The Official K04 Club (Experiences and Troubleshooting)

[John@Unitronic]

We do have Uni dealer here in town. Performance Engineering. I believe that's where Zach got his DSG flash done.

Yes, that's it! Tommy@Performance Engineering :thumbsup:

 

[Travis.rudd]

Help!

Hey guys, wondering if what i'm experiencing is normal or maybe I have a leak....

Running APRk04 kit and tune

So here's my boost per gear (What it holds at after it settles) 1st, 2nd, and 3rd seem low to me. I'm running all supporting mods except haven't installed my FMIC yet...

1st: ~4
2nd ~12
3rd ~17
4th ~18
5th ~20
6th ~20

PLEASE any help or insight would be very muh appreciated

 

[allset]

Hey guys, wondering if what i'm experiencing is normal or maybe I have a leak....

Running APRk04 kit and tune

So here's my boost per gear (What it holds at after it settles) 1st, 2nd, and 3rd seem low to me. I'm running all supporting mods except haven't installed my FMIC yet...

1st: ~4
2nd ~12
3rd ~17
4th ~18
5th ~20
6th ~20

PLEASE any help or insight would be very muh appreciated

u really need to log multiple block parameters with vagcom and post to get any idea if a problem exists, which may or may not

 

[grambles423]

Everything is load based.

 

[Travis.rudd]

u really need to log multiple parameters with vagcom and post to get any idea if a problem exists, which may or may not

Thanks for the response

In general do those numbers seem low for the first few gears, I'm just wondering if people are seeing like... 10psi in first and 15 in 2nd then obviously I have a leak somewhere, if people are seeing CLOSE numbers then i'm not worried about it!

 

[Travis.rudd]

Everything is load based.

Sorry i'm still pretty new, I don't have a vagcom, what exactly do you mean load based? Based on temp etc?

 

[allset]

Thanks for the response

In general do those numbers seem low for the first few gears, I'm just wondering if people are seeing like... 10psi in first and 15 in 2nd then obviously I have a leak somewhere, if people are seeing CLOSE numbers then i'm not worried about it!

not nessicarily a leak......boost varies depending on many sensor inputs to the ecu. u can peak at 10 in first or 21 depending on load, rpms, etc.

 

[Travis.rudd]

not nessicarily a leak......boost varies depending on many sensor inputs to the ecu. u can peak at 10 in first or 21 depending on load, rpms, etc.

But i'm peaking at like 5... lol which is nowhere near either of those So it may be a sensor issue? Maybe throttle body? Or Possibly a leak? Or no?

Thanks again for the responses

 

[allset]

With this debate heating up, I'm going to interject my opinion here.

I haven't had a single surging issue out any other type of issue with my k04 setup.

Drove dsm1983's car and mine back to back and there was a distinct difference between the two.

My current tune pulled much harder than the uni one.

Boost was delivered differently however.

Just my quick observations from a drive around town.

But never once have I felt my current one was peaky or hard to manage.

i missed your questions till just now, sorry.

i feel UNI delivers it smooth and hard. when i romp it the boost peaks to 20-21 and holds. with APR it would peak to 22 and immediately fall back to 18 and hold. it caused hesitation and all kinds of system actuation that interfered with the pull.

UNI WOTs are hard, smooth and consistent the entire pull.

It feels to pull much harder in all gears. granted my APR ko4 or stage 2 IMO never worked right but Ive driven APR other ko4s and i felt the same thing.

 

[allset]

But i'm peaking at like 5... lol which is nowhere near either of those So it may be a sensor issue? Maybe throttle body? Or Possibly a leak? Or no?

Thanks again for the responses

again, its hard to make any calls without logs but if from a slow roll in first if u floor it on a KO4 u should be peaking much higher than 5.

 

[col-buddy-greenleaf]

Ryan (HYDE16) has our standard Stage 2+ (K04) file; completely "off-the-shelf".

HYDE16's comments about the boost hesitation have me wanting to VagCom log my APR tuned car to see if I am getting the same issues. I have had the APR k04 on my car since the 300 mile mark, so essentially all parts on the car were new when the turbo/ software was upgraded.

I have noticed the boost-hesitate-boost situation before, but never investigated. Now that you say the Uni tune has eliminated this, I plan to investigate and see if my experiences are the same as HYDE's. That being said, I am not ready to jump ship yet, but I am curious to see what is going on.

