Despite promising myself i wouldn't, i now feel myself slowly sliding down the slippery slope of tuning. I have a pretty basic knowledge, but think i need to learn a bit more. I always thought boost controllers were a little unnecessary, surely a good map would set the boost at the highest end of the safe limit for the engine? So why would you want to go higher, and why would you want to lower the boost? But everyone who has a fast, well tuned coupe and knows way more than me about tuning seems to have one? I have a hybrid turbo, stage 2 flea mapped at about 280bhp, do i really need one? What are the pros and cons? Please excuse my ignorance!

Good question James I wonder too so would like to see what tuners got to say. Thou, to kick it off I got the Apexi AVC-R with 3 boost settings. Depending on conditions on the road I adjust the boost. In the wet usually 1.2bar, dry 1.45bar, snow or really bad rain stock 0.8 bar. I apply the same rule on the track. It's very convenient not having to go under the bonnet to adjust the boost each time you feel that you want to do it. Other then that don't know the sense of it...

Boost controllers all do the same thing in the same way at the end of the day.

Some electronic boost controllers, like your AVC-R are useful because of their versatility; it allows you to adjust things like gain and overboost, plus it can do gear-based boost control - that can be particularly useful in some circumstances. It's case of horses for courses really. Some setups in certain situations can benefit by EBCs with the those features. The majority don't however. Personally I like to keep it simple and use as little boost control as possible, so to speak. I find that the best performance is had by using a wastegate with base spring pressure as close as possible to the maximum target boost, and then using minimum boost control for fine adjustment - via whichever method; EBC, MBC, stock boost controller...

I do a hybrid T34 upgrade for 16VT's and on that I use a 1 bar actuator instead of the stock 0.3 bar. This makes the turbo spool as fast as possible and can easily hold 1.5 bar right to the redline. The stock 0.5 bar actuator always drops off by the redline and no boost controller can remedy that.

On my car I don't even use a boost controller. I run 1.5 bar so I have 1.5 bar springs in my external wastegate. Nothing else is necessary. Boost threshold and lag are as low as physically possible, boost holds flat right to the redline, perfect. If I want less boost I just don't press the accelerator so hard!

Having said that, having gear-based boost control to lower boost in 1st and 2nd could be handy on my car, especially on track.

Sorry for interrupting.

I have a question about boostcontroll too. I have a Dink stage 3 chip (with supporting mods). And his site says that the map is programmed untill 1.5 bar. But max boost for this chip is set at 1.2bar (for standard internals).

Can somewhone confirm that? If so, can I install a proper boostcontroller and raise max boost pressure?? I have AEM wideband to check fuelling. Not that I want/need to raise boost pressure but maybe in the future.

Best Regards
Michael

Totally ignored the fact that I can do it with my AVC-R... That would be extremely useful once done. Unfortunately, I got no clue how to set it up

You have to wire up the road speed sensor to the AVC-R then 'teach' it each gear, Pretty straight forward if you have the instructions to hand.

Cheers KJ, I will download the manual then and try to sort it once I got some more time

I'm very happily around 340hp (GT28R + Fleamap) and have no extra boost controller.
Talk to Flea, he can point the way I think.