If you have been following CPI Tuning lately you would have noticed that they have a little soft spot for the VW Golf. In fact, the guys at HQ have owned an MK3 VR6, MK6 GTI and our current project: MK12LO
Today is an opportunity for us to show off some of the reasons why CPI are the best choice for tuning your vehicle. One of the biggest decisions you will face when choosing a workshop and tuning company will be finding someone you trust. With modern ECU tuning being such an abstract and difficult to understand process, we seek to demystify the art and help educate our clients.
For some background reading you should check out CPI's article on the MK4 R32 which will teach you about ignition timing and its effect on performance.
We have developed this easy to understand diagram to help show you the unique and systematic approach that we take to ECU tuning:
By following these methods CPI are able to ensure that every vehicle that leaves our workshops is powerful, smooth and above all safe & reliable.
To give a real world example of this process in action and how it helped our client reach their goals, we have one of our favorite examples: The 000RUN MK6 GTI.
CPI had known about 000RUN for a while and it was always one of their favorite vehicles on social media. It was brought under the spotlight recently by a video circulating that essentially accused it of being “all show and no go”. CPI reached out to the owner and invited him in to discuss his options to redeem 000RUN and put everyone in their place.
The car was brought into our Western Sydney workshop AME where all the diagnostics and work was performed. It was completely stock on the software side, however, it had an intake and 3″ downpipe installed.
Our first approach was to perform comprehensive testing and analysis of the vehicles condition while stock. Before we could even proceed to work on the vehicle we were able to identify an immediate issue with the vehicles intake:
An intake installed by a friend was incompatible with the vehicle and was causing issues with idle and reducing the vehicles performance. CPI retrofitted a MAF housing from the stock intake (as pictured) to see if this alleviated the problem and as expected it did. This was one of those rare instances that returning a part to stock actually yielded a better result.
With the vehicle’s intake system returned to stock we could proceed with our dyno testing.
Stock tests revealed the car to be very healthy. Timing retard, air to fuel ratio, boost pressure & fuel pressure were all within spec and the car was now behaving as a healthy stock vehicle should.
It was now time to proceed to tuning.
After the initial tune, the first test was to check the peak boost level to ensure safe operating levels. Here are the results:
The boost pressure is shown in a unit called “absolute millibars”. In order to calculate the PSI (pounds per square inch) we need to take off 1000 otherwise the boost pressure will include the pressure of the atmosphere around us. When you convert 2050mbar to PSI you come up with 15.44PSI. This is an extremely safe boost level. Other vehicles that CPI have tested that were not tuned by CPI have had boost pressures in excess of 22PSI putting us securely on the safer end of the spectrum. This safe boost level does not sacrifice on performance as you will see in the dyno chart further down the page. Through the intelligent use of Boost, Timing & AFR (Air to Fuel Ratio) we are able to keep our boost levels down while keeping our power levels up.
Our second test was to check the AFR. An optimal AFR will produce the best power and reduce the chance of knock/detonation. Industry standard for the 2.0 TSI engine in the MK6 GTI is between 0.75 and 0.85.
Under full boost, this vehicle was stable between 0.81 and 0.82 which is perfectly optimal.
We also checked the ignition timing retard. (For more info, once again, read our article on the MK4 R32) The ECU can record values anywhere from 0 to a little bit over 10 degrees. The best way to understand how this works is to think about it like bouncers at a club. If everything is great then there will be 0 bouncers intervening. If there is a serious problem then 10 bouncers might need to intervene. The more bouncers, the worse your night is going to be.
Our testing revealed absolutely no retardation at all under full full boost. An exceptional result.
The dyno results are below.
After all the dust settles, we hope that 000RUN has now had its redeeming moment. We would like to take a special opportunity to thank those that helped get 000RUN and CPI out into social media. Your continued support in mentioning us helps individuals like the owner of 000RUN get the proper support to achieve their goals.
“All show and no go?” We don’t think so. Playtime is over.
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The CPI Tuning Process
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