newbie69

Up to MY18: 280 = 6-speed DQ250 (the older one) 272 = 7-speed DQ381 (the newest) From MY2021 onwards, power is yet again up to 280 and will come with the DQ381. It's true that the DQ250 is a solid box as it has been proven over the years but the DQ381 is based on the stronger DQ500 from the TT-RS/RS3 so it is expected to be just as good if not better in terms of reliability and handling more torque then OEM. By now, the DQ381 is found on many VAG cars so the pticture starts getting clearer, apart from very few exceptions (only 2 that I know of) there have been no cases of issues, failures. I drove the DQ250 before, switched to a DQ381 car in 2019. No issues with any of them (both tuned to 370+) The DQ381 is a better 'box (athough don't think night and day difference) in terms of performance: smoother changes in the Auto modes (Both Drive & Sport), shorter ratios in the lower gears that help the car sprint more easily, and a lovely long 7th gear that makes cruising a real pleasure (the short-ish 6th gear of the DSG6 was my main gripe with it, otherwise no problems at all). It does benefit from a DSG remap though especially when running more power, even more so than the DQ250. In the present day, I wouldn't consider a DQ250 over a DQ381 despite the (inevitable) longer track record of the former as there does not seem to be any justifiable concern with the newer 'box, and you can get stuff like virtual cockpit which were not an option on the 280 cars. In terms of upgrades both cars (pre-GPF 280 and GPF 272) will see around 360 with just a remap, which could go a bit higher with some intake mods. Pre-GPF 280 has ready solutions for stage 2 downpipes that should get one closer to 400bhp while on the GPF 272 there is a stage 2 from REVO that does not modify neither the downpipe or the GPFs (meaning not MOT issues) but still manages 400bhp and equal, pre-GPF stage 2 performance as I can testify, without essentially the extra cost and hassle of upgrading the downpipe.

+1 For the rear wiper. I also did not spec it by choice and love the cleaner look of the car as it is. Strangely also, despite subconsiously trying to hit the "rear wiper" stalk (that doesn't move) every time it rained during the first months, I realized this was due to habbit and not due to bad visibility, I haven't come across a single occassion where I thought my driving was impaired by the lack of the rear wiper really.

Kalimera Ilia I sent you a PM

Exactly. Springs compress the same way but it will always be 6.5mm higher than where it would be without the thicker pads. This is how OEM springs are set also: back sits higher than the front. It's Eibach springs that drop the rear more so that it ends up at the same height as the front for better looks, but having this effect on the loading.

I don't get any vibrations at the front that would be sorted by slightly thicker pads, you must be having in mind something different i think.

I can't say I have felt anything different driving wise and If there is something in these extra 6.5mm of rubber it's definitely really hard to notice. This is mainly for preventing the rear axle to drop too much and lose practicality when carrying passengers at the back and cargo. No they can't be put in the front as the design of the strut assembly is different.

In all seriousness, Briskoda is one of the biggest niceties of owning a Skoda

On the "hot" topic of towbars: current campaign on the Superb (in Sweden) offers the electrical, foldable towbar as standard. I have that too (also included in a 2018 campaign) and never used it but certainly amazes people when you show off what goodies your car came with

To me at least, it would be great that way. Then again there's no vRS Superb that would officially justify setting that car equal to a Golf R's ride, and as I have said, Sportline DCC in Sport is pretty controlled and more than adequate for most owners so I see the logic behind it. I can also see how some would have found the car less comfortable with everything turned up a notch based on some comments of the stock ride already. What would be ideal would be either an extra "Race" setting and leaving all the rest as they are, or to have turned up only "Sport" mode while keeping the other two as they are.

Interesting, but not a VCDS mod unfortunately. From the translation I understand the Arteon's firmware needs to be flashed which needs special equipment. What I don't see is how the Arteon's setup (especially not being the Arteon R) could be any firmer than that of the Cupra...

Actually it's quite more complicated than just a fixed damping setting, it is constantly evaluating the conditions and damping (even at a macro level), I had read the details some years back, which is why it behaves so well The shocks are essentially the same between all MQB cars so it must be a matter of electronic adjustment, unfortunately no-one has come across a way to change this, hence why some who are after a really sporty ride but like being able to dial it back on occasion are switching to the B6 DCC (instead of passive aftermarket dampers with DCC delete for example).

