gtman
Senior Member
- First Name
- Mitch
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This hopefully will be helpful to those of you considering a tune but worried about a tune hurting your drivetrain's longevity. I have a base 1.5T w/CVT but this applies in many ways to the other models too. For the most part, people talking tunes tend to talk about high boost and 1/4 mile times and so on. How far they can push things. But there's another aspect to tuning and one that might surprise you. It's about how a tune can improve day to day driveability without increasing stock boost numbers all that much.
I run three tunes on the fly. My daily driver tune, my fun tune and my aggressive tune. And believe it or not, I spend the most time on the lowest psi tune (16-17 psi depending on the setup). Not only is it much more responsive than stock, it offers more than enough power for almost any situation. Yet, 16 or 17 psi doesn't sound like much more than Honda's boost claims for the base 1.5 turbo. The difference is in power delivery.
The quick enables and adjustments of KTuner is where the driveability magic happens. The throttle responds faster, the turbo spools quicker and power ramps to the boost target much quicker than stock. Instead of that wait for it, laggy acceleration, you get nearly instant power.
Here's a real world example of what I'm talking about. I usually do most of my commute on the highway but I had to go through all city stop and go traffic today for 8 miles. Untuned, it would be a chore. Stopping and starting and then finally seeing a gap in traffic. But untuned, the lag had me hesitating (sorry for the pun) to make my move in tight quarters. Tuned, I see a gap. I make my move. It's such a confidence inspiring thing to know power will be there the instant you want it. It's fantastic.
And that's with my lowest power and least aggressive quick adjustments. When I toggle some CC buttons and get to my 21.5 psi aggressive tune, it's even better. But I save that for "special occasions".
I feel confident that using the lower power tune quite often means I'm stressing components less. And even in this morning's stop and go traffic I got 33+ mpg. It's a win win.
If you have one performance mod to do, get a KTuner. Your car will stay reliable as long as you show some restraint and don't abuse it.
I run three tunes on the fly. My daily driver tune, my fun tune and my aggressive tune. And believe it or not, I spend the most time on the lowest psi tune (16-17 psi depending on the setup). Not only is it much more responsive than stock, it offers more than enough power for almost any situation. Yet, 16 or 17 psi doesn't sound like much more than Honda's boost claims for the base 1.5 turbo. The difference is in power delivery.
The quick enables and adjustments of KTuner is where the driveability magic happens. The throttle responds faster, the turbo spools quicker and power ramps to the boost target much quicker than stock. Instead of that wait for it, laggy acceleration, you get nearly instant power.
Here's a real world example of what I'm talking about. I usually do most of my commute on the highway but I had to go through all city stop and go traffic today for 8 miles. Untuned, it would be a chore. Stopping and starting and then finally seeing a gap in traffic. But untuned, the lag had me hesitating (sorry for the pun) to make my move in tight quarters. Tuned, I see a gap. I make my move. It's such a confidence inspiring thing to know power will be there the instant you want it. It's fantastic.
And that's with my lowest power and least aggressive quick adjustments. When I toggle some CC buttons and get to my 21.5 psi aggressive tune, it's even better. But I save that for "special occasions".
I feel confident that using the lower power tune quite often means I'm stressing components less. And even in this morning's stop and go traffic I got 33+ mpg. It's a win win.
If you have one performance mod to do, get a KTuner. Your car will stay reliable as long as you show some restraint and don't abuse it.
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