4Driver4

VAG-COM is not tuning software. It is a diagnostic tool. Fix the problems with the engine and things will get better.

honki24

You're right. Shortly after posting that I found out that it has no tuning capabilities.

Right now I'm on to trying to disable the EGR in the ECM. I've been unsuccessful at recoding with VAG-COM. I found a thread on here where someone gave coding for vehicles without EGR but it's not sticking for me.

I'm pretty sure that the motor is "fixed". It's just that I'm used to having control over my vehicles relatively easily. Not trying to whine. I never meant for this car to be some kind of HP beast, but I guess I'll have to just kill the idea of making use of all of my octane points. The only thing that could use to be "fixed" at this point is the variable intake runner actuator. I need to go grab another one from a junkyard. Does anyone have a good link to a thread where I can read up on this? I know how the principal works but I'd like to know that I understand the "system" on the car. I think it's a dumb system because I've been running without it for a week now and the car seems to have no idea. No sensor to measure whether it's working or not.

turbo510

Honki24, just some observations on your project; the EGR won't have any effect one way or the other for power, because it only dumps some exhaust gas in during cruise conditions. If for some reason you don't want the EGR to work, pull and plug the hose to the diaphram. You will get an EGR fault code, naturally. By the way, if you haven't done an EGR port cleaning in a long time, the EGR isn't working anyway.

It sounds like you want to advance the ignition timing to get more power, but there is a limit to how much advance is benificial, and ECU is programmed to cover that range. Your two knock sensors tell the ECU when there is too much advance. Personally, I doubt advancing the timing, if you could do it, would get you any more power. Remember that poorly-designed combustion chambers need the most advance.

The variable intake system depends on RPM, there is no sensor to check. At about 4K or so, the changeover valve opens and the diaphram pulls the linkage. Take a look at the graph on 12V.org and you will see the step in the torque graph where the valve re-tunes the intake. The mod that's been recommended for the 12V engine is to match and polish the intake ports where the manifold is attached.