Wow, what about his former customers that need their map tweaked for a new mod?

Any other tuner can write a new map for either ECUtek or AP, thats not really an issue. Sure, it'll be a new map 'from scratch' but most tuners have a good idea about whats going on, and can usually use one of their base maps to start from and get a new map in very little time.

Well, I'll give you an example (without naming names so we can try to avoid the OT BS):

My tuner spent over 4 hours fine tuning my car at sea level and I have a very generic setup. Everything was fine at sea level (although boost was set a tad too high in retrospect). But at this elevation I'd see some spiking. My tuner was in town and offered to fine tune for this elevation and drop my peak boost by a psi or two. The result was he was able to advance timing and my car now feels exactly the same to the butt dyno, but the boost is lower and more stable.

Here's my only point. It only took him an hour of screwing around up here to fine tune his previous map...if he went out of business, I'd be paying for an entire new tune. Some of Nate's former customers will be spending more money get tuned for new mods unless he unlocks the map for another tuner. At least I think that's how it works for Ecutek and Protune.

Your tuner doesn't have a dyno so it takes him 4 times as long as it should to get a decent tune on a mildly modded car.

Normal tuner shouldn't take more then one hour to do a tune that should work at any elevation (unless he's tuning standalone). If a tuner requires more time then that, maybe that just speaks to his experience level.

So, one hour for a completley new map or one hour for a revised map. Same price eitehr way.

I can understand that opinion, but the car felt awesome the moment he dropped his generic map to the ECU. The rest of the time he spent fine tuning it.

I hope you didn't pay him hourly... 'cause all that "fine tuning" is worthless the next day you drive the car, since the temperature is different. Or a month later, since the VE of the motor has changed a little due to wear. There's a reason the ECU has learning algorithms... it self fine-tunes.

Okay, lets drop Ed here, as it isn't important to the discussion, IMO, and just gets people butt hurt.

A professional tuner with a dyno should be able to make a map at the same price a re-tune from S2 would have cost. Their customers, yes, need to find a new shop, but its not exactly like they are left in the cold when it comes to re-tunes. When taken to a reputable tuner, it shouldn't take any more time or money then a re-tune at S2 would have.

Let's not go there. Please try to see my point. You are welcome to disagree with that, but I'm not here to discuss road tuning vs dyno tuning.

Agreed.

If you say so...

That's a very simplified descripiton. You and I both know the ECU is given targets to hit for AFR's, timing, and boost. Fine tuning those targets is the difference between a tune that is constantly causing knock or a lean condition, and one that the engine responds magicly too...regardless of the environmental conditions.

Just let go of the hate.

Trust me. Unless the car has wierd mods, a tuner will have most likely seen the setup before. And it doesn't take long to work the quirks of a car out. Its very rare that a car with simple bolt-ons takes more then one hour to tune (a completely fresh tune), and a re-tune would be a bit shorter but most shops only charge in full hour increments.

So, one hour of fresh tune costs the same as one hour of retune.

I didn't think I was missing your point. You said that is seems wrong for someone to have to pay for a full retune when they're just getting their car tweaked for a new mod. You cited that it took 4 hours for you to get your initial tune, and only an hour for a tweak.

I'm telling you that 4 hours is too long for a single map on a car with your mods. It's not like you're were getting multiple fuel or boost maps, it's not like your car has any bits on it that most tuners haven't tuned for a 100 times. 5 hours to get it right is about 4 hours too long. Not having the convience of a dyno is part of the additional time, but I'm gonna guess the biggest delay was simply a lack of experience, which isn't a knock on Ed as everyone has to start at some point, just as long as he's not charging by the hour for you to let him learn on your car.

Anyway, a tune on a mildly modified car takes about an hour. A tweak later on also takes about an hour, since the tasks are exatcly the same. Remember, most tuners already have base maps made for 99% of the common mods out there, so the only difference between a tweak and a full tune is whether they can start with the map on the car, or the map on their PC.

