New owner, got some questions.

Hello ladies and Gents, I'm Victor and my wife owns a 2011 GTI 2dr Dsg. I until a few days ago owned a 2013 Focus ST. Last Thursday it was totalled and now I'm in the market for a new car. My gameplan will be to keep the GTI for myself and just purchase a new car for my wife. With that being said I've always liked the GTI's and almost walked away with a MK7 before getting the ST. I've been lurking around the forums reading up on stuff that I need help with. But since this is my new car i decided to join the community. After reading thru a lot of the great write ups I have a long laundry list of stuff I want do to the car. Mainly just maintenance stuff. At the top of the list are the water pump replacement, carbon cleaning of valves, and upgrading the coils. I purchase the car with about 70k and had zero issues until a road trip about 2 months ago when the water pump started leaking. Besides that the car is solid and pulls pretty well. This leads me to a question, is there any way of telling if my ecu is chipped or if it has a tune? I only ask because for kicks I ran an auto 350z and he was a car length ahead the whole time and never pulled. Either it's a ragged 350z or this GTI is tuned or maybe I just under estimated the car. Sorry for the run on paragraph but I'm at work and typing as I go. Looking forward to learning more about this platform and maybe even contributing a little.

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Could call up the big tuners, APR and Unitronic are the biggest I believe, and ask if they've tuned your vin. Also since you have a 2011 I would get the timing chain tensioner checked and updated as soon as you can if it's the old revision. Basically a ticking time bomb.

Boost gauge will let you know real quick. ~8psi is stock, ~15-18psi is stage 1, and stage 2 is around 20-22psi. Stage 2 needs a down-pipe so im sure you would know if you had a exhaust on the car.

Also welcome fellow Florida Peep

smanierre said:

Could call up the big tuners, APR and Unitronic are the biggest I believe, and ask if they've tuned your vin. Also since you have a 2011 I would get the timing chain tensioner checked and updated as soon as you can if it's the old revision. Basically a ticking time bomb.

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Agreed on timing tensioner. Watch this video to see how to check: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G65J1aEszyc


Maybe you can play with the cruise control stalk to rule out APR? https://www.goapr.com/support/dpp_emcs_instructions.pdf
I'm not APR tuned so I don't really know if all APR tuned vehicles have that option or not.

smanierre said:

Could call up the big tuners, APR and Unitronic are the biggest I believe, and ask if they've tuned your vin. Also since you have a 2011 I would get the timing chain tensioner checked and updated as soon as you can if it's the old revision. Basically a ticking time bomb.

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Thanks for that piece of information on the tensioner. Will take a look this weekend

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So I just got an email back from unitronic and they did pull it in the system. Car is tuned on stage 1+.

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Sorry to see your ST like that, glad you walked away in good health. As mentioned the most important thing is the tensioner.