First off, I want to thank Viral and Zak (Software Engineer at AA) for the excellent communication both via email and on the phone through this process and answering my seemingly inane to paranoid questions.
I spent the last 2 days going through the Active Autowerke tuning process using their Simon Flashloader tool.
Simon Kit
Basic Home Voltmeter
Simon arrived on Tuesday evening and looking through their instructions, they seem to strongly recommend having a battery charger hooked up to the car to maintain voltage over 12V during the process so I picked up a
Battery Tender Plus 12V@1.25a at the local Pep Boys. When the battery indicated a voltage of 12.2V with the tender hooked up, I was ready.
Well, almost. I had to install the MyGenius software onto my wife's windows machine (I have a Macbook Air) using the supplied flash drive. Then hook up Simon using USB to the laptop and run an update - this updated the software on the laptop and the firmware on Simon.
Now, I was ready for the next step. This involves connecting Simon to the car's OBD2 port and following the simple on screen instructions to start the download process. Simon took 25-30 minutes to pull the stock software off the ECU.
Simon is now connected back to the laptop and the stock file transferred to the laptop. Then I emailed this file to AA so they could prepare a flash for my car and email it back to me.
Zak labelled my stock file as well as their pump gas file so I can load both onto Simon and easily find either. I transferred these from email attachments to Simon via MyGenius using USB. Then set the car up for the flash (all accessories off, door closed with windows down, starting voltage of 12.5V with the Battery Tender connected), hooked up Simon and followed on-screen instructions to start the flash.
Here is what surprised me, one the writing to ECU began what seems like the fuel pump (whirring noise from passenger side gas tank area) started to run and ran for the entire duration of the flash. The flash took about 30 minutes and battery voltage seemed to drop to around 11.75V (momentarily to 11.6V and that worried me) but the flash completed.
I just took the car for a quick test spin and the one thing that is noticeable immediately is how smooth the throttle response is throughout the rev range. Stock felt edgier but also somewhat harder to drive smoothly at times, whereas the AA tune seems to have taken the edge off. Rolling onto the gas getting out of a bend is very smooth and linear as is getting off the gas. Did I mention how smooth the AA tune is?
In terms of power, I cannot tell as I was part throttle most of the time with a couple of full throttle runs in 3rd and 4th. After each full throttle run, the car felt more responsive so I think there is some adaptation to be had. So far, it does not feel like when I installed the headers and drove the car the first time where it was an immediate felt improvement in midrange torque. I think this is a more subtle change and only adaptation after a while will tell how the tune feels and a dyno will reveal actual changes.
I am going to Watkins Glen this Sat/Sun so the car will have plenty of time to adapt to "fun" driving
I will keep you all updated on subjective feedback over the next few days and the dyno once I get that done.