abctdi said:
Vagcom list at top of the page...there is a guy at unm that helped me once. 'uponblocks'
What would be great for a get to together would be if we could attract a tuner like Jeff for our 5000 foot elevation here in ABQ. Maybe for balloon fiesta this fall?
I think RC wanted 10-15 jobs before he'd drive from PA to FL. Proabaly take close to 20 to get him out here. As you say the problem is elevation, not sure if the current tuners have much experience with high altitude. For instance, notice the popping turbos on the Rally car at Pike's Peak. Another for instance, I had to detune twice, from RC3 to RC2 and finally now I'm at RC1. I also had to downsize my nozzles from the nozzle seller's original recommendations. I was getting too much smoke and piss-poor economy, even though people at sea level rave about those particular mods. It took about a year of haggling with the tuner/trying to get ahold of him/waiting for him to be available, praying to the post office god every time I mailed off my ecu not to lose it, not to mention the overnight freight charges, down time, etc., as well as finally ignoring the advice of the "experts" and following my gut in detuning my ecu and downsizing my nozzles.
The guiding mantra back in the days of the AZ tdi club and Upsolute was, if you chip/nozzle, you're gonna pop a turbo eventually. Now with RC there's probably more safety built in, although my first mod was the VNT-17 for insurance. High altitude driving plus tdi engine performance mods is still in the experimental stages.
All that said, I'd be interested to see how Kerma's Alligator venture pans out, as he's one state away and also at higher elevation than sea level. Only thing is, I've found him even harder to talk to/get ahold of than RC. Plus as I understand it you have to solder into your ecu and it costs around 500 bucks between the software and the hardware.
Of course I live in S.Fe at around 7k, so if you're primarily driving at ~5k in ABQ you might have better luck. For now I'm fine with RC1 and .184's, nothing more. I just wouldn't wish my past year's science experiments on anyone else.
