Kerma Tdi Review

Darth_Furious

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2005
TDI
2015 GSW, DSG
I got 50mpg on a 300 mile trip with the kerma tune (hand calculated. 303miles using 6.01 gallons filled to the neck. This was also driving fast, averaging almost 80mph). The mfd is off but the kerma tune does improve mpg quite a bit.

I have yet to get a tank below 40mpg, even pure city with only 5 mile trips
 
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adjat84th

Veteran Member
Joined
Dec 13, 2008
Location
Virginia Beach, VA
TDI
'01 Jetta TDI/'15 Golf TDI
The MFD can be adjusted +/- 15%. Unfortunately, there are some versions of tunes that can skew those numbers even farther past the point of being able to correct in VCDS. Would love to know what causes that and if it's fixable.
 

Owain@malonetuning

Associate Vendor , w/Business number
Joined
Jul 1, 2016
Location
Vancouver
TDI
PD jetta wagon
It can be adjusted/fixed in the tune, Mark recently looked into it for someone (haven't had a need to mess with it before), minor adjustments are easier to do in VCDS though.
 

Lightflyer1

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Sep 13, 2005
Location
Round Rock, Texas
TDI
2015 Beetle tdi dsg
I got 50mpg on a 300 mile trip with the kerma tune (hand calculated. 303miles using 6.01 gallons filled to the neck. This was also driving fast, averaging almost 80mph). The mfd is off but the kerma tune does improve mpg quite a bit.

I have yet to get a tank below 40mpg, even pure city with only 5 mile trips

You really "averaged" almost 80 mph? That would be very difficult to do in my opinion.
 

Darth_Furious

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2005
TDI
2015 GSW, DSG
You really "averaged" almost 80 mph? That would be very difficult to do in my opinion.
I took it to 90 here and there and a few times dropped it to 65 for a couple miles. It was an empty highway late at night and I set cruise to 79mph (I tried to keep it under 80 incase I get pulled over).

It's easier to say I averaged almost 80. You don't have to believe me. I don't really care. I know for myself what happened.
 

milktree

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 8, 2011
Location
Eastern Massachusetts
TDI
2015 Golf Sportwagen, 2004 Jetta Wagon (sold!)
Digging up this necro-post, 'cuz I have questions:


The current offering is the result of many hours of development time that includes 8 months of personal seat time by me and many dyno sessions that add up to something like 35 hours strapped down. And it shows because our Mk7 tune shows roughly 2x the percentage gains that are published by our nearest competitor. It avoids the throttle tip-in delay that the factory (and other tunes) have and is generally much more responsive and fun to drive than anything else available.
What does "throttle tip-in delay" mean? Is it the thing that feels like "turbo lag", or something else?


Then there's the matter of the flash counter. I decided that his ecu should be backed up your ecu before any more tunes were sent. ... The flash counter is getting too high and before too long even VW won't be able to flash it when it reaches 65. (this actually happened to me when I was on the dyno) If we back up the ecu on the bench, then we can restore the flash counter back to what it is at the time of the backup. Otherwise you would need to buy a new ECU. That wouldn't be ideal.
I don't understand this. Is "flash counter" something different than what triggers the TD1 flag?

Or put another way: If I were to back up my ECU before doing a tune, would restoring the ECU to "before the tune" mean VW couldn't tell it had ever been tuned?
 

KERMA

Vendor , w/Business number
Joined
Sep 23, 2001
Location
here
TDI
99 beetle and 04 jetta
Throttle tip-in delay is the thing the feels like turbo lag

The flash counter is exactly THE thing that everyone says triggers the TD1 flag.
IMO: Thousands of tunes on CR cars, never once had any customer refused warranty, TD1 must be a myth.
If you were to backup your ecu prior to tuning, we could restore it to a state that NOBODY could *ever* tell it had ever been tuned at all. But like I said, never been a problem. (Exception: obvious aftermarket parts under the hood, where the car has obviously been modified. Or the customer brags about his tune to the service writer... but much of the time the service writer will just tell them not to tell them that.)
 

Daemon64

Veteran Member
Joined
Jul 19, 2019
Location
Tyngsborough, Massachusetts
TDI
2022 Polestar 2 BEV - Current, 2021 Q5 55e PHEV - Retired, 2015 Q5 3.0 TDI - Retired, 2013 Golf TDI - Retired
Throttle tip-in delay is the thing the feels like turbo lag

The flash counter is exactly THE thing that everyone says triggers the TD1 flag.
IMO: Thousands of tunes on CR cars, never once had any customer refused warranty, TD1 must be a myth.
If you were to backup your ecu prior to tuning, we could restore it to a state that NOBODY could *ever* tell it had ever been tuned at all. But like I said, never been a problem. (Exception: obvious aftermarket parts under the hood, where the car has obviously been modified. Or the customer brags about his tune to the service writer... but much of the time the service writer will just tell them not to tell them that.)
Not a vw, but my Audi Q5 TDI went in multiple times for later diesel gate fixes w/ malone stage 2 on it, would reset it back, and flip it forward depending and was never flagged... so I'd imagine the principles are the same.


Kerma- I'm looking in the future to do the CR190 stage 3 on a mk7 manual, how does your torque curve look to avoid DMF shudder?
 

milktree

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 8, 2011
Location
Eastern Massachusetts
TDI
2015 Golf Sportwagen, 2004 Jetta Wagon (sold!)
The flash counter is exactly THE thing that everyone says triggers the TD1 flag.

...

If you were to backup your ecu prior to tuning, we could restore it to a state that NOBODY could *ever* tell it had ever been tuned at all.
Can you expand on the "we" part? I think I probably don't understand the flash process.

Is "restore it" something the customer can do, or does it require something from you?
 
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