Hi guys,
I have a 56 plate 1.9 TDi 105 which I had remapped in June (BXE engine code). My wife is going to be working away for 3 years and traveling 500 miles per week, so thought I'd treat her as it was pretty underpowered for all the A-road driving she'll be doing now. Our other car is a 2011 VW Sharan 2.0 TDi 140 and she was driving that daily while I was piling on the miles on pur wee Altea. I'm down to 250/300 miles per week and home with our 4 kids, 2 labradors and 2 tubas, so need the bigger car.
Anyway, we've had the Altea for 2.5 years and managed to get it up to a huge 132k mileage wise, having put about half of these on ourselves. I was going to replace it for a 61 plate Fiesta 1.6 TDCi, but she decided to save the money and keep the extra weight for the high windy roads between our house and work.
Anyway, I went off to Jim @ Star Performance in Fife (90 mile return trip) after hearing so many positive things about him across many forums. I turned up at 10:30 and sat around for a couple of hours as he played and tinkered with it. He commended me on such a clean and well maintained car and gave me the talk about having such a high mileage model and that while he isn't tweaking boost pressures, the turbo may decide to play dead at any time, albeit unrelated to what he was doing.
After a couple of hours of backing up our ECU and downloading the new map, he went off with our wee Sally (our kids call her Wee Sally Ally rather than Seat Altea and our 2011 VW Sharan is Big Shazza!) and returned 15 minutes later with our keys. I paid the bill he bid me farewell and it was then time for the treck up the road. Jim told me to have a wee blast locally to make sure I was happy, but to get in touch if there was any issues I discovered.
When I left I kept the revs high and compared to the car I turned up in which had to be pressed hard to do anything beyond a snails crawl. With a similarly leaden right foot I was stunned. The car was pulling hard and clean and it was flying! I relaxed my foot and the world was a much better place than a mere 2 hours earlier!
The power low down is much more useable, and the turbo comes in gradually rather than bang and stop, second gear is simply lovely now and, shock of all shocks, I can now overtake another car when approaching (but not, of course, exceeding the magic 70mpg
).
I am a generally pretty relaxed driver 85% of the time and have noticed a wee improvement on the fuel consumption. On the other hand, my wife is late for everything and only appears to be able to be static or travel at warp speed. Her fuel consumption has propped by a similar amount, so we've probably leveled each other out.
As everybody who has had similar worked carried out will testify, the car may be much better now, but there is still the potential to go further. Now that she is used to the power my wife wants some more at the top end for overtaking again. She's driving on A-roads in Scotland in the dark most of the time and needs some grunt from wee Sally, and it is still calling for more.
The bottom line:
- The car is much, much smoother through the entire range;
- Fuel consumption will remain the same or you may get a slight improvement based on your driving style;
- At the price of 3 moths depreciation on a replacement Fiesta it's been worth every penny;
- We've had this car for a while and are used to to it's quirkiness. We've also had some work done to it and like the spec:
- work: clutch & flywheel, headlight bulbs changed to night breaker plus, alternator pulley, exhaust rear box, window regulator, usual tail lights issues (which were fixed for £11 for a bulb holder!), plus servicing with genuine VAG items. I also have a mint set of Leon allot wheels with Conti Sport Contacts for summer and the original 5 spoke alloys with a brand new set of M&S Uniroyal's which I will put on at some point this month.
- spec: bluetooth, electric folding mirrors, leather steering wheel, rear parking sensors, auto lights & wipers (although the bloody sensor has fallen off the screen - help, see my other posts!), not the sport model with the sculpted rear seats (we have 4 kids,3 of them teens and this works better for us), plus it's a different car to anybody else locally!
- Jim @ Star Performance knows his stuff!
I hummed and hawed for 2 years to do it and (like everybody else...) should have done it when I bought the car. When I went off to look for an Altea initially, my mechanic steered me towards the 1.9 rather than the 2.0 due to purchase cost, insurance cost, and also because he was convinced that between the injectors, DPF & EGR I would be visiting home more tahn with the 1.9.
Hope this helps someone thinking about doing something similar.
