tuning

Was looking in web for tuning for my 2015 sportwagon. I see Malone And Kerma are very popular but i also found JR auto tuning. Does any one use the JR tune or should i just stick with getting Malone

So i guess no one has heard of jr tuning by looks of the response to my post.

Just saw your post. There's also RocketChip, and Jeff drives a '15 Sportwagen.

Not sure if Green Diesel Engineering has a tune for the modded 2015s yet. I had their tune on my '09 TDI JSW and really liked it.

could anyone speak to how simple it is to use Kerma Q-Pro or Malone Flashzilla to load tunes?
i'm a Mac OS X user, without Windows, and i'm wondering if this would prohibit me from having success w/ either tool.

i know Ross-Tech is not real Mac/Apple friendly, so just wondering if that's an industry-wide thing.

I have a JR Stage 2 tune, getting a Stage 3 to go along with my CR190 next week!

I'm about to pull the trigger on either the Kerma or Malone tune, both are on sale this weekend.

Malone with Flashzilla for $700
Kerma with Q-Pro for $650



Without creating a war, any simple reasons to choose one over the other than $50 difference ?

1854sailor said:

Just saw your post. There's also RocketChip, and Jeff drives a '15 Sportwagen.

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I have a Rocketchip tune in my ‘15. Jeff has put a lot of effort into this tune. I originally had it tuned in May (at 800 miles!) but recently had the tune updated. Power at tip-in is much improved over stock, as is pull in top gear. The car now drives like a Diesel should.

St.Hubbins said:

could anyone speak to how simple it is to use Kerma Q-Pro or Malone Flashzilla to load tunes?
i'm a Mac OS X user, without Windows, and i'm wondering if this would prohibit me from having success w/ either tool.

i know Ross-Tech is not real Mac/Apple friendly, so just wondering if that's an industry-wide thing.

Click to expand...

The tool is developed by alientech and is the standard. It's pretty straight forward, but you will need windows 7 or newer. You could use virtual box with the USB extension and run the operating system within a minimize-able window. You cannot easily transfer data/viruses back and forth unless you choose to, can shut down at any time, or delete it if you have a problem since it's only virtual. The program is free and I use it regularly for testing operating systems, questionable software downloads for tools, server stuff etc. You could also boot windows, or run parallel, but I've found virtualbox is easiest by far. A $200 used laptop might be your best option though, anything with a decent CPU (use cpubenchmark.net for reference anything past 2500 or so rating should be okay, take a high clock duo core over low clock quad core), and 4gb of ram should work great with a modern solid state drive and windows 7. Windows 10 is awful without a solid state.


Essentially to tune your car you do the following
- Download software, plug in device, update it over the internet
- Install a template if the one fitted doesn't work, it should
- Read an ECU file off your car through the tuning menu
- Download that to the PC and email it to the tune provider
- They'll reply with a tune
- Download to device and write to car, you'll also have the "originale" file, which is your original and you can revert back to it if needed for dealer updates etc.

I believe the "tool" used by JR, Kerma and Malone are all the same ODB flasher, not 100% sure but could be wrong.

St.Hubbins said:

could anyone speak to how simple it is to use Kerma Q-Pro or Malone Flashzilla to load tunes?
i'm a Mac OS X user, without Windows, and i'm wondering if this would prohibit me from having success w/ either tool.

i know Ross-Tech is not real Mac/Apple friendly, so just wondering if that's an industry-wide thing.

Click to expand...

I run VCDS on Windows 7 in Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro with no problems. Boot Camp is an application built in to every Mac OS since 10.6, I think. Look in the Applications folder in Finder and you will find the Boot Camp Assistant in the Utilities folder. All you need is a Windows OS and you can download Win7 for free.

I absolutely love how simple the flash process is with these tools, once you get the file in your email its like a 10 minute job to load it into the tool and flash your car.

1854sailor said:

I run VCDS on Windows 7 in Boot Camp on my MacBook Pro with no problems. Boot Camp is an application built in to every Mac OS since 10.6, I think. Look in the Applications folder in Finder and you will find the Boot Camp Assistant in the Utilities folder. All you need is a Windows OS and you can download Win7 for free.

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i considered this, but finally caved and bought a refurbished Dell for $100. i'd rather have a dedicated VCDS and tune setup than cram Windows on my Mac.

now just need to decide on which tune...

740GLE said:

I believe the "tool" used by JR, Kerma and Malone are all the same ODB flasher, not 100% sure but could be wrong.

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Yes, the powergate 3.

IndigoBlueWagon said:

I have a Rocketchip tune in my ‘15. Jeff has put a lot of effort into this tune. I originally had it tuned in May (at 800 miles!) but recently had the tune updated. Power at tip-in is much improved over stock, as is pull in top gear. The car now drives like a Diesel should.

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Any mileage penalty or gain with the tune? I had Jeff tune my 2006 I had previously and loved it. I want to love the 2015 a little bit more. I like it, but it needs a little more of something.

dieselpony said:

Any mileage penalty or gain with the tune? I had Jeff tune my 2006 I had previously and loved it. I want to love the 2015 a little bit more. I like it, but it needs a little more of something.

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I got kerma on my car and I noticed an increase in MPG. I was getting high 30s mpg with the post-dieselgate fix on my '15 GSW. After using Kerma for the past 3,000 miles I'm seeing mid 40s mpg.

