speed808

After having a APR chip installed on my 1998.5 Audi A4 1.8T Quattro 5-speed over a month ago, I can now share what I have learned. The biggest disappointment is that the car will ping under WOT (Wide open throttle) in 2nd and 3rd gears. The pinging occurs in cool weather 60-65 degrees and in warm weather 87 to 90 degrees. I have tried various octane boosters and I always use premium unleaded with 92 octane (the best we can get in Hawaii) from Chevron. I have called APR and spoke to Jeremy and told him about the problem. He asked about what gas I use and then told me that there is no way the APR chip can cause pinging with 92 octane gas. He gave me the impression that I was lying and he did not take the pinging issue seriously. He said that only recourse was to sent my engine CPU to them so they could look at it. Jeremy said it might take up to one week. Problem is, I use my car every day and this is not an option. This is why I had the APR chip installed at my local Audi dealer. Oh, one more thing, when you get an APR chip installed, THEY KEEP YOUR STOCK CHIP!!!!!
There are some good points of the APR chip. The chip pulls very hard in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear. BUT, There is a drawback. The power abruptly drops in 2nd to 5th gear. 1st gear will pull hard up to the redline, this is the only gear where the APR chip will pull into the redline. 2nd gear will pull hard up to about 5600 rpm. 3rd gear will pull hard only up to about 5300 rpm. If you do not shift before these rpm points, the acceleration drops off very sharply. It accually feels like you're decelerating or hitting a hidden wall because the pull abruptly stops. In 4th and 5th gears, the improvement is almost non-existent. In 5th gear, you need to downshift to 3rd for the best acceleration.
Your top speed also drops with the APR chip since the chip will not pull hard beyond 5300 rpm's in the higher gears. My stock A4 went 127-129 mph. After the APR chip was installed, the top speed dropped to 122 mph. The car will simply not pull beyond 5300 rpm's in 5th gear with the APR chip.
If I had to do it again, I would probably go with a GIAC (Garrett) chip. I have heard great things about this chip including its ablity to pull in 4th and 5th gears. On this forum, I have only seen (1) posting about the problem of pinging with the Garrett chip. I have spoken to Hussy who runs Volksgerman in Honolulu, HI. He said that Garrett takes pinging VERY SERIOUSLY (unlike APR) and Garrett will use all means to correct the situation if the pinging occurs (again, unlike APR).
I know this message will upset a lot to APR fans out there but this is my personal experience with APR. The fact is: APR does not seem to take pinging seriously. Jeremy at APR did not seem to believe a word I said about the pinging replying to me - there is no way the APR chip will ping on good gas. If he is right, then am I imagining this pinging, I don't think so. All of my friends that rode in my car also noticed the pinging without me saying a word.
So I am left to ponder whether to just live with a pinging A4 with the APR chip or whether to have a Garrett chip installed and lose out on $700 for trying out the APR chip. I'm very disappointed with the pinging on the APR chip and even more disappointed in the way Jeremy of APR has handled this situation. Pinging issues seems to be the last thing on his mind, his mind is more set on selling more APR products.

RedBlackYellow

ECU back to them to get them to fix it and you won't have any down time, maybe give them a deposit for the loaner ECU on your credit card or something. I'm sure they can work it out for you.

Or you can do what skene has been pushing on every A4'er out there and go GIAC

Skene @ PES Tuning

=)

Yippers®

Didn't you receive an email about this ?

incremental

As I was reading this, I was thinking this sounds a lot like the problem that the 2002's have with the fuel sender limiter. Except, I assume you don't have a 2002 (because APR doesn't make a chip for that). So... call me crazy, but I think the problem is not with the chip, but with the fuel delivery or something along those lines. Lots of people with APR chips go well above 122mph top speed. That's not normal.

RedBlackYellow

tell your boys i'll stick a GIAC sticker on my *** if they give me a free t-28 kit