I have a 56 plate 1.9 TDi 105 which I had remapped in June (BXE engine code). My wife is going to be working away for 3 years and traveling 500 miles per week, so thought I'd treat her as it was pretty underpowered for all the A-road driving she'll be doing now. Our other car is a 2011 VW Sharan 2.0 TDi 140 and she was driving that daily while I was piling on the miles on pur wee Altea. I'm down to 250/300 miles per week and home with our 4 kids, 2 labradors and 2 tubas, so need the bigger car.
Anyway, we've had the Altea for 2.5 years and managed to get it up to a huge 132k mileage wise, having put about half of these on ourselves. I was going to replace it for a 61 plate Fiesta 1.6 TDCi, but she decided to save the money and keep the extra weight for the high windy roads between our house and work.
Anyway, I went off to Jim @ Star Performance in Fife (90 mile return trip) after hearing so many positive things about him across many forums. I turned up at 10:30 and sat around for a couple of hours as he played and tinkered with it. He commended me on such a clean and well maintained car and gave me the talk about having such a high mileage model and that while he isn't tweaking boost pressures, the turbo may decide to play dead at any time, albeit unrelated to what he was doing.
After a couple of hours of backing up our ECU and downloading the new map, he went off with our wee Sally (our kids call her Wee Sally Ally rather than Seat Altea and our 2011 VW Sharan is Big Shazza!) and returned 15 minutes later with our keys. I paid the bill he bid me farewell and it was then time for the treck up the road. Jim told me to have a wee blast locally to make sure I was happy, but to get in touch if there was any issues I discovered.
When I left I kept the revs high and compared to the car I turned up in which had to be pressed hard to do anything beyond a snails crawl. With a similarly leaden right foot I was stunned. The car was pulling hard and clean and it was flying! I relaxed my foot and the world was a much better place than a mere 2 hours earlier!
The power low down is much more useable, and the turbo comes in gradually rather than bang and stop, second gear is simply lovely now and, shock of all shocks, I can now overtake another car when approaching (but not, of course, exceeding the magic 70mpg
).I am a generally pretty relaxed driver 85% of the time and have noticed a wee improvement on the fuel consumption. On the other hand, my wife is late for everything and only appears to be able to be static or travel at warp speed. Her fuel consumption has propped by a similar amount, so we've probably leveled each other out.
As everybody who has had similar worked carried out will testify, the car may be much better now, but there is still the potential to go further. Now that she is used to the power my wife wants some more at the top end for overtaking again. She's driving on A-roads in Scotland in the dark most of the time and needs some grunt from wee Sally, and it is still calling for more.
The bottom line:
- The car is much, much smoother through the entire range;
- Fuel consumption will remain the same or you may get a slight improvement based on your driving style;
- At the price of 3 moths depreciation on a replacement Fiesta it's been worth every penny;
- We've had this car for a while and are used to to it's quirkiness. We've also had some work done to it and like the spec:
- work: clutch & flywheel, headlight bulbs changed to night breaker plus, alternator pulley, exhaust rear box, window regulator, usual tail lights issues (which were fixed for £11 for a bulb holder!), plus servicing with genuine VAG items. I also have a mint set of Leon allot wheels with Conti Sport Contacts for summer and the original 5 spoke alloys with a brand new set of M&S Uniroyal's which I will put on at some point this month.
- spec: bluetooth, electric folding mirrors, leather steering wheel, rear parking sensors, auto lights & wipers (although the bloody sensor has fallen off the screen - help, see my other posts!), not the sport model with the sculpted rear seats (we have 4 kids,3 of them teens and this works better for us), plus it's a different car to anybody else locally!
- Jim @ Star Performance knows his stuff!
I hummed and hawed for 2 years to do it and (like everybody else...) should have done it when I bought the car. When I went off to look for an Altea initially, my mechanic steered me towards the 1.9 rather than the 2.0 due to purchase cost, insurance cost, and also because he was convinced that between the injectors, DPF & EGR I would be visiting home more tahn with the 1.9.
Hope this helps someone thinking about doing something similar.
