Hello everybody!
Thought I would share my experience of having my car remapped. I drive a 2019 Leon ST 2.0 TSI. From the factory this develops 190 hp & 236 lbs/ft. The car has never felt slow during my short ownership (purchased Jan 2024), in fact it has proved to be quite brisk. I just wanted it to have a bit more performance, enough to keep my petrol headed side interested.
After careful consideration and lots of research, I settled on a stage one remap from Revo. It was a close call, the alternative would have been Racingline's offering, but their remap was a tad down on power vs Revo's, and Revo were doing a good March discount offering at the time.
I didn't fancy going to an 'authorised dealer', so drove to their HQ in Daventry to have it done. The logic being the car would receive the best treatment this way, which certainly seems to have been the case. I booked it in with Barry, who was also on hand to greet and deal with me on the day. The whole job took around two hours, no biggie when their customer area is such a nice place to spend time in, comfy sofa, top gear continually looping on TV, free coffee, plenty of nice kit to have a look at etc...
I didn't have anything else done on the car, I'm still using an OE paper air filter and intake, and didn't get a DSG tune. I wanted to keep my original fuel economy and figured there's always the DSG's 'S' mode if I want to hold lower gears. This has so far proved a good option, it saved me a few hundred quid and my car has retained it's fuel ecomony at precisely what it managed before the remap. It is easily capable of 50+ mpg on a run if you drive carefully. I typically get low or mid 30's for city driving. The 7 speed DQ381 gearbox didn't need anything doing to it, it's good for the power & torque a stage one provides, it's the exact same box you get in GTI's, R's, S3's, VRS's, etc... Though the engine differes slightly from those, this car uses the 3b engine variant. A more economically based design which uses a different combustion cycle for efficency & emissions purposes than those performance models.
Talking of performance models, if VW made a Golf GTI Estate I would have 100% bought one. Having always wanted a GTI of some sort, and now having the luggage capacity demands a child brings, it would have been a no brainer of a purchase for me. VW's lineup being as it is, I didn't want or need the four wheel drive, 300 hp, insurance costs, excessive fuel bills or theft issues associated with the Golf R estate. It's a shame they don't make the GTI estate but in the absence of that this Leon was the next best thing in my eyes. In case anyone is wondering, I did test drive an Octavia VRS 245 estate but I didn't like it.
Anyway, the remap... The car is it's placid old self in normal driving, you would struggle to tell anything had been done to it if you are pootling around. Give it a bit more throttle than that though and you can definately tell it has a lot more torque. Running premium 99 fuel I'm told by Revo that it now develops 321 lbs/ft, an increase of 85 lbs/ft over stock. And you can really feel it, there is a lot more 'lazy power' available, you really don't have to get the engine going much to have it very effectively shove you down the road. Even in 'D' mode with the box constantly trying to run the highest gear it possibly can, it's more driveble more of the time. The high gearing is just less of an issue with the extra power. There is a bit of torque steer which wasn't present before, but it's not an issue at all and is very manageable. My first experience of it actually, having come from BMW's. My old car was a 2003 E46 330i, I loved that thing but it was getting on a bit.
The power is right up there now too, apparently now running at 266 hp, easily making this the most powerful car I've owned. Stick the gearbox into 'S' or manual mode, get the revs up and the car really really flies. Like I mentioned before, it wasn't slow before but it is savagely fast now. The engine makes a much better sound, I swear there's even a nice induction roar with the stock system. It's never going to be the final word in performance, its an FR estate after all, but in this configuration its now the ultimate performance estate sleeper car (de-badged S4 Avant's and the like aside of course). For what is still a fairly light & compact estate car, coming in at 1,384 kg it's new found power is rather a lot I think. Traction is a bit of an issue off the line, and wheel hop can be had, but it was there before and if you manage the throttle it's fine.. Anyway, I'm not really one for haring it off from a standstill, I tend to treat my cars more respectfully & carefully than that. Traction all the rest of the time is very good, and the brand new Kumho's Ecsta 71's it came with are up to the job, though I will swap these for Asymetric 6's or Sportcontact 7's soon. 40-60 or 50-70mph is literally dispatched in a couple of seconds, any in gear acceleration is more than enough for any situation or overtake, and it's all delivered in a very linear and smooth fashion. The engines running doesn't seem to have been compromised in any way, and the car seems just as happy as it was before it had the stage one. FYI... if you're considering getting a remap on the 2.0 190 engine, get it done from a reputable company. My research into this just showed how important this is, a lot of people have suffered issues from cheaping out on the software. I've not come accross any issues from people using reputable tuners like Revo/Racingline/APR etc...
So yeah, I'm happy with the result, and im very pleased with my new (to me) Leon FR ST, it's just a brilliant car in so many ways. With this forum's help I've fixed the usual rattles, soundproofed the door cards, and the rear wheel well. It's a much quieter & nicer place to spend time in as a result, so thanks to you all for that. Any questions relating to this are of course welcome. Thanks for reading this & happy motoring!
