The EQT Difference - Practical Application

Last week we had a 2019 Golf R in for a tune. This car has our Vortex XL turbo along with the major supporting mods, running on E85 (stock engine and transmission). The car came in running a completed custom dyno tune from a different tuner. The customer was not entirely satisfied with the tune, complaining about drivability issues and lag. We checked for any mechanical issues but didn't find any. So we ran a couple baseline pulls on the previous tune before performing our own custom dyno tune.

Here you can see the comparison between the other tune and our EQT custom tune. Both of these runs were done on the same day, same fuel, same mods, no mechanical changes, etc. The only difference is our EQT custom tune. You can see that our tune resulted in roughly 300RPM faster spool, 30whp gain, and major gains in area under the curve while keeping peak torque levels in check. I was very happy to see that the car made exactly the expected power for the setup and that there were indeed no mechanical issues hindering the tune.

Beyond the obvious gains shown on the dyno chart, the really important thing to the customer was overall drivability and feel of the car. This cannot be expressed on a dyno chart, so the customer wrote up his impressions and comparison. His comment is also posted bellow... please give it a read.

"On my quest to go E85, I ended up going through a number of tuners for my Vortex XL. I will not mention their names, because I respect the time and effort they placed on trying to make my car run how I wanted it to, even though it didn't work out in the end.

That being said, I had been running into countless issues with various tunes, ranging from boost cuts to horrible DSG shifting characteristics (no matter which DSG tune I used) that no one could seem to figure out. I spent a lot of time and money on parts and tunes just trying to get my car to run right, and I was at a point where I was going to give up on the platform.

I finally turned to Ed for a dyno tune. I originally hadn't gone with Ed because the wait time was a little longer that I'd liked and I'm stupidly impatient. But hindsight is 20/20 and now I see that I should've just gone with him right off the bat.

I drove in for a dyno tune and he squeezed me in despite me missing my original appointment due to unforeseen circumstances. I got the car back and I could tell immediately that the tune was different, from both a feel and a power perspective. I was no longer getting crappy shifts, lugging the engine unnecessarily. The shifts were silky smooth and shifting at the proper RPM's. I was honestly scared my transmission was messed up because of how bad shifts felt, until my current tune which miraculously fixed it all.

The power delivery is also incredible, with power being both less laggy and more powerful than my previous tunes. I had thought that the power I had before was the limit my car could hit, and that the numbers I had seen on this turbo were reserved for luckier cars. I ended up making that power, and the powerband is so much more useable it's like a whole different car.
Overall completely satisfied with Ed's tune, and EQT in general. It's a night and day difference, and I'm in love with my car and this platform all over again."