First off, kudos to Curry's Auto Service in Falls Church, Virginia. Excellent service!

Now you may say, "Big deal. It's only a chip, and a flash at that." Well, in my case it wasn't. You see, I had had REVO on my car for over 6 months and it never worked right. I thought it did at first, but after the placebo effect wore off, I decided to hook up a boost gauge and see what was really happening. Bottom line, the car never boosted above stock.

I went back to the REVO dealer (who by the way is Pro-Imports and also provided excellent service) to try to figure out what was going on. Well, they tried everything—smoke test, new MAF, MBC, etc.—and could never get the car to boost more than about 12 psi. They spent a lot of time trying to figure things out.

Finally, after examining some vag-com logs, I concluded that was the software because the specified boost was never more than 1750 mbar. I also proved that the car could mechanically make the boost by swapping the N75H with a MBC, bypassing the N249, and finally installing the diode mod. So finally, Pro-Imports reloaded the stock program and refunded my money.

Now, the stock program is NOT the original program, but a generic stock program. REVO has one; GIAC has one. When I took the car to Curry’s to load GIAC software, the transfer kept failing at the very end. Finally, they sent the ECU out to AWE Tuning to solder on a new blank chip. After that, everything worked great. Apparently, the REVO code left something behind that would not let someone else flash the ECU.

Let me say that the GIAC software is the best I’ve every seen. It’s strong, but incredibly smooth…smooth like factory smooth. REVO on my GTI was very strong, but a little spiky. That’s OK (I guess) for a GTI, but the A4 needed to be smooth like the higher class vehicle it is.

I am a very happy camper now and can’t wait to install the K04-15 sitting in my garage!

Again, kudos to Curry’s for all the hard work and time (and money) they spent getting this thing to work. Also to Pro-Imports for the effort they put in trying to get REVO to work. I can say now without a doubt is was the REVO code that wasn’t working. REVO is ok for VWs, but GIAC is the way to go for Audis.

 

very nice damn u have alot of A4s ok i think ima have to ask you this one question though. I see that you have both a GIAC chip and a NEUSPEED chip how bout you let us know how they compare which ones faster? which ones more powerful. Which one do you like more im sure alot of us would love to know that since there has been alot of trash talk about the neuspeed.

Thanks

 

I got the Neuspeed chip first for the 99.5 because (1) it was only $250, (2) REVO (which was great on my VW) did not have a program for the nDBW cars, and (3) it was going to be my wife's car. She needed a little more, but not a lot.

Now, to answer your question. The Neuspeed chip does boost to 16 psi and is very smooth, but not as strong as the GIAC software. The Neuspeed chip certainly adds to the stock setup, but doesn't feel as strong. I say "chip" because it was soldered in. The GIAC software is flash loaded. Also, the Neuspeed chip is a 1 bar chip--I think they offer a 1.1 bar now.

If you are looking for the best power output, GIAC has it. If you are looking for a very good chip for half the price, Neuspeed is the way to go. Both are smooth and very driveable and I have never had a problem with Neuspeed. The GIAC is brand new on my car, but I don't expect any problem. Lastly, the Neuspeed car is a Tiptronic with a K03 and the GIAC car is a 5-speed manual with a K03s--not really apples to apples.

If you don't have $500 to spend, I think Neuspeed would be a very reasonable choice.

 

even though its the "stock" flash, they still have their encryption protection in there to ensure the software can't be flashed over. You get the same effect if you do their trial software and then try to go another flash

 

DAMN! If only there was a way!!

 

Congrats!

 

I must have missed that in the fine print![:@]

I think if that is really the case, that should be disclosed to the buyer before purchase, and not hidden in fine print.

 

meh, your not expected to go back to a true stock program. If you want that, you need to pull your stock chip and have them solder a blank on that they can flash.

The flash is not just copying text file with settings to a hard drive, they actually have to flash or completely overwrite and burn the new program on the chip. There is no real way for them to do that and retain your factory stock application with no encryption since I'm fairly sure their flash loader lays the encryption groundwork automatically during the flash process.

 

how much are you boosting on the neuspeed one with the n75h valve? still 16psi? you think ther wuold be a big difference between your giac and the 1.1psi of boost one?

 

Back in early 2003 when I got REVO for my GTI, Pro-Imports did actually (or so I was told) make a bakup copy of my existing stock chip. I was shown a file with my name on it that would be used in case I needed to restore the ECU to its former condition. Now, that was when REVO was just hitting the streets here and maybe things were done differently then. I just assumed the same would be done with the Audi, or at least the "stock" restore would not include encryption.

Curry's Auto was extremely generous because loading the GIAC software was more than they expected to do and they ended up absorbing the cost to overnight the ECU to AWE Tuning and back without charging me any more. That's a bit unfair to them over something that another tuner did. But they also wanted to ensure they had a satisfied customer, which I am. I will certainly be going back to them for the K04 software upgrade when the time comes.