Pedal box is great and I run one too, but this sounds definitely like a DSG map thing. I had two DSG cars mapped from local tuners before the DQ381 on this 3rd DSG car, in none of them I felt the DSG remap offered any noticeable difference in driveability and shifting behaviour despite having (allegedly) increased clutch pressures and reduced shift times. On the DQ381, I thought I was going to waste my money again but I decided to find out if TVS are rightfully considered top DSG experts or not. As I had written in my review, this was the first time I realized considerable improvement after a DSG map, in the aspect that really mattered to me (forget 20ms off in shift times - who notices??): driveability. It totally transformed the car. It improved D mode which was good, but more importantly it made S mode the best mode in the car, and one that I could easily drive in the whole day even for the most dull journeys. The car picks up my intentions much more accurately now depending on how hard or steep i press the pedal, it can up-shift almost as early as D mode when I barely touch the throttle, it will stay in gear if I am more decisive and it will downshift one or two if I smash it. It just works and makes the whole experience so much better as these cars feel easily 100-150 down on bhp when driven in D mode so the fact you can use S all the time feels as if it had another ECU remap. In fact, most tuners' DSG maps are nothing special in terms of driveability (some are even worse than stock - even some of big tuning names) from what I have seen, so it's not un-common at all. It's really very few tuners who offer all-round DSG improvement.

That's the beauty of the DCC and OEM electronically adjustable suspension systems in general, on my 2nd DCC car and I don't think I'll ever have any other performance all-rounder without such a system from factory. Manual adjustment is fine for a track car but I wouldn't bother with it on my daily. That been said, on the Superb i would have like it a bit firmer in the Sport setting. It improved after Eibachs went on and I reckon for most would be ok but I like a firm ride.

Shocks is what you're after, and since no lowering is desired, B6 should be ideal for that (or Konis according to some who have them, although not an option if you got DCC)

Well, the order was placed last week for a heavily equipped Superb Estate Sportline TDI 200 4x4 in Steel grey! In the end, this was the car and trim/looks he preferred the most out of the other options so he pulled the trigger on one. Gotta say in that colour and with Supernovas or other black alloys it even makes me consider an estate (not gonna happen! )

I don't think either but I would personally replace the cat after such an incident. After all you're tuned and run a stronger turbo already, going stage 2 with a good catalyst and removing all parts that have suffered damage is a win-win. We are still talking really low costs all things considered, just my 2p though...

Depends what kind of damage he means. I'd imagine "damaged" means less effective filtering so less back-ressure/more flow possible which doesn't add up.

Being aggressive can have the opposite results if the ECU is making adjustments all the time for targets it cannot meet despite the very fast response times of modern ECUs. No way you'd see such timing and retardation figures if the tune was meant for 95, and there wouldn't be any issues running 98 on it, apart from not hitting its full potential. Here it's the opposite. I'd say send the logs to your tuner and ask about retardation, why it's constantly having to pull back timing and whether a less aggressive map is an option. I'd be good to log some acceleration times too if you are going to get any new maps. Not so much for cross-comparing with other cars as to be precise enough you'd need a 10hz device but more like a before/after comparison for yours.

Cheers. So I probably shouldn't comprare directly against my GPF stage 1 logs, especially stuff like EGT as the downpipes are different. Still, viewed independently I think the ECU is having a hard time meeting the remap's request, in this particular log it is actually worse than the previous one I had seen. There is consistent retardation across the entire 4500-6000 rpm range especially in cylinders 2,3 often above 3 degrees. Do you have any supporting mods? It looks to me like the remap is quite agressive and built with the assumption some peripherals have been upgraded. You could try to ask the tuner what he thinks of these logs and whether he could dial it back a little (unless you plan on going stage 2) but as I said already, this is not an ideal way to work, questioning your tuner vs the internet expertise, at least not to my experience. They tend to get defensive and all and at some point you've had enough...

I have completely forgot at this point, is it a 272 GPF or 280?

