Wellllllll, interesting, someone from the RS world who's interested in tuning...
I just learned to tune Motronic. I even wrote my own definition files in the beginning. I was also the first person (AFAIK) to publicly start experimenting with cam phasing on the N/A Audi engines.
When I say park the exhaust cam, I mean just that. keep it's opening late as possible and the intake opening as early as possible under part throttle. It will hurt gas consumption, but no more than a manifold half full of carbon would.
Really, if you think about it, the only time the intake valves see carbon is when it flows back in during overlap. For that to happen, pressure in the exhaust has to be more than the intake. Unfortunately, with the big pre-cats in place, it's easy to generate more pressure in the exhaust at part throttle say vis a vis a catless set of downpipes. In fact, eliminating the cats would probably mitigate cabon build up a LOT on these engines seeing as they have branched manifolds which encourage scavenging (unlike the B6/B7 S4).
As for tuning, I've spent literally thousands of hours and about 500 different file revisions tuning my two V8 S4's. While I don't want to start a pissing contest, between my tunes and JHM's all I'll say is I have a copy JHM's tune which was given to me, I've studied it and while it's a little better than most, it was nothing earth shattering IMO. To wit, JHM changes about 50 maps, I change just under 100. Now, many of them are 1x1, but still they make a significant difference to transient response by eliminating throttle delays on opening and closing among other things.
You say that APR tried to tune your car for W/M and only made 9 WHP whereas JHM made 25 WHP. Do you happen to have copies of the dyno graphs and any logging data from the two tunes? PM me if you do as I'd be interested to see them.
I myself have tuned an RS4 and it turned out well. I had very, very little time with the car and only had 2 revisions to get it dialed in. However, I spoke with the owner after a few weeks of driving it and he is beyond thrilled with it.
While I didn't get a chance to dyno it. I did get a clean 3rd gear pull on a flat stretch of road for data analysis. I put the results into Virtual Dyno and found this... (note, I took the peak numbers out so as to eliminate the inevitable inter-dyno dick swinging contest)
RS4 TUNED DYNO NO NUMBERS by
zimbu themonkey, on Flickr
vs APR
RS4 TUNED BY APR DYNO by
zimbu themonkey, on Flickr
Now, I know people will scoff and say "pff, it's only a Virtual Dyno plot" well I challenge anyone to replicate this plot on their own by plugging numbers into a spreadsheet. What you need to take note of is just how FLAT it is. I ran out of road and had to pull the plug around 7300 RPM. However when you compare it to the APR plot (and EVERY other aftermarket tune dyno), you'll note that the torque curve on EVERY ONE of them does not change shape, it just gets raised up. That's a surefire way to know if the cam timing was changed BTW.
Anyway, I hope that at least whets your whistle a little. You can flash your car with a simple $99 MPPS V18 clone cable, use a cracked version of winOLS for editing and if you can PM me your ECU number I can even see if i have a DAMOS file to give you.
I look forward to continued correspondence
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