JBS CUSTOM CODE MKV R32 REMAP - FULL WRITE UP

[jaysVR6 2]

Hi fellas, after living with my new remap for a couple of weeks and on agreement with James from JBS, I have written what I consider to be my honest opinions on his Custom Code Remap and my experience with him for the day, hope you all find it useful.

How to improve on Perfection…

Silky smooth, 4wd, comfortable and a sleeping weapon in one single package, yes the :R32 in whatever guise is quite simply the tool for grownups (that’s what we pretend to be anyway!).

When I first drove the MKV :R I was a little disappointed in the performance, however as many owners will probably agree, it’s the package that impresses. Floor the throttle in a straight-line drag in an R32 (MKIV or MKV) and your not going to dislodge any tonsils! My impression of throttle response was a rather hesitant and drawn out affair and upon a burst of torque from 2,500rpm to 4,000rpm, the V6 seems rather lethargic upon approach to the red line.

I had succum to the fact that upon buying an :R32 I would need to make sacrifices in out and out performance and substitute it with comfort, build quality and as I said before the overall ‘package’, until I suppose I had 15k to spend on a turbo conversion!

After only having my :R32 for a month I joined the owners club forum and started to play PM tennis with an established (and who turned out to be local) member - AndyR32, we started talking performance figures and oily bits. JBS Auto Designs soon came into conversation and we discussed some of the crazy creations James and his team have created over the years, not to mention the outlandish and quite frankly Frankesines monster modifications they have made to Andy’s some 600+hp MKIV :R32.

Upon Andy asking if I felt the same as he did with the disappointing production state of tune from the R32, he understood I didn’t quite have the budget he had for his car but mentioned JBS have spent hours and hours of testing and ironed out the software of the VAG map on the :R with JBS’s own Custom Code software.

So after a brief conversation with proprietor James, I decided to take a trip to JBS for a little of his fettling.

If you’re the sort of person who likes to be given horsepower ratings picked out of the sky and want to be in and out of the garage in an hour then James isn’t the guy you want to be taking your car to. Straight talking and honesty is his forte and when I stepped foot into the office I was presented with the surroundings to compliment this – clean and crisp with the expected clinical feel.

After a brief chat with James and with laptop in hand, he wired himself into the diagnostic port of the car, at which point he instantly noticed some rather alarming issues with the software in the ecu, namely the knock sensor being switched off! After a little tweaking, we proceeded for a drive up the road for some live diagnostics and recording, to find out what the car was doing, again James instantly noticing how little air and fuel the car was pulling on different throttle positions.

His knowledge was very reassuring and set my mind at rest when I was hooning up the dual carriageway with him watching what the engine was doing on his screen.

Monitoring different throttle positions and my driving style, he was looking for the spots on acceleration where the car was struggling and not breathing correctly, the car was way retarded in timing and he said it could be pulling way more air/fuel at certain throttle positions. So after the live recording session, we returned back to JBS for some of James’s magic.

This part of the day was a little removed for me, as James returned to the rear of the garage with his laptop and (as I understand) played with figures. I on the other hand was left out front with a Playstation and mountains of back issues of various VAG magazines to read.

Some 30 minutes later, after beating what I considered to be a high score on Colin McRae Rally, James emerged with his laptop and a fresh new map for my car.

Again we returned to the road after 10 minutes of downloading to the ecu and I could instantly tell the difference, before I could say anything James said exactly what I was thinking ‘Feels much swifter doesn’t it?’

A better way of describing how the car felt to drive was like we had a tail wind behind us on acceleration. The lethargic nature the engine had when building rpm’s had all disappeared, she now seemed to just get up and go and pull all the way to the now slightly extended redline of 7,200rpm then the DSG makes its mind up to change gear.

Again James asked me to hold various throttle positions and he was instantly pleased with the amount to air and fuel the car was pulling. Don’t get me wrong, the map wasn’t going to produce neck snapping results and you’d be a fool to expect the thing to break free under hard acceleration, we’re not expecting massive power gains here, this is REAL tuning, helping the car to breath more freely and maximise on the fuel/air mixture the car is capable of taking in, without being restricted by the stock EU regulated map the car left the production line with.

At this point James and myself were eager to place the car on the rolling road and find out the gains. The plan was to load the stock map back on the car and see what power it was producing then load the new map back on the car and compare the figures, again please bare in mind these are only figures we are talking here, how the car drives and performs on the open road is a different matter.

However the high tech DSG was to be my power run downfall. James tried as hard as he could to run the car up in 4th gear from 30mph, as this is what the rolling road needs to calibrate the speed of the car, but the gear box kept dropping gears and holding 4th at that speed and accelerating was not happening, James even suggested playing with the DSG map to make it work (this taking hours to do!) I however suggested he’d done enough hard work for the day and he is now updating the software on the rolling road to accommodate DSG.

All this considered, I was not expecting mega power gains and a future FOC rolling road run will prove actual hp increase which I have no doubt there is. The real results are out there on the road, setting off from stand still is half the effort and the car is more of a joy to drive, with instant throttle response and torque that delivers from 1,000rpm right up until the DSG takes over for another shift. This is how the :R32 should have realistically left the production line.

If you’re in the market for a MKIV of MKV :R32, the first thing you need to be doing is booking it in to JBS and James will make the car suit you, not (as VW would have) you suit the car.

Thanks for reading.

[pimpcat 0]

wud the efects be similar 4 the 4motion as the mk4 r32 they shud be shouldnt they just with a lower gain ? sounds interesting tho

[petervr6 0]

sounds good jay been thinking my self about a custom code remap think the gains are around 10-15% onn the custom code nice write up mate..

[Eat this 2]

how did u go on with disabling the haldex? iv heard bad things about turning it off

[jaysVR6 2]

how did u go on with disabling the haldex? iv heard bad things about turning it off

All seemed ok to be honest, no problems.