Yippers®

cavalear approach to customer complaints. They don't do well with email in my experience but the customer service on the telephone is typically pretty good.
It sounds to me that the chip is either faulty or you car has an issue. Any of the major tuners chips will pull well above the OEM limiter if the car is healthy and the chip is healhty. If you've indeed been reading this forum, you will also recognize that many folks here run GIAC, APR, Neuspeed etc. without the type of issue you are descibing. There are a few folks running each chip who have had issues but typically that turned out to be either an Audi issue or a single bad chip. All the chip suppliers seem to have the occassional faulty chip or chip install.
I would be as wary of advice from a competitor about what any other suppliers chip does or doesn't do. They are all trying to get your business. I wouldn't expect glowing reports from APR about GIAC either .. not the way that works in the real world unfortunately.
What does your installing dealer have to say? If they installed the first chip why can't they replace the current one with a new one? Has the dealer looked for codes on the car? If so what codes if any show?
If you've not taken it into the dealer what other than call APR have you done to see if there is an Audi fault or an ECU fault in the car?
Do you know anyone who has a OEM ECU you could borrow to ascertain if it is your ECU? If so then while your chipped ECU was sent back to APR you'd have your car available at least. If it won't run worth a hoot on the OEM ECU either .. you've got your answer.

hurricanesteve

at the track. This was reformulated 93 and temps were in the low 90's. I had been running several slalom course runs back and forth, so the i/c was way heat soaked.

And yes, APR had a "that is not possible" approach to the problem. I put some octane booster in for day two of the track event and it went away.

But listening to your description, my feeling is that it is probably NOT the chip. I'd run some fuel system cleaner to insure good fuel delivery, check the MAF, check for vacuum leaks (those hoses get brittle), inspect your plugs, etc.

Too many people run that chip without problems to immediately blame the software.

steve

EdP

I also would have a momentary ping in 2nd on a hot day with a hot engine. This of course goes back nearly two years, so I don't know about the new programs....

But like the others have said, many folks here have rarely if ever commented about pinging with either chip brand, and pinging is one thing that most will instantly post about. So I to=o think it's in your interest to first look at a few other things, especially with an older non-dbw car.

AWE has a 30 day money back guarantee to try a chip - you could always try that route.

Paul H. (near Annapolis, MD)

..but as was your experience my every attempt to do so fell on deaf ears. I even had some extended discussions with Ed Palisoc about this (back when he worked for APR), and in the end we decided that my car was a bit oddball in that it required an atypical version of software. More on this below. I only recently found out that the problem MAY IN FACT BE a glitch in their software.

Now, as for the different software versions and which one works in my car: APR makes software for two different ECU types used in pre-2000 (non-DBW) A4s: 8D0 907 557 P (All pre00 cars except Quattro Tip), and 8D0 907 559 C (All pre00 Quattro Tip cars). Since I have a pre00 Quattro Tip, APR had loaded v3.1 of the 559 C code when I returned it to them to correct a problem I had changing the ECU drivetrain/transmission code after loaning my ECU to someone with a 5-speed. This was July-August 2001. When I installed the updated ECU I immediately noticed the power loss above 5300 RPM (NO pinging though, more on that later). speed808 is correct this power loss is NOT subtle.

Before going on I should say this: For the most part, my experience with APR has been very good. Most of the time they really bend over backwards to be helpful (in some cases going way above and beyond the call). This cannot go unmentioned. My experience with their products is that they seem to be very well engineered, and I believe they honestly do put a lot of effort into research and development to ensure quality products. But, they are human and no matter how hard you try, sometimes glitches are just going to happen.

So after doing some initial diagnosis to make sure there was not a problem with my specific car, I sent e-mail to Brett, Sales, and Ed Palisoc at APR about the power loss. This was before I realized that APR was no longer responding to e-mail (APR I would suggest you remove the e-mail links from your web site. If you're not going to respond, the only thing those links are going to do is create irate customers). Ed responded almost immediately, and we spent some time on AOL chat going back and forth about my problem, mostly my insisting there was a problem with the software and Ed making every attempt to find otherwise (sorry Ed, I know you tried to be helpful, but that was honestly how I felt).

Now, the original ECU that came in my car was 8D0 907 557 P, which means there were at least some Pre00 Quattro Tip cars using this code and not the 559 C. Since I have a home programmer I decided to try the 557 P code in my car, and lo and behold and the power loss disappeared! My car pulled hard to well above 6000 RPM even in the higher gears. So naturally I assumed my car was an oddball case (not unknown with Audis) and 559 C was simply the wrong software in my case.

It wasn't until recently when I returned my ECU to APR to have a flip-switch installed (to support multiple programs), specifying that they use 557 P code since 559 C did not work correctly in my car. I got the ECU back, confirmed that 557 P eas indeed loaded, and lo and behold the power loss returned, in exactly the same way it was before! At 5300 RPM, it's like the programming abruptly goes to stock, and the boost abruptly drops from about 10 PSI to 3 PSI. There is no check engine light or DTC, so I don't think it's going into limp mode (am I correct in this asumption?).

