Where to get car tuned?

[silviaz]

7 minutes ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Yes, here's a scenario.

Say your original tune by Tuner A has been done, with the wrong injector data, wrong sensor scaling, base timing not synced properly. Tuner B then hops on, fixes up the cock ups and now realises the fuel table & timing tables are pretty much invalid.

Easier for them to copy and paste a known working tune from a similar car they've done in the past with similar mods, then tune/calibrate accordingly 

Yep that makes a lot of sense, actually I was reading reviews a few minutes ago of this exact same scenario that you mentioned. Now, I wonder if they will do a copy and paste tune, doubt it lol. Less money that way for them.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

27 minutes ago, silviaz said:

Less money that way for them

Why? They will still charge you for a full tune.

[silviaz]

1 minute ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Why? They will still charge you for a full tune.

Really even though they save a ton of time with the copy paste it's still the same price as a full tune? I thought it was a time thing where the more time they spend the more money they charge, now if the adjustments take the same amount of time then that makes sense to me, or am I missing something?

[Murray_Calavera]

1 minute ago, silviaz said:

Really even though they save a ton of time with the copy paste it's still the same price as a full tune? I thought it was a time thing where the more time they spend the more money they charge, now if the adjustments take the same amount of time then that makes sense to me, or am I missing something?

Oh you sweet summer child. It might be easier to look at this from the Euro scene, in this case a Golf Gti. A super quick google... 

https://www.mountune.com.au/products/m52-golf-gti-stage-1-power-upgrade-mk7-5-only

$1,175  for a "stage 1" tune. 

https://www.vagparts.com.au/products/volkswagen-golf-gti-mk7-tuning

Oh it's on sale! $800 for a "stage 1" tune. 

So, in these instances the car never sees the dyno, no mechanic ever sees the car, no tuner touches the car. You hand over a large sum of money and you get a copy paste flash tune uploaded to your ecu. 

So much of the tuning industry is like this. 

Why would a tuner, turn down the opportunity to extract a minimum of $1,000 from you? It's an easier pill to swallow for the average customer when they sell it as a "full tune". Oh I'm sure they'll happily bill you for more if you want something special done on top, but the price of admission will always be for a "full tune". 

I really hate to be so cynical about this but it's reality. The obvious solution is to tune the car yourself. 

[Kinkstaah]

But a Skyline is not a OEM hardware flash tune. Skyline mods pretty much START at Stage .. 8 or something like that.

To "fix up" a tune you have to first familiarize yourself with WTF is going on. Any tuner will realistically have a look and see if the baseline actually makes sense. If it does, then yes of course they will use that as a base and spend time tweaking and modifying it. If it's way too far from what they are used to they will start from scratch, but treating the current tune like a baseline is as good a place as any to start as long as it makes sense to do so.

However it is a CYA technique. They do not expect that the tune to be 30 seconds of work away from being perfect, and they have a paying customer with a complaint that they very much want to resolve. To do that properly they quote high and will go over everything to make the thing work as well as possible.

It would be crazy for them to assume that they can make a fast tweak to fix a tune made by someone else on a car they don't know. It could also not be a software problem as well.

[Dose Pipe Sutututu]

56 minutes ago, Kinkstaah said:

It would be crazy for them to assume that they can make a fast tweak to fix a tune made by someone else on a car they don't know

Hence they rather copy / paste a tune with similar mods from a previous car as a base, not to mention all the tables are scaled how the tuner likes it. And in the odd event, the car has like for like mods as the file they have on hand, even better!

Means less work.

I once did 2x S15s with GTX2867R turbos, same 980cc injectors, one had Procams & broken VTC, one had Poncams and working VTC. Did I start from scratch? hell no.

[silviaz]

12 hours ago, Murray_Calavera said:

Oh you sweet summer child. It might be easier to look at this from the Euro scene, in this case a Golf Gti. A super quick google... 

https://www.mountune.com.au/products/m52-golf-gti-stage-1-power-upgrade-mk7-5-only

$1,175  for a "stage 1" tune. 

https://www.vagparts.com.au/products/volkswagen-golf-gti-mk7-tuning

Oh it's on sale! $800 for a "stage 1" tune. 

So, in these instances the car never sees the dyno, no mechanic ever sees the car, no tuner touches the car. You hand over a large sum of money and you get a copy paste flash tune uploaded to your ecu. 

So much of the tuning industry is like this. 

Why would a tuner, turn down the opportunity to extract a minimum of $1,000 from you? It's an easier pill to swallow for the average customer when they sell it as a "full tune". Oh I'm sure they'll happily bill you for more if you want something special done on top, but the price of admission will always be for a "full tune". 

I really hate to be so cynical about this but it's reality. The obvious solution is to tune the car yourself. 

Ah, I thought as much lol. Me tuning the car myself would be a disaster, I'll just pay the 1k+ 🤣

[silviaz]

1 hour ago, Kinkstaah said:

But a Skyline is not a OEM hardware flash tune. Skyline mods pretty much START at Stage .. 8 or something like that.

To "fix up" a tune you have to first familiarize yourself with WTF is going on. Any tuner will realistically have a look and see if the baseline actually makes sense. If it does, then yes of course they will use that as a base and spend time tweaking and modifying it. If it's way too far from what they are used to they will start from scratch, but treating the current tune like a baseline is as good a place as any to start as long as it makes sense to do so.

However it is a CYA technique. They do not expect that the tune to be 30 seconds of work away from being perfect, and they have a paying customer with a complaint that they very much want to resolve. To do that properly they quote high and will go over everything to make the thing work as well as possible.

It would be crazy for them to assume that they can make a fast tweak to fix a tune made by someone else on a car they don't know. It could also not be a software problem as well.

That makes sense.