Quote:
Originally posted by dd74
Ralph - thanks for the response. I ask about the warranty only because both John Cooper and Dinan are recognized by Mini and BMW and are under the company's warranty. Same with Saleen, for example.
I like the mods, though. Any idea of $$? Do you have a package put together?
Oh, and what'd you do to lighten the GTI?
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Those guys are way out of our league. We are the 2nd largest VW tuner in the US (after Neuspeed), but VW has never been aftermarket friendly, especially to a US tuner. We're still considered "boy racers" by the manufacturers. Building production cars isn't our area of expertise nor something I personally have an interest in.
My opinion is the best bet in the VW/Audi world to ever achieve "mfg status" would be ABT in Germany, as they already prepare many cars for competition and they are considered to be in similar standing as AMG is to Mercedes. The funny thing is, much of they're stuff is so overpriced and many of our products (and others in the US as well) fit better and make more power. They seem to have a different US distributor every couple of years, as people realize that they're paying primarily for a name and not necessarily the performance. Volkswagen guys won't touch their stuff.
Many of the chip tuners (APR, GIAC, REVO, etc) charge $500-$700 for their programs. The new cars are all flashed through the OBD2 port and many of the chip tuners are all trying to outdo each other with different options. When you consider that 30 whp is gained for the above dollar range, it's not a bad deal.
Whereas you could simply bolt on a K04 using the stock manifold and a simple remap yielded 230-240 crank horsepower on a 1.8T, the A3/GTI/GLI 2.0T has an integrated manifold/turbo. Not going to be cheap for an aftermarket upgrade.
We have the new Garrett turbo on the bench and are just waiting for the prototype manifold to arrive.
This turbo conversion will also be submitted for CARB exemption.
As far as lightening the car, all we really did was remove the rear seat, spare tire and we lost a fair amount of pounds when converting to our 321 stainless exhaust. It ended up being a little over 100 lbs. in savings, not a whole bunch but we have to put the car back to stock before shipping it back to Germany in late March.
If any of you guys buy A3/GTI/GLI's, let me know via PM. I'll give a Pelican "good guy" price.
I didn't intend to solicit business as I am on Pelican as a Porsche enthusiast and want to keep it that way.
Ralph