Dan K. |
12-20-1998 12:56 PM |
K04 upgrade experience (very long)
I want to share my experience with my K04 turbo upgrade. <p>I was very excited when the installation was completed (R & A enterprises in New Jersey did an excellent job and I would wholeheartedly recommend them). The top end performance was excellent and was significant over the Stage I kit, but it definitely lost its low end kick that I enjoyed over the past year. I went to Atco Raceways to get some hard numbers. The best quarter mile time was 14.8 @~92 mph, 2.2 seconds for the 60 foot time (around 40 deg F. and at low humidity). A definite improvement but I felt I could get more out of the kit.<p>When I heard that Tony Ricci from PES used custom programming by Garret Lim for the ECU in the Supercharger, I thought Garrett could do the same for me. Fortunately Garrett goes to medical school in Philadelphia and I only lived 30 minutes away. We met at Air and Water Enterprises in Phila. Todd, the owner, was also very excited by the performance potential of the A4, so much so, that he just purchased an A4 to be used as a test bed for future development. <p>Garret is an extremely bright person with plenty of energy and enthusiasm for engine tuning. Despite taking final exams earlier in the day, he was very excited to do my kit. (Aren’t you tired from the exams? No, actually tuning your car will be relaxing and fun.) Garrett does all kinds of custom tuning for international and American customers. He apparently is the only one to tune a chip for the new Porsche 911 (996). <p>First, we went for a test drive with his laptop connected to my car. The original chip for the kit was apparently dumping too much fuel at initial full throttle under low rpm conditions. The upper RPM range was "good". We went back to the speed shop and burned a custom chip and swapped ECU’s. We started with a k04 chip program that he used for European customer. After a couple more runs with better air/fuel ratios (lambda closer to 0.85) we came up with the final program. The low rpm torque was vastly improved with boost coming on a lot sooner. The improvements were definitely felt as your back was pressing against the seat. No pinging or overheating was experienced. I also did some preliminary performance testing.<p>In third gear, acceleration from 40 to 100 km/h was substantially improved. From an average of 7.96 seconds to 7.1 seconds. I will return to Atco speedways on Jan 10 to do back to back testing of each chip.<p>I would like to keep my post positive and therefore will not reveal the original chip tuner. So please don't ask me who did my original chip and please don't post any guesses.<p>Garret says that my new chip is moderately aggressive and that he had a lot more room for improvement. He also stated that my A4 is the strongest a4 in the USA that he has tuned. I will keep everyone posted of future developments. <p>Dan K.<br>97 1.8tqm<ul><li><a href="http://www.dvol.com/~users/gal/giac.htm">Garret Lim</a></li></ul>
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