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Till now I have only been exposed to Standalone of aftermarket Engine management. They are perfect for race car builds or if you fit another engine in your car and need to control it in some way. I know you could send you ECU in to get it reflashed with racing maps for higher octane fuel.
I spoke to our ECU supplier from MBE at that time and said I would like to do something to the Golf 5 GTI. I just didn’t know where to start. The fact that it was a direct-injection engine made id difficult for me to do anything. Allot of the aftermarket ECU’s could not drive direct injection engines. The other problem is to integrate it with the ABS and chassis control. It was just not worth going that route.
Software?
Jeff from MBE then told me about upgrading software in the car. Because it is a turbo car you could run maps that had higher timing and boost. This would increase the power of the car. The factory tunes are done to meet the market and the emission requirements. The fact was these Golf 5 GTI’s were way underpowered to what they could do. The first model of the Golf 5 GTI had the AXX engine. These engines produced 147kW. The laster models Golf 5 GTI’s had the BWA engine. These engines were in the 2006+ models. They produced 155kW although the spec said 147kW.
The BWA engine was a fiscally stronger engine than the AXX. There were also some reliability upgrades done to the engine. One thing that was changed on the BWA was it had a slightly lower compression than the AXX.
Jeff told me that he had a friend that works at Superchips in the UK. They sell a handheld unit that you plug into your OBD port. With this unit, you could flash your software yourself, and when you take the car for a service you could flash it back to stock. No one would ever know that the software was changed on the car.
I was so impressed I ordered a Blufin handheld unit through Jeff and got it at a very good price.
Bluefin Software flash unit
A few weeks later I got the unit from the UK. I was so impressed with the unit.
I followed the instructions and plugged the unit into the OBD port. The unit started downloading the software that is on the Golf’s ECU. The next step was to connect the Bluefin unit with my PC via a USB cable that was supplied with the unit. I had to mail Superchips the file that came off the car. Because there were some serial numbers that had to match up they could not just send you a fresh file without your original file. The next day I got the modified file back for my car. One again I had to connect the Bluefin to my PC to upload the modified file to the unit.
Once this was done it was easy, just plug in the unit and select update software. It took about 20 min to upload the new file. Once this was done I could start the car. What was nice about doing the software, this does not affect starting or driveability. The car felt stock but was allot stronger. I have only done the Stage 1 software as this is the highest stage I could put on the car without changing any hardware.
The outcome
I took the Golf to one of the local dyno shops and let them do a run with the car on the dyno. The Golf made 180kW and 334Nm of torque. The Golf 5 GTI was doing the numbers that were claimed by Superchips.
I was well impressed, the problem now was I have opened a can of worms. I knew what upgrades I had to do be able to run Stage 2 software. The modifying bug had one again bit me.
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