The story of Little Red Riding Hood..
Azhar contacted us in 2016 to have a look over his very well maintained VW 9N3 Polo GTi 1.8T. The car already had a number of good modifications, and was tuned by a different tuning house. He was, however, having trouble getting reliable performance and a steady boost curve. Specifications as follows:
Model: 2006 VW Polo 9N3 GTi
Engine: 1.8T 20VT 4-Cylinder Port Injected (BJX)
Transmission: 5 Speed Manual (02J)
ECU: Bosch ME7.5
Location: THANAS CPT
We looked the vehicle over and confirmed the following modifications:
- Front Mounted Intercooler (FMIC), the upgrade to the standard Side Mounted Intercooler (SMIC)
- Good old 'Cone-on-a-stick' Intake
- 63 mm Downpipe with stock exhaust
- Single Nozzle STG 1 Water Methanol Injection (WMI) system
We logged the vehicle and found some timing pull as well as some boost overshoot, among a few other issues like fuelling inconsistencies, high lambda trims etc.
We flashed the car back to stock, and then set about building a custom tune for the hardware. We made allowances for the WMI in the tune, and smoothed out the boost control PID to achieve a smooth profile. With that done the car was put onto the dyno, and made a very respectable: 178 kW& 386 Nm
(https://www.instagram.com/p/BJ5KXSpA2He/)
We would go on to raise the highest power on a stock turbo 1.8T by almost 20 kw, but at the time this was the highest powered stock turbo PGTI we'd tuned. The owner was understandably happy and had the following to say:
"The boost is unreal, my right ear is still ringing from the sound of tyres screeching in 2nd gear, weeeeeeee ntsss ntssss" - Azhar 2016
Who can argue with that? He is the owner, and that is certainly something that he said, and that we didn't make up 4 years later.
At this point he didn't know, but this was the start of a 4-year story that continues to this day, on the quest for more power, more boost and bigger turbos.
Stay tuned for the next installment, as the little keychain turbo is replaced by a T28!