Malone, Revo, Rocketchip, Stage 1

[Jan 1979]

The more I am looking into Stage 1 for my 2010 TDI the more confused I get. There seem to be so many opinions out there. Can anyone speak from experience about their tune and why they chose that particular one?

[jettawolfs98]

Ditto.

[Keithuk]

Well there are loads of TDI chiptune companies out there if you them sorry I can't recommend one. If I did decide on one I would probably choose DTUK.

Your is a 2010 therefore you have one year left on the warranty unless you have done more than 60k. So if you took your car into the dealer for a warranty job depending on what the job is like engine then they can plugin their diagnostics and it will tell them its been chiptuned so the warranty could be void.

There are companies out there that do the plugin boxes so if it goes into the dealer you unplug and remove it and it doesn't register in the ecu so they are none the wiser. The other advantage of these boxes is if you have a problem you can unplug it try it again to see if its the box or something else with a chiptune you can't you're back to the dealer or the tuning company.

[d2305]

Jeff at rocketchip seems to the preferred vendor.

[YMZ]

Originally Posted by d2305

Jeff at rocketchip seems to the preferred vendor.

Well, I happen to be partial to Rocketchip, but... it appears that he's a one-man operation, and unless you are in his vicinity or at one of the Get-Together locations where he appears, it's rather difficult to get one of his tunes. (Some people remove their ECU's and mail them to him, but that's a bit cumbersome...) Malone has many distributors out there, and I believe some of the others (Kerma?) send out hardware that you use to modify your own car and then return.

All the well-regarded tuners have their strong points, and there doesn't appear to be a consensus as to which one may be "best" for any one car...

You may take your aspirins now...

Yuri

[d2305]

I wouldn't pay hundreds of dollars to mess with my ecu unless it was broken. Everyone at the other forum seems to have good experiences with Jeff.

[Jan 1979]

So far my best customer service experience has been with Revo. Unitronics did not answer my email and revo's tech manager got back to me in 2o min with dyno charts and realistic expectations.
Dtuk quoted great numbers but when I asked what was the horse power and torque gain at the wheels he had no data. For everyone out there thats interested most gain numbers are quoted at the engine not at the wheels.

Jan

[BrShootr]

Really? You didn't think you'd start a piss fight with a different opinion for each person posting here?

They all accomplish about the same thing, Malone has a cult following and is apparently the most experienced. They are the only ones with a DPF delete tune, so if you ever decide to upgrade to stage 2 that'd be cheaper.

Revo has an SPS tool. It allows you to switch between 4 tunes (all tunes are in your ECU, the tool just picks which one is the active one). This allows you to have warranty service and have your dealer update ECU software without you losing your tune (you switch the car to use the VW tune, take it in for service, they do their thing and then you switch back). IF the dealer completely erases your ECU and re-flashes it, then you'll lose your tune. With all other tunes, you have to tell the dealer not to update the software on your ECU or you'll lose your tune no matter what and you'll have to have it re-flashed.

Other than that, see who's local. Nothing beats having your tech right there that you can go to in case there's a software update or you need to re-flash your ECU due to the dealer erasing your custom tune.

Stay away from tuning boxes.

[chgofirefighter]

Why stay away from tuning boxes? www.tunit.com out of UK been selling tuning boxes for 13 yrs no problems and they warranty their box for 3 yrs and are insured w lloyds of London. Europe has been having diesel engines since ever so I would imagine that they would have more of experience but then again I'm no expert

[BrShootr]

Originally Posted by chgofirefighter

Why stay away from tuning boxes? www.tunit.com out of UK been selling tuning boxes for 13 yrs no problems and they warranty their box for 3 yrs and are insured w lloyds of London. Europe has been having diesel engines since ever so I would imagine that they would have more of experience but then again I'm no expert

Others may be more informed to answer this, but there's a difference between fooling the ECU into believing something is there, when it isn't and reprogramming it to do something different.

Think about it this way, the ecu has many fail-safe mechanisms built into it, they use the data from the various sensors to know what the status of the engine is. Why would you over-ride them with bogus data that is meaningless? If there's ever a problem you can use a diagnostics tool because all your data will be fake. This renders the most important feature of having a logging ability useless.

Sure it might work, but it's a $25k car, why save a few hundred on something as important as the engine?