 

[Arin@APR]

PARTIAL THROTTLE BOOST OSCILLATION OR FLUCTUATION
After some more seat time after my initial K04 install, my first concern was partial throttle boost oscillation or fluctuation. If I had to define this “oscillation” term which has been floating around the forums, I would define it as a surging or hesitation as the car accelerates. It occurs when the gas pedal is depressed to the halfway point or held at halfway. Whether accelerating fully from a stop or accelerating from a cruising speed on the highway, once the gas pedal was held halfway down, the smooth acceleration was interrupted by a hesitation or surging effect. I would watch my AWE boost gauge climb and as soon as the pedal was depressed halfway down, the needle would fluctuate up and down a few psi until I depressed the pedal past 60%. It was almost like the turbo didn’t know if it should continue boosting or not boosting. Just a side note, I’m not a heavy footed driver so I’m not stomping on the gas pedal all of the time and operating outside of this half-pedal range. I generally accelerate smoothly around town and on the highway so I may be more prone to experiencing this fluctuation. After the Unitronic K04 (“Stage 2+”) software, the car pulls quickly without any boost oscillation or fluctuations (in terms of feel or boost gauge readings). I must have spent close to an hour each day over the following week driving around town and on the highway testing the gas pedal at the halfway point through every gear. I could not find any oscillation or fluctuations, it was now just smooth acceleration.

I'm trying really hard to repeat this oscillation situation and if anyone thinks they have it, I'd really appreciate if they would stop in and show it to us (if local).

About a year ago we did update several maps to fix an issue we spotted on some ECUs. On some, N75 duty cycle would drop in and out at boost onset while going wide open throttle. Once update (a single bit changed in the code), everything was fine. I can easily check to make this update was applied to anyone experiencing the issue.

Other than that, moments after the flash, I can see a situation where everything wouldn't be perfect. Slight variations from car to car could lead to some differences. Right after the first start all adaption data is cleared and usually the engines cooled down. This will mean some items, like the O2 sensor, are not active till they warm up. Usually when I hear someone saying "I just got chipped and it feels funny" it goes away after only a couple miles behind the wheel.

Anyways, back on to the oscillation, I tried to repeat it in a car we had here just this morning. The car has 90k miles, 6MT, stock plugs, stock coilpacks, stock catback, stock intercooler. It has a DXD clutch, APR K04, APR Stage 2 Carbonio intake, APR Downpipe. He's running on production 93 octane software and he changes his oil. That's about it!

I drove the car up and down the highway trying various throttle positions in multiple gears trying to reproduce the oscillation, but I could not get it to happen. I had a theory some people were "thinking" they felt an issue because their gauges were moving around, so I installed a gauge and went back out again. I had the same results. I put my foot down a little and I'm up to 0 boost on the gauge. I go a little more and can hold evenly at 5 PSI. More, 10psi, more throttle and I'm up to 15PSI. If I go wide open throttle I'm a little above 20psi and I taper towards redline. There was no over and undershooting or oscillation like some have described. I simply could not get it to happen at all no matter how hard I tried.

So, back on point, if someone really has an issue like this, by all means, mark my words, I would want to fix it if it was something on our end. Please, if you have any issues and are near APR, please come in and we'll work with you to diagnose it, because as is, we are not able to repeat the behavior on our own vehicles.

 

[grambles423]

I drove the car up and down the highway trying various throttle positions in multiple gears trying to reproduce the oscillation, but I could not get it to happen. I had a theory some people were "thinking" they felt an issue because their gauges were moving around, so I installed a gauge and went back out again. I had the same results. I put my foot down a little and I'm up to 0 boost on the gauge. I go a little more and can hold evenly at 5 PSI. More, 10psi, more throttle and I'm up to 15PSI. If I go wide open throttle I'm a little above 20psi and I taper towards redline. There was no over and undershooting or oscillation like some have described. I simply could not get it to happen at all no matter how hard I tried.

My vehicle was not this linear.

It was perfectly ok until around 10-15psi when you could literally feel the car shift its dynamic to meet the request, once there, the car would fall in psi and buck up and down from 5-15psi like an on and off switch.

 

[Arin@APR]

My vehicle was not this linear.

It was perfectly ok until around 10-15psi when you could literally feel the car shift its dynamic to meet the request, once there, the car would fall in psi and buck up and down from 5-15psi like an on and off switch.

You were so close, for years. I wish we could have seen this in person.

 

[allset]

My vehicle was not this linear.

It was perfectly ok until around 10-15psi when you could literally feel the car shift its dynamic to meet the request, once there, the car would fall in psi and buck up and down from 5-15psi like an on and off switch.

this has to be something with the tune and early MY's. Z Grambles is 09 im 10 i noticed alot of the complaints are 11 and earlier