Dropped of the car at Balanced Performance Motors today. Tomorrow I'll pick it up with new Michelin PS4S tires, new brake pads, new brake lines, and a brake flush. I'll do my best to run it out of gas before I bring it back home as I need to fill it up with E85 so I can finish the tune with Justin. 

When I pick my car up, we drop off the wife's car so they can install my tires on her new wheels and install the new Swift springs and hopefully we can have hers back on Thursday.

I'm on my 11th tune file with Justin. We're going to throw as much E as we can to see how much power it will make. The thought is that it will run full E85, but whether it makes full power at that level is another question and one we hope to answer. 

I shared this earlier today.

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First... no one is paying me to say nice things about Justin Schmidt 🙂 As a matter of fact, I'm getting ready to pay him to go through the entire process again with the wife's car. The XDI HPFP translator arrived a few minutes ago (images) for her car, and once that is installed HPTuners can interact with the XDI HPFP. That process was handled by Trifecta in their software, but HPTuners needs a hardware translator to do the same thing. I need to make an appointment with Teddy Knisley to install that and the AEM wideband. But that car is another story. 🙂
I told Justin last night how great the programming of my A8 was now. I enjoyed the improved transmission performance with my Trifecta tune and there was a noticeable difference in the way it shifted, but Justin has taken it to another level. 

The first thing I noticed was the downshifts when slowing down. I love the feel and sound of the rev matching as I slow, and I think it's the way the factory setting should have been from the beginning. When I coast downhill it will downshift to help maintain speed to minimize braking, and that's one thing that mine never did before. 

The upshifts are also improved and the transformation from calm to beast mode occurs with more sensitivity now. When you add up all of these changes, it has really transformed the way the car feels and drives. Add the fact that Justin spent some time tweaking my low speed/low rpm throttle response, and I get a grin each time I think about taking it out for a ride. The power is nothing like the stock car, and right now on E45 it's nothing like the Trifecta 93 tune, which would of course be expected.