So I looked at the 557 P file I had downloaded last year for my home programmer (which thank GOD I still have) and low and behold it is v3.0!! Even though their website at the time said I was downloading v3.1. So the problem doesn't have anything to do with 557 P vs. 559 C, it is v3.0 vs. v3.1.

When I discovered this, I called APR and it was lunchtime. After explaining my problem, a very courteous young lady said she would need to have someone who handled technical issues call me back when they returned from lunch. I asked that they call me as soon as possible. By 4pm, when nobody had called, I called again and was passed to someone (I think it may even have been Jeremy but I'm not sure) who (finally!) admitted that they had seen other reports of this power loss problem and were investigating it as a possible glitch in their software. This was on April 1, 2002. I relayed my prior experience with this problem and how I corrected it by loading v3.0, and he said unfortunately they do not save old versions of the software so it was a good thing I had saved that 3.0 file and suggested I load it again to correct the problem until they can come up with a fix for v3.1. He did not ask for a copy of it, though, so I guess the rest of you are out of luck.

Now before anyone with an APR chipped pre00 A4 experiencing power loss above 5300 RPM writes to see if I can reprogram their ECU with v3.0 to correct this, you should also consider that below 5300 RPM, v3.1 actually runs much better (smoother and more powerful). So your best solution would really be to wait for APR to correct the glitch (if one actually exists, which they have not yet admitted) and release a newer version of their software.

What I don't like is that APR refuses to help with or investigate a problem until they have a number of people reporting the problem. One person is not enough to get their attention. This has been my experience, with every person at APR I have ever dealt with (even Brett). I can understand that problems with chipped cars are more often than not a problem with the owner's car, and not their product. And technically APR has no responsibility to diagnose these kids of problems. But I wish APR would reconsider this. APR, if you won't help, then who are we supposed to go to in order to get these problems diagnosed? Warranty issues aside, dealerships have no experience with, and no training for diagnosis of chipped engines, so unless you have a really good tech the dealer is not going to be much help. And sometimes these problems (small leaks, for example) do not exhibit themselves with stock programming. That leaves the independent garage, and many of them (in my experience) are similar to the dealer in this regard. That leaves only race shops (many of which are not reputable), and APR affiliates, which are not always local enough to bring your car to.

Ok, 'nuff said on that topic I guess.

Pinging:

I have NEVER experienced pinging with any of the v3.x versions pf APR software (which have been available for 1-2 years). I have run VAG-COM scans under all kinds of heavy acceleration with 93 octane fuel and see hardly any timing correction AT ALL, which means my car was never even at the VERGE of detonation.

I HAVE, however had a lot of problems with vacuum leaks. Enough to affect performance, but not not enough to set the check engine light or throw a DTC. Vacuum leaks on the 1.8T actually cause a rich condition. This happens for two reasons: 1) the ECU self-adapts the fuel mixture (via the lambda (O2) sensors) at idle and during part throttle operation. Most of the time under these conditions the intake plenum is under vacuum. So with a vacuum leak the ECU will see extra air and richen the fuel mixture to compensate. This richening happens across the board. Then, as the system goes under boost, air is lost through the leak and the already richened mixture gets even more rich! Since the lamba sensors are not used under heavy acceleration and wide-open throttle, the ECU never sees this.

The good news is that rich operation can prevent detonation. The bad news is that over time it causes carbon buildup in the combustion chambers. Carbon buildup makes an engine MORE prone to detonate. So if you are experiencing pinging or surging with an APR chip, based on my experience and observations with test equipment, and the fact that too many people run this software without those particular problems, I would have to side with APR and say it is highly unlikely that their software (even v3.1) is causing it. Make DOUBLE SURE that none of your intake hoses or vacuum lines are leaking. A common culprit is the hose that goes from the intake to the turbo bypass valve. This cloth covered hose is known to get brittle and crack. I also have a '98.5 A4 and had to replace mine several months ago because of this. And it had been leaking for a long time. If you do find a leak, once it is fixed I would normally suggest getting two bottles of Techron Concentrate and run two consecutive tankfuls through to remove any carbon buildup (one bottle in each tankful, of course). The only problem with this is that Techron lowers the octane number of the gas, making it less chip-friendly and more detonation-friendly. APR does not recommend using fuel additives in chipped cars.

Paul