United Motorsport / AMD Stage 2 ECU & TCU Tunes // 02.23.2018

I've known Jason @AMD for around 5 or so years now, ever since I first brought my B5 S4 to him shortly before I sold it. Over those years I've learned two key things about him, AMD, and those he partners with:

  1. He's not always easy to get a hold of unless you stop by the shop (that's an understatement when I first got to know him, now texts work quite well), and
  2. He, his crew, and those he partners with know Audi's

I worked with AMD mostly on my RS4 that was car #2 to have the AMD/Aviva Instruments Supercharger tuned by UM on it. I lived through an ungodly amount of haters and drama from those who swore my car would blow up and not make any power (boy is the C7 forum calm...a welcome change!), only to have her still happily on the road under new ownership and likely 60k miles of SC'ed life by now, along with doing the 1/4 in low 11's on pump and putting down around 525 whp. Anyway, I bore you with this only to make the point that I had always planned on handing her over to Jason's care and feeding, and today was the day we started down that path. One more thing, perhaps an obvious one: it's an awesome luxury to have a tuner (read: not reseller / distributor) within 30 minutes driving distance, one that you can work with to tweak a tune to be just right for your own car. I'll argue that this will always get you the best results compared to your other, more mainstream, offerings. I'm thankful I have the option.​

Results
So, loading a stock file, then a Stage 2 file, on 92 octane, 4th gear pulls, the car went from 451/424 whp/wtq to 576/707 whp/wtq. Relevant mods are:
  • Milltek DP's
  • Milltek custom Valvesonic exhaust
  • Custom 200 CPSI cats
  • AWE Gen 1 intake
Picture
We also compared to the prior Stage 2 tune on the car, and we ended up with a repeatable increase of ~10 whp and ~35 wtq compared to the best run from the prior tune. The car is happier all around regarding things like fueling (interestingly, it was running on the rich end before) and cam timing, while running similar boost and ignition timing.

First Impressions

There was some discussion of the trans slipping too much with Jason but I mentioned that I never felt her slip before / didn't know what he was talking about. Having now driven it on the new tune, I can definitely see what he means. Prior, if I punched it, including getting it into kick-down, there'd be delay before the car really responded. I wrote that off as perhaps turbo lag or 'that's just how it is', but when I punch it now - it has a much, much crisper response, and that's because the trans is holding that initial (substantial) torque much better. One thing I've noticed is it's downshifting less while in S mode, likely because it knows it can deliver the torque. I'm going to monitor that over the coming week in what exact scenarios this happens / doesn't happen, and if it's an issue, we'll get it back on the dyno and adjust.

Net/net: based on 40 minutes in the car - it's feeling strong, and has a much crisper response. I'll update this thread as I learn more.
​
Oh, and a final bonus / nice touch: the redline has been updated to start at 6,800 (for 7k redline) vs the prior still 6,400 rpm ;)