Hidden Horsepower

In order to squeeze the most horsepower possible out of our late model performance cars, it makes sense that we have to turn our eyes to the ECU’s (Engine Control Unit). As it turns out, car manufacturers are able to make the same engine perform much differently for various markets, and in many cases reduce a significant amount of horsepower and torque. Continue reading…

Many companies began by offering chips for vehicle ECU’s that required removing the vehicle’s computer and soldering in a new aftermarket performance chip. Downtime for your car could be several weeks if you didn’t live close to a dealer and had to ship your ECU. Tuner shops tried to reduce downtime by studying up and offering ECU remapping. This is great if you can find someone who knows your car’s ECU and performance characteristics. However, more times then not, they won’t have knowledge on your specific application. Besides, do you trust the brain of your brand new $35,000 car to a guy with a laptop and a few extra hours of time?   

Companies like APR offer ECU re-flashing through a vehicle’s OBD2 port, and have cut downtime completely out of the equation. I recently had my 2008 GTI re-flashed by my local APR retailer Achtuning and the results are phenomenal! Dion at Achtuning simply ran a USB cable with a special OBD2 attachment to my car, hooked it into their computer, asked me a few questions, and in 30 minutes my car was done. APR re-maps over 200 programs in my car, paying particular detail to extended driveability. They have a huge R&D team that spends their entire day designing and testing these applications. The best part is that most tuner-friendly dealerships don’t see anything harmful in doing this, and some even offer it as an extra when purchasing vehicles.

After re-flashing my ECU I hopped in the car and took off. I immediately noticed a huge difference in driveability, torque and most of all POWER. My specific application brought an extra 50 hp and 99 ft/lb of torque out of my 2.0L Turbo engine. Just look at the numbers!

My car is completely driveable and actually gets better gas mileage! Not only that, but APR made it so easy to switch between the stock GTI programming and the upgraded performance program, it’s all controlled through the cruise control stock! 1 blink Program 1, 2 blinks program 2, etc. Check out the video!