Like most tunes, if you use the extra power often, you won't improve overall mpgs much. I try to drive the same and I noticed an increase of about 10-15%

Power on the other hand is significantly increased and the tune really made the car fun to drive.

dieselpony said:

Any mileage penalty or gain with the tune? I had Jeff tune my 2006 I had previously and loved it. I want to love the 2015 a little bit more. I like it, but it needs a little more of something.

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I would have to say it's too early to tell. My lifetime mileage is 43.2 and the car was tuned with 875 miles on it. However, it has under 4,000 now so the sample isn't that good and it most certainly isn't broken in. There's a lot of traffic around here and I don't hesitate to run at 80 on the highway when I can, so I feel the FE is pretty good, and certainly will improve.

At the pump is the only way to really measure it, and if there was much on the table VW would have tuned for it in the first place to put a higher mileage rating on the window when selling them. After all, they cheated emissions to get better mileage. They also tried to quiet the motor down a bit which isn't ideal for timing, the difference between pre and post fix tunes is audible, although the power is identical.

Recently got 44 mpg city with a lot of abuse on a deleted ea288, customer says he's into the 50s on the highway.

I'd expect 50s with a delete. But I'm also beginning to think that tuners are doing so much better with DPF diesels that the delete isn't as essential as it was a few years ago.

I'd have to somewhat agree there, have several months of stage 4 turbo testing to do on the stock exhaust system on the ea189s so hopefully that goes well and our sanity remains intact. We've put a lot of hair pulling and dyno testing into getting EMPs, EGTs, boost curve etc all in line with the stock system for a safe reliable solution. The main benefits from deletes are fuel economy and reliability, on the 335Ds for example at 30 PSI on a smokeless tune the gains are about 7-8%, but you have more room for heat so can crank fuel up a bit further and increase boost while matching previous EMPs. On EA189/288 it's probably more around 5% unless you want to go really aggressive with it (at which point, just buy a bigger turbo and HD clutch).

Have millions of miles on stock exhaust ea288s and no real reported issues at this point, maybe a couple nox sensors that needed cleaned off and reset in VCDS but were replaced under warranty. If you go too aggressive with it and start banging off egt limiters or turning stuff off, then you can run into tons of issues and low mileage failures. Jeff @ rocketchip has been daily driving one for awhile now so curious to see what he comes up with in the long hall, smart dude for sure.

St.Hubbins said:

i considered this, but finally caved and bought a refurbished Dell for $100. i'd rather have a dedicated VCDS and tune setup than cram Windows on my Mac.
now just need to decide on which tune...

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You are my hero!

I'll keep my XP machine for VCDS until i can't update anymore before i toss widows on my mac.

dieselpony said:

Any mileage penalty or gain with the tune? I had Jeff tune my 2006 I had previously and loved it. I want to love the 2015 a little bit more. I like it, but it needs a little more of something.

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We tuned around 2-3K and at 10K now, its all dependant on your foot prob way more.

I got 48 on a 180 mile trip to visit family 70-80mph, wife got 51 on the trip back 65-75mph, this is MFD which I know is optimistic.

Id say if driven for economy you shouldn't get any worse and may get slightly better, but you gotta do hand calcs at the pump, MFD is skewed after the tune.

I adjusted my mpg gauge through vcds. The max is a 15% adjustment. Even then it is 2-3 mpg higher than reality. Last week driving during thanksgiving, I got a little over 300 miles and refilled 6.0 gallons topping off to the filler neck. I got 50.3 mpg while driving 80 the whole time. My adjusted dash read 51.8mpg so it was still off slightly. I got 56.7 another time going 70mph for 200miles. The kerma tune helps me get good mpg without trying. I am expecting to get 65+ if I really try.

It all depends on your driving style. I got 46.8mpg on a stock 2001 camry 2.2l on the same trip when it is rated 30mpg highway. My best on that car was 64mpg during 50 miles but I was driving 48mph.

How much driving style can you have at 80 mph? What was your average speed for the trip, it can't have been 80 mph?

My average according to the trip computer was 76mph (reset once up to speed and again at the off ramp) so 80mph most of the time with occasional slow downs to 65mph from other cars and occasional 90mph to pass cars.

Like I said, I wasn't trying to get high mpg on this trip. Just trying to get home quick and not break 80 to attract cops (many cars were going around 80 so I could blend in). I got some drafting from other cars going similar speed. I could have done a little pulse and glide on this trip but I would have gone slower.

By driving style, I mean using some hypermiling techniques. I do draft assisted pulse and glide but with minimum 3 car lengths distance. That is how you max mpgs

Lightflyer1 said:

How much driving style can you have at 80 mph? What was your average speed for the trip, it can't have been 80 mph?

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Amazingly if you're in traffic moving quite steady, drafting can help you a ton, I find its kinda similar to the plus and glide technique.

We drove to Manchester NH to NYC, kept in the fast lane the entire time as fast as the person in front of us 70-85, traffic was thick but kept moving, MFD showed 53 MPG when we arrived at a parking garage. This was in the old Jetta.

If you're out west on flat land and set the cruise at 80 and don't see a soul for 300 miles, yeah MPG are going to tank with head winds.