Installation took me 20m, not having even looked at the ECU or bolt sizes before this. Stupid easy swap. Again I have a
G70 AWD. ALL STOCK. No intake filter change, A/S tires, no JB4 for logging. Nothing.
My options are as follows: 1.4 bar max, soft bubbles in sport mode only at and above 4500rpm, boost by mode (0.3 bar eco, 0.7 bar comfort and full 1.4 bar in sport).
- Turning on the car the first time, there's a very small (1s) delay. I guess the ECU needs to adapt to the rest of the car's electronics (transfer VIN, talk to everyone, etc)
- No change whatsoever to drivability. I don't have the TCU so the shift patterns are unchanged in each sport mode.
- Eco mode feels rather slow lol. About the same power you could expect from an I4 Camry, but with V6 refinement and power delivery. Not bad, but not exciting at all. Just what Eco mode should be I guess.
- Comfort mode doesn't feel much different from Eco mode if I'm honest. More on that below.
- At first drive, I was underwhelmed by the power in sport mode if I'm honest. Certainly not $1500 worth. My history with tuning extends to Gen1 Speed 3's and mk6 GTI's. The Speed 3 did injectors, FMIC, DP and a tune all at once and that was a very impressive upgrade. The GTI's power bump from stock to stage 1 (tune only) was just as much, but a little more impressive as it didn't have any other hardware mods supporting. The G70 didn't get the same bump; the 3.3 seems a bit closer to its limits as a hardware package (displacement, turbo size, etc).
- HOWEVER. On the second drive I got another bump in power, matching the first. There's definitely some adaptation going on! I pulled out behind traffic on a 45mph road and almost ran through the back of the car in front of me at almost but not quite WOT because I wasn't expecting the thrust! I don't know yet if this adaptation also applies to comfort mode yet - only been driving in Sport.
- One thing I'll call out is that the boost control on this ECU/engine is excellent. My mk6 with the EA888 gen1 and MED17 ECU wasn't that great. Stock was pretty great, but the APR tune would overshoot the boost target by a fair degree. Made driving kind difficult - you'd accelerate as usual but when the boost comes on you'd instinctively pull back on the gas a bit to avoid the overboost, then the car wouldn't accelerate as you expect... it was a pain. This tune is near perfect, even at part throttle.