Joe
Thought I would share my experience of having my car remapped. I drive a 2019 Leon ST 2.0 TSI. From the factory this develops 190 hp & 236 lbs/ft. The car has never felt slow during my short ownership (purchased Jan 2024), in fact it has proved to be quite brisk. I just wanted it to have a bit more performance, enough to keep my petrol headed side interested.
After careful consideration and lots of research, I settled on a stage one remap from Revo. It was a close call, the alternative would have been Racingline's offering, but their remap was a tad down on power vs Revo's, and Revo were doing a good March discount offering at the time.
I didn't fancy going to an 'authorised dealer', so drove to their HQ in Daventry to have it done. The logic being the car would receive the best treatment this way, which certainly seems to have been the case. I booked it in with Barry, who was also on hand to greet and deal with me on the day. The whole job took around two hours, no biggie when their customer area is such a nice place to spend time in, comfy sofa, top gear continually looping on TV, free coffee, plenty of nice kit to have a look at etc...
I didn't have anything else done on the car, I'm still using an OE paper air filter and intake, and didn't get a DSG tune. I wanted to keep my original fuel economy and figured there's always the DSG's 'S' mode if I want to hold lower gears. This has so far proved a good option, it saved me a few hundred quid and my car has retained it's fuel ecomony at precisely what it managed before the remap. It is easily capable of 50+ mpg on a run if you drive carefully. I typically get low or mid 30's for city driving. The 7 speed DQ381 gearbox didn't need anything doing to it, it's good for the power & torque a stage one provides, it's the exact same box you get in GTI's, R's, S3's, VRS's, etc... Though the engine differes slightly from those, this car uses the 3b engine variant. A more economically based design which uses a different combustion cycle for efficency & emissions purposes than those performance models.
Talking of performance models, if VW made a Golf GTI Estate I would have 100% bought one. Having always wanted a GTI of some sort, and now having the luggage capacity demands a child brings, it would have been a no brainer of a purchase for me. VW's lineup being as it is, I didn't want or need the four wheel drive, 300 hp, insurance costs, excessive fuel bills or theft issues associated with the Golf R estate. It's a shame they don't make the GTI estate but in the absence of that this Leon was the next best thing in my eyes. In case anyone is wondering, I did test drive an Octavia VRS 245 estate but I didn't like it.
Anyway, the remap... The car is it's placid old self in normal driving, you would struggle to tell anything had been done to it if you are pootling around. Give it a bit more throttle than that though and you can definately tell it has a lot more torque. Running premium 99 fuel I'm told by Revo that it now develops 321 lbs/ft, an increase of 85 lbs/ft over stock. And you can really feel it, there is a lot more 'lazy power' available, you really don't have to get the engine going much to have it very effectively shove you down the road. Even in 'D' mode with the box constantly trying to run the highest gear it possibly can, it's more driveble more of the time. The high gearing is just less of an issue with the extra power. There is a bit of torque steer which wasn't present before, but it's not an issue at all and is very manageable. My first experience of it actually, having come from BMW's. My old car was a 2003 E46 330i, I loved that thing but it was getting on a bit.
The power is right up there now too, apparently now running at 266 hp, easily making this the most powerful car I've owned. Stick the gearbox into 'S' or manual mode, get the revs up and the car really really flies. Like I mentioned before, it wasn't slow before but it is savagely fast now. The engine makes a much better sound, I swear there's even a nice induction roar with the stock system. It's never going to be the final word in performance, its an FR estate after all, but in this configuration its now the ultimate performance estate sleeper car (de-badged S4 Avant's and the like aside of course). For what is still a fairly light & compact estate car, coming in at 1,384 kg it's new found power is rather a lot I think. Traction is a bit of an issue off the line, and wheel hop can be had, but it was there before and if you manage the throttle it's fine.. Anyway, I'm not really one for haring it off from a standstill, I tend to treat my cars more respectfully & carefully than that. Traction all the rest of the time is very good, and the brand new Kumho's Ecsta 71's it came with are up to the job, though I will swap these for Asymetric 6's or Sportcontact 7's soon. 40-60 or 50-70mph is literally dispatched in a couple of seconds, any in gear acceleration is more than enough for any situation or overtake, and it's all delivered in a very linear and smooth fashion. The engines running doesn't seem to have been compromised in any way, and the car seems just as happy as it was before it had the stage one. FYI... if you're considering getting a remap on the 2.0 190 engine, get it done from a reputable company. My research into this just showed how important this is, a lot of people have suffered issues from cheaping out on the software. I've not come accross any issues from people using reputable tuners like Revo/Racingline/APR etc...
So yeah, I'm happy with the result, and im very pleased with my new (to me) Leon FR ST, it's just a brilliant car in so many ways. With this forum's help I've fixed the usual rattles, soundproofed the door cards, and the rear wheel well. It's a much quieter & nicer place to spend time in as a result, so thanks to you all for that. Any questions relating to this are of course welcome. Thanks for reading this & happy motoring!
Joe
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