Custom TDI Tune and AI
Preface, I do not regularly use AI nor am I an AI evangelist, but I am a VW/Audi nerd who loves engine swaps and found an interesting use case for AI.
2 years ago I built a TDI swapped B6 generation Audi A4 wagon (doner engine was a 2.0l BHW TDI out of a Passat). I worked with 2 different reputable TDI tuners to try and get the engine happy while also making sure the rest of the car was happy (cruise control, electric cooling fans, ABS...etc). In the end I was left with the following solutions/problems:
- Passat BHW tune which would not work with the Audi cruise control, ABS, or factory cooling fans
- BPW (Euro B7 A4 2.0l TDI) tune which could not talk with the B6 chassis.
- BKE (Euro B6 A4 1.9l TDI)/BHW hybrid tune which worked with the Audi chassis, ABS, fans...etc, but never made good power like the native BHW Passat tune made, resulting in an overall sluggish tune with mediocre fuel economy.
After essentially running into a brick wall with both tuners, I ended up just using the BKE/BHW hybrid tune which the car was happy with, but left a lot on the table when it came to power and fuel economy.
A few days ago I had a hairbrained idea to use Claude AI to analyze the Passat BHW tune and the BKE/BHW hybrid tune to identify all of the differences to try and finally get this thing running correctly. Short story long, it was able to identify all the differences and generate a new hybrid tune using all the BHW engine parameters while maintaining all the needed BKE parameters to retain cruise control, ABS, and the factory cooling fans from the Audi.
I uploaded both the native Passat BHW tune file and my new AI modified Audi BKE/BHW hybrid tune file to an online tool used to estimate HP/Torque values, and the charts were identical.
Power is way up, power band is much more usable, engine runs/idles smoother, and I gained 3-4mpg to boot.
I am not recommending anyone vibe-code a tune themselves, but in my case I was able to utilize AI to generate a new tune based on some already proven base maps and I am 110% happy with the results.