HowLeTT

Sorry this is so insanely noobish with my first post and all, but I'm a very excited new owner of a silver b5. The car is beautiful... got it from a dealer near Philadelphia. One owner, and it just had a LOT of maintenance done to it by Autospeed in NJ. They did the clutch/flywheel, ToB, TB, TBT, serp belt, coolant pump, vcg's, heads, head gaskets, plugs, etc. It's chipped, although I'm not sure which one is in there. If anyone could tell me the ECU location or an easy way to tell that would be helpful... I tried getting in touch with the previous owner and could not.

The car has 68k on it, 6 spd man. I took it for a test drive last week and it pulled nicely, registered ~18 psi on the AWE boost guage installed in the vent. Now today I picked up the car, let it warm up and all, and it never pulled over 4 psi. It's cooling down now and I'll see if it still does it later. Maybe the dealer didnt put 93 octane in it? IDK why this would happen so soon, I literally picked the car up two hours ago. It felt great during the test drive.. I'm really bummed out right now. The salesman really knew his stuff w/ the car, he seemed very legit and so did all the work it had done. Autospeed faxed over the receipt of all the work they did just this April on the car. the only thing I could think to do was pull off those plastic covers and take a look at the TBB to see if maybe it tore during initial acceleration.. it was blue silicone and looked aftermarket, no tears in sight. Any suggestions on what I should do at this point. The car was purchased as-is, of course, and taking it back is pretty much not an option. Thanks everybody, I'm looking forward to becoming a good member of this community instead of a noob firing off questions about probs with his new car.

HowLeTT

Just drove it to and from the gym... oil got up to ~200 before I gave it a romp and it stayed at 4 psi in every gear. first gear just feels so sluggish now, it really wants to go more. As I was pulling in to the gym I got on 2nd and 3rd a little and it went up to 10 psi or so and would have kept pulling but I let off. Then on the way home it was 4 psi the whole way.

rktskicar

4 psi is limp mode (boost reduced by ECU due to some error condition). You will need a VAG with this car to figure out what's going on. Speculation is futile. What sort of tuning?

Bruce

complacentsee

ECU location is in the engine bay, behind the first firewall in a sealed plastic case close to the driver. There should be more than a few write-ups. I'm pretty sure awe-tuning has a good one. Or I think they did years ago anyway.

shawnoc2003

Definetly get a Vag com cable from Ross-tech. You're gonna use it a lot plus there's some pretty good changes you can make with the Vag com (like one touch unlock for all locks, one touch windows up/down...etc). You can look around the engine all day and not know which sensor is giving a bad reading.

http://www.ross-tech.com/Merchant2/m...ry_Code=VAGCOM

HowLeTT

Thank you very much, all three of you. It def seems to be the right way to go getting a vag com, I'll pick one of them up when the next paycheck comes. It's in limp mode for sure, but only doing it about 70% of the time and then it will randomly boost up to 15 or so and taunt me. I'm guessing it's spiking too high... the 93 octane was not the problem. Can't wait to see these codes, heh! I found the ECM today, thanks again guys. This forum is great. I'm just northeast of Philly in Bucks County if anybody wants a vag com reading in about two weeks.

rktskicar

What sort of tuning do you have?

Bruce

HowLeTT

Unfortunately I'm just not sure yet. From what the dealership told me, the car is chipped and has an AWE boost vac boost guage in the vent, and I'm running 93 just to be safe. Is there a way to tell just by physical inspection of the ECM, or will the vag com be able to give me insight into that? There are no visible engine modifications, just a set of lowering springs. It sounds like an N75 fault, it'd be nice if it's just one relatively simple problem like that and not some hard to track down boost leak.

rktskicar

If it is an old version of GIAC-X (K8X and before), can overboost on boost ramp (overboost throttle cut). Need VAG to verify you have overboost throttle cut. Can only be fixed by MBC or SW update. I went for SW update, removed problem (check pics)





Bruce

complacentsee

You can easily tell which chip you have (atleast with my giac) by opening up the ECU box. Just remove it the whole metal unit And then remove the torx screws from the bottom. The top lid will then lift off and reviel the chip which is usually removeable and mounted to standoffs which were soldering on to where the original ecu was.

They might be security torx, but I think tuners normally swap them out to standard torx.