Just as a follow up to my own experience with the box, to recap: previously I'd borrowed a GTI to fit the loom and box to and ran it briefly in bad weather and heavy traffic. The car was obviously more eager under acceleration but still as docile as stock when not 'on it'. I think I said this was how the car should have been from the factory as the chassis and brakes could easily cope with the upgrade with masses of room to spare such is the competence of the chassis.
Well the car came back to me briefly yesterday and I had a spare hour before I had to work in the evening and it was just a case of removing the blanking plug from the loom which had been left in the car (I wasn't completely sure how well the loom would hold up as I'd fitted it in pretty poor weather conditions albeit in a dry garage with the door open to let in natural light and I used 'natural' runs in the engine bay keeping the loom as far away from anything it might rub on as I could but I didn't put any cable ties in as I was pretty confident I'd fitted it in a way that there would be no movement for ease of removal again as it wasn't my car).
I'd asked Andrew @ DTUK some rather obvious questions to make sure I'd taken in the info in the first place properly and double checked how to remove the circuit board which Andrew sent me an idiot proof video within seconds of asking which says it all about Andrew I think.
Then as recommended, I put the box to the settings Ben @ Shark had recommended before Xmas and refitted the box in seconds.
So, off to find a nice big steep hill on a bit of fast dual carriageway to test out the new output - my theory is that anything can go quickly on a bit of flat straight road but a nice big hill with lots of bends and a bit of speed will sort the men out from the boys in the go department!
It was throwing it down with rain, cold, fairly heavy traffic - ideal!
What can I say - the car is still as docile as ever off boost, totally smooth and has none of the hiccups and coughs as the dump valve struggles to cope with masses of extra boost just as the turbo starts its main spool around 2000rpm. Nope, if there is one big benefit of these boxes mirroring the factory mapping and just amplifying it, it's that the power delivery is just as smooth and progressive - only more - lots more!
The mid-range is awesome now. You'd never know it was mapped from the delivery but it just shoots up steep motorway slip ramps. The XDS copes with it completely in even awful conditions, no traction issues and the chassis just shrugs it off.
Now I wasn't trying to be a racing driver, all speeds were pretty much not going to raise an eyebrow of a traffic cop unless he was having a particularly bad day at the office. But it was enough to get a pretty darn good insight into how much better the car felt.
After all, to me the ability to do 200 mph is irrelevant as I don't drive outside of the UK. The benefit to me of a remapped car is not how fast it will go balls out but more how much more fun it is to drive at five tenths, six tenths or thereabouts.
And that's the thing. I think if a standard car is driven very hard it will wear things far more quickly than a remapped car that's driven sensibly with a bit of sympathy.
Another thanks to Andrew for the top service.
I didn't want to give the car back after that!
