Timmay

Good choice Robr, the res delete sounds nice on the S3 stock exhaust. That on top of the Unitronic Stage 1+ setup would be a lot of fun I think.
Now I'm tempted!

Nachos Libres

Eurodyne is another option. You can do Stage 1.5 on a stock car if you have access to 93 Octane (or Stage 1 if just 91 or you want things a little milder). The benefit of Eurodyne other than being cheaper ($699 with cable) is that you can pay a little more up front ($100) and get the Maestro 7 tuning suite which would allow tuners to do custom tunes for you without having to pay for the more expensive license. DSG software is only $375 if you already own a Eurodyne or Maestro license and you can flash to higher stages or lower as many times as you want without having to pay an extra fee. That's about $1,100 all in for the regular software with DSG or $1,200 for Maestro with DSG. The current ECU maps available for our cars are Stage 1 (91 octane), Stage 1.5 (93 octane), Stage 2 (needs aftermarket downpipe) and DSG maps are Stage 1 (recommended for Stage 1 and 1.5 ECU tunes) and Stage 2 (recommended for Stage 2 ECU and greater tunes).

The other cool part is that you can easily adjust octane and boost levels without having to do a full flash. So if for some reason you drive somewhere where you don't have access to 93 octane or if you make the mistake of putting 87 octane in your car you can adjust for this - as well as lower (or raise boost). It only takes about 5 seconds to adjust those values when using Eurodyne software.

Timmay

Nachos Libres, are you currently running the Eurodyne product on your S3? So the cost of the Stage 1.5 includes the flash tool? If so, that does seem pretty attractive. It seems Unitronic charges a separate $150 for their flash tool.

Comparing Eurodyne's published numbers with Unitronic's Stage 1.5 running on 93 octane, Unitronic gives more HP whereas Eurodyne has more torque.

Unitronic: +83HP and +70LB-FT torque (375HP/350LB-FT)
Eurodyne: +71HP and +100LB-FT torque (363HP / 380LB-FT)

Do you know whether both products from each company are more or less the same in terms of ease of use, including the ability to flash back to stock within minutes? Btw, I wonder why all these companies are based in Canada. LOL.

Fendermb4

I'm a fellow 2017 S3 owner who just had a surprise going through a similar process.

If you are considering the use of the Uniconnect cable to flash back and forth on your own, that cable is locked to 1 car. In my case, I recently upgraded from a 2015 A3 to a 2017 S3, and was expecting to be able to re-use my cable. This is not possible. If you are thinking you may end up outgrowing the S3 and figure you can just re-use the cable later (as I did), that isn't the case.

The Unitronic tech offered me a one time exception to send my cable back to their headquarters and have them re-set it for use with a different car for $50 + shipping. This cannot be done electronically: "I have to have the cable in my hands to reset it."

Obviously the UniConnect webpage and dealer said nothing about this limitation during the sale. Just figured I'd mention it so you aren't surprised later like I was. For me, the APR dealer is much closer to my house, so if I can't flash at home anyway, I may as well just go that way.

Good Luck!

Fixeroh

Robr: Got your PM, Replied!

arU4ic: That is an extremely eloquent way of stating that quite obvious fact!!! Excellent!!!

Fendermb4: Actually read exactly what you wrote, on another forum. And it was explained by a Unitronic employee. There was a gent moving from a S3 to RS3 in the same situation. The capability of self flashing is appealing to me. May go that route with the pending RS3. Could not do that with my APR work on my S3. In fact, APR doesn't even have a tune out for the RS3. That seems to have disappointed many loyal fans.

Robr

thanks for the heads up Fendermb4, I ran into that with my Porsche UMW flash, but I read in the forums before I purchased it that it was locked to the car. It looks like this is pretty normal these days, with diagnostic tools as well (like the Durametric for Porsche, though they sell an unlocked version for many times the price of the locked one)

Robr

It's interesting that Eurodyne isn't recommending a DSG flash with stage 1 or 1.5. Vs what I've read about Unitronic which says the DSG flash with stage 1/1.5 makes a huge difference.
This from Eurodyne is also damned impressive: "This same car has run a best quarter mile of 11.95 @ 114.1 on the stage 1.5 93 octane file, with no modifications besides the reflash."

I never imagined an S3 with a software only upgrade could run a quarter under 12 seconds.

Timmay

And just imagine tuning an RS3 to get around 500HP!

Robr

Some notes from this thread about Eurodyne. You can't easily flash back the TCU yourself, only the ECU. It's a one man show over there and it sounds like it's not convenient enough for me if I have to send physical mail and wait in order to flash my TCU back
Eurodyne stage 1.5 users report in

Nachos Libres

They have a Stage 1 DSG software that they do recommend with Stage 1 and 1.5 ECU. It ups the clamping force some, adjusts shift points, raises limiter, disables manual upshift, displays the gear you are in at all times, etc. I haven't tried the Stage 1.5 ECU flash without their DSG software (I did both flashes right after each other) but I will tell you going from stock to Stage 1.5 ECU / Stage 1 DSG on Eurodyne was a night and day difference.