Which chip?

[philrobertson]

Am looking to get some more horsepower out of my mk5 55 plate gti and wondered which make of chip was best? how much?and how much horsepower increase they give? Help!!!?

[edo]

Mine had (until VW reflashed it) APR, and was impressive. I think it is around 500 quid. It was 250hp. Fuel economy is no worse. Much stronger pick up from the turbo.

[RedRobin]

Revo are another recommended one and it has switchability and anti-theft immobilising features.

Check out the Tuning forum and also search further back in this GTI forum.

[DHA]

Had revo on a previous car (S3) and would use them again.

[rs32]

just to clarify - the chip itself does not get replaced if the tweaks are done via the OBD (On Board Diagnostics) Port - so the end result is an ECU remap , not a chip.

some of the later MkV Golfs cannot be tweaked in this way, and the chip has to physically be de-soldered form the ECU board, then connected to a 'carrier' linked to a laptop, then re-soldered

You have a choice of APR, Revo, AMD, Superchips, Morego, MTM and many others so it's worth taking the time to do the research.

I wouldn't necessarily pick the one that offers the highest bhp figure as (a) the GTI is front-wheel drive and (b) the driveability and smoothness counts for much more than a set of headline figures.

HTH

[RedRobin]

....Hear! Hear! rs32 = Good advice IMO.

What does "HTH" stand for?

[SamD]

HTH = Happy to Help.

HTH

[Spot]

<u>H</u>ope <u>T</u>his <u>H</u>elps

[RedRobin]

Cheers, guys . We learn something new every day.

[CMC950]

Sound advice RS 32, but could you go as far as to say which remap (not chip) you would suggest?

[rs32]

I have to be careful here as I do not own a GTI, nor have I ever remapped one. However Revo and Morego seem to have good reputations, I cannot recommmend AMD as they really messed me about but others have had decent results and service there so they may also be a contender.

With any of the companies I've mentioned here and above, I'd be asking to see power/torque curve plots along with an explanation of how the driving dynamics would be affected post-remap. Even better would be a company with a demo car that is prepared to explain why it's behaviour is usable in real life.

If you see a power plot with a huge increase as the turbo goes onto full boost - but with the torque curve flattening and tailing off as the revs climb right up, that might suggest that the tuner has gone for power before driveability. If there are steady and smoother curves then that might suggest they have done extra work on improving driveability as well as the headline figures.

If it were me I'd be looking for the 2.0T to give an extra kick as the peak torque point is reached, but I'd also expect that peak to be held and for strong consistent pull to be evident right the way up. With this example I'd rather 250bhp and a strong linear set of dyno results than 260/270bhp and all the torque arriving in one big unusable lump. If you can have the best of both worlds then all well and good.

Also remember that a reputable tuner will take DSG into account as IIRC there may be a torque limit for these cars.

not sure whether turbo lag becomes an issue with this engine - my previous Scooby was pretty bad for this (no real urge until 3k revs then mayhem !) but I have read that the FSI turbo engine has different (hopefully more useable) behaviour.

all imo of course.

[RedRobin]

rs32's advice perfectly matches everything that I have learnt in research and talking to various tuners in the last year.

The only thing he doesn't know is that the GTI has virtually nil turbo lag.

Driveability is what's important imo - Otherwise, build yourself a track car!

[JonnyGTi]

[ QUOTE ]

Even better would be a company with a demo car that is prepared to explain why it's behaviour is usable in real life.

[/ QUOTE ]

I note that AwesomeGTi allow you to have a full 6 hour trial of their APR remap in your own car

[rozzerfodder]

I am sure OliH will add a more informed point of view in that his car is REVO'd, but at the rolling road day he had a drive of Siburts AMD mapped car. Now I drove Siburts and it was much quicker than my stock gti. What has to be taken into account though is Si's is manual and Oli's is DSG so the DSG back to back is the quicker of the two. The rollers revealed SI's to be about 266 whereas Olis was around 245 with the calculations for DSG taken into account. Oli did however say that back to back, his "felt" faster.

The one thing I did discover though was that AMD's map is customised to the car and they take DSG torque factors into consideration whereas the REVO map is a generic code. I was gonna go with REVO before the meet but talking to Adam at AMD has set me thinking that a custom map is the way to go. Certainly the drive in Siburt's brought a smile to my face. However, from the research I have done and other TSN'ers comments, both companies (on the whole) come highly recommended.