Yes AFR is "current of oxygen sensor bank 1 broandband" although the value depicted is lambda, I guess you are aware of that. Again, I will sound maybe annoying but analyzing logs is more complicated than it sounds and parameters can be inter-linked and affecting each other in a way that simply and selectively looking at some can create more worries that are justified for the occasion. Also, different conditions might show a different picture and also not all maps are set up the same way so a parameter being slightly off on one map might mean a much worse situation than when being equally off on another map, not sure if my point is clear here. Surely an AFR of 1.0 at 6K rpm or hitting 1.8bar consistently on a stock turbo is bad news no matter the map but for something less dramatic it's harder to argue it needs attention. My personal opinion from the few logs of yours I've seen so far, it looks like the typical "less known tuner" map with aggressive timing that the ECU is not able to meet 100% and slight-overboosting, but not something I would particularly worry about. The logs are not the "cleanest" but they are not alarming either. Would I take it to another more well known tuner? Well I've done that in the past as I am bit picky if I see something which I don't like even though my tuner said its ok (and it probably could have been). But that's what you get for diggin in logs and discussing about them Over the years I realized I didn't have the time (or will after some point) to monitor and worry about little details in logs and then argue over them with tuners of average remaps (both offering "custom tuning" by the way which I never really saw) so I decided for this car I'd go with the name that came out at the top based on my research. Funnily, it has made the tuning aspect of it completely boring since I've all but forgotten about it after it was flashed and did a few quick health checks that came out exactly as thet were supposed to be. On the contrary, I have probably over a hundred logs of both my previous cars where tuning wasn't the best.

Word of caution: going down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out logs can sometimes get you more confused than you were before, ideally this is something only your tuner should worry about. What are you logging for? Boost kept in control? TIming? EGT? I openend the full datazap and took a look, you reallyneed to log "Ignition timing adjustment cylinder 1" as that parameter shows the actual requested timing, the 4 parameters you have above are only the retardation. Ideally retardation should be 0 on all cylinders all the time with very few exceptions. (On mine it's 0 during the whole pull). On yours, the ECU is detecting something it doesn't like and reduces the timing requested from the map between 4500-6000 (circled in red): It could be that the timing is too aggressive or temps or AFR get too high, can be many things but without seeing what the timing is we can't say. in the end that's how the map is. There's a slight over-boost at some points (1.68bar from 1.60bar requested) and in general the ECU seems to have a little bit of a hard time controlling the boost to where it should be (according to the map). To me it's not that bad to worry about, it's probably just not ideal. But again, this is only my "enthusiast"'s analysis.

Stock is 1.2bar Did you let off the throttle just before 6K rpm? It's better to keep it floored till you switch to next gear when logging. On the graph you show I don't see something weird, although logging 4th gear is more representative of what's going on, 1.77bar sounds too much, would be interesting to see timing also. For a (light) comparison, here's a log I actually did tonight before even reading your post (funny huh?) from 2500 rpm in 4th gear all the way to 6700 into 5th: I floor it at around 2800 rpm and at 3000 rpm it's hit full boost of 1.57-1.6bar which it maintains steadily till 5800 RPM where it starts to slowly taper it down to 1.44 bar right before shifting up. What I see in mine is that in general it follows specified pressure with nearly 100% accuracy, and it only drops slightly below that in the final rpm range, but not over-boosting. The only case of going above specified is right when spooling up but that's hitting 1.57 from 1,52 specified so not an issue really. Try to get a log of 4th gear from down low all the way to 5th as it'll be a more fair comparison. And of-course, ask your tuner what he thinks of your logs, you've paid quite some money so far to get it sorted and Internet is can only help so much.

DQ381 arrived with the GPF 272, no 280 has it, and will continue with the new 2021 GPF 280. I'm sure the choice to change yet again the bhp to an already used value will create quite a mess when trying to define models and engines...

4K EUR difference is crazy. In Sweden both are ending up around 45K eur for the same equipment, plus there are some stuff that the L&K doesn't get even as an option that my buddy likes, like the flat bottom steering wheel with perforated leather, alcantara trim, tinted headlights, etc. etc. so he's going for the Sportline. There's no sound deadening difference that I'm aware of between a SportLine and L&K, and I have never noticed too much noise in my SportLine either.