RBeam6

This A6 is the first car I've ever had flashed so I can only speak to my experience with the Stasis version but after about 2 weeks with it I can say:

1. Everything I hoped it would do, it did.
2. NOTHING that I loved about the 'balance' of the car has changed in a negative way.
3. A LOT of things I wasn't really thinking about when I decided to tune have made the car a lot more fun.

One of the very few things I had to criticize about the car in stock form was that the way the power rolled off at around 5k felt artificial to me. Almost like a soft limiter kicking in. The software change (to me) feels more like they fixed a factory defect than upgraded something.

Power from top to bottom is still silky smooth and utterly effortless feeling. Without the tune this is a deceptively fast car that could get you into trouble without knowing it. With the tune it's absurdly easy to find yourself in triple digit license ending speeds when all you were trying to do was give it a little bump to get around a clump of traffic on the highway.

Having the near linear power curve extend all the way to red line makes it A LOT more fun in the turns. I never used to manually shift the car because it just didn't seem worth the effort (compared to putting it in sport mode which does a pretty good job of keeping you in the right gear). I'm sure with some practice I could've gotten better at finding the sweet spot in manual mode but I just always seemed to end up in the 5000 -> red line dead zone so never bothered. After the software ... everything is a sweet spot. Where ending up in the 5k range when exiting a turn or an on-ramp to the highway was a bit of a let down before .... now it is just nothing-but-awesome. Manually shifting the car on the back roads around town now is a blast.

Oh yeah, all this and my gas mileage around town (when I'm in a relaxed driving mode) is unchanged and I think the highway mileage is a little better (once again, when I'm in relaxed mode).

When I was at Stasis for the tune 2 weeks ago they took me out for a ride in one of their hopped up A4s with the ohlins based challenge suspension. I was so utterly dazzled by that I was back up there this past Friday to have it installed on my car.

Both times I was there I talked to Mark Yates (CTO/founder of Revo). Only talked to him briefly on the first visit and didn't know who he was .... just this nice British guy that helped me figure out where the power switch on the coffee maker was. This last time I was there for a lot longer (ECU flash only takes an hour vs. the 4-5 for the suspension) and we chatted for a while about a number of things but, most relevant to this thread, in the course of me telling him what a great job they'd done with the software for my car he directed me to this video. (he was quite giddy about it)



Pretty fun comparison of a total beater used S4 (not an A6 but the same engine basically) and a brand new rs4. It's only straight line comparisons but ... fun.

feralc

I don't know which tune is this (don't speak Russian) but you can see the difference between a tuned A7 and a stock
https://www.audiworld.com/forums/sho...2835086&page=5

RBeam6

I hadn't seen that one yet. Nice graphic demonstration of what is pretty obvious looking at really any of the various company's post-tune power curves vs. stock. Up to ~5000 in first gear it should be close. After that it's pretty much game over unless the tuned car has 6 or 7 bags of cement in the back seat.

It would be nice to see a track comparison. I think you'd see results at least as dramatic with the tune vs stock exiting turns under full power.

Btw, your tach/speedo vid of the high speed run was one that I watched several times while (impatiently) waiting for my scheduled tune at Summit Point.

feralc

Hahaha so glad that risking my life taking a video with one hand while flat out helped you make a decision.

RBeam6

One of my thoughts when I first watched it was that it would have been 'interesting' trying to explain that to law enforcement if they'd happened to clock you at the apex of that run

feralc

And of course that video took place in a track in a country far far away.

salvadorik

Okey. Just came back from a shop. The service manager told me that there is nothing available for my particular ECU. It is so weird though. APR states that they have the tune available for C7 A6. So maybe it will be available later. Yeah... I got a bit disappointed but whatever.

RBeam6

Did you contact APR directly to see what they say? They cracked the encryption on the software before Stasis/Revo and when I scheduled my appointment to have my flash done with Stasis all they needed to know was that it was the 3.0T engine and C7 platform. You'd think since the APR tune has been out for a while longer if there were some slight variations in the ECUs they would have worked it out by now.

salvadorik

Yup I did contact them directly. APR software for C7 platform is actually relatively new. They just released about a month ago for C7s. They wanted the number of my ECU, which I could not give to them (due to the complexity of getting it in the first place). I was advised to wait for a about a month or so for them to have enough time to develop software covering wide range of C7s produced from early '12 to current ones. So be aware they dont have software for all of us at least at this time.

RBeam6

I must be thinking of one of the other companies then. Stasis/Revo had some delays with theirs but think it was out for public consumption the first month or two of this year. I remember because by the time it was out I was slammed with work so didn't get the chance to do it until two weeks ago.

Pretty sure someone had it out before them though.