You missed my point. Ed wasn't "fine tuning" the car... he was "tuning" the car. You were implying that Ed spent a ton of extra time on the details. I'm telling you the details are handled by the ECU itself, if they weren't we couldn't push the cars to the levels they're pushed, as the margin of safety would be too slim as operating conditions change.

Spending an ass-load of time on a map getting it "just right" is a waste of time, because the conditions the motor's being tuned under won't ever exist in exactly the same manner ever again. Temperatures change, parts wear, humidity is different, and on and on. The ECU can already adapt to those changes. The goal of the tuner is to make a map that's good enough to allow the ECU to work well in all conditions. If you really go after the details, at some point you're actually going to be fighting the learning features of the ECU.

Ed had a tune premade for my specific setup and spent 4 hours fine tuning it. I did not pay him by the hour, but took advantage of the package deal of getting the AP and tune for one set price (which is supposed to include only 2 hours, but Ed is a perfectionist). He didn't even charge me for the re-tune up here. It was a good experience for him to see how a good tune at sea level may not be a good tune at 4,500 feet.

I understand that most places would have spent only an hour, but that's exactly why I went to Ed after talking to both of them.

Okay, I'm sorry I can't control myself from responding and I hope nobody gets butt hurt. (that's not a jab at anyone).

It sounds like my situation is not the norm so I'll just be quiet now.

I think the point we're trying to convey is that just cause it took longer doesn't mean its necessiarly any better. Don't fool yourself into thinking a 4 hour tune is inheriently better then a 1 hour job. It might be better (no proof either way in your case) but its not definitive to say that 4 hours to tune means your map is better tuned.

Maybe you're right. I'm not a tuner, so I don't know. In fact nobody can possibley say with any certainty whether my car would be happier if I had gone to a dyno-tuner that would have spent 1/4 the time.

Personally I'm just glad Ed stood behind his work enough to come up here and make it right. The car seems very happy to me. The EGT's and boost are nice and low but it still feels like a rocket. I'm happy.

I'm not knocking Ed. Really I'm not. I've got no problem with the guy, or his work, he's certainly tuned some fast cars. And I'm attempting to leave my concerns about his business practices out of this thread.

My point is that Ed is new to the game. You shouldn't kid yourself into thinking he's somehow doing something super-special that the other more experienced tuners aren't also doing. The "extra" time he's spending is more than likely because he's not as experienced as someone that's tuned 1000 cars. He's doing you right though by not charging extra for the time... if you've got the time to let him work on the car, you're certainly going to get a better tune, and Ed's going to get the experience he needs to become more efficient.

My point is, the amount of time spent on a tune isn't directly proportional to the quality of the tune. The going rate for a bolt-on's map is about an hour, which is why it shouldn't matter if S-Squared did your initial tune, since it'll cost the same at just about any EcuTek tuner to get the map tweaked.

Yeah! We all agree! :D

Quick, lock the thread!

:lol:

I feel compeled to respond as this digresses into Ed/Street tuning bashing...

Scott, you have previously claimed or even bragged that your car in it's last incarnation spent an entire day on the dyno at Easy Street. To then turn around and claim that "I'm telling you that 4 hours is too long for a single map on a car with your mods" and is "is a waste of time" is somewhat hypocritical IMHO...

Getting the base maps as accurate as possible is a significant advantage over relying on the ECU to learn how to adjust. You say the conditions will never be the same, but many will. The relatioship between the MAS, O2 sensors, injectors, and other sensors is not likely to significantly change. Yes, the specifc environment might, but much of what you are tuning for is matching all these items for a given set of conditions. RPM, Boost, etc. Relying on knock, and other sensors and ECU learning to tune your car is crap.

I am not claiming to be an expert, but from just my first few months of just collecting data and learning about Street tuner, I know how many values there are to tune, and that most of what you are doing is making the different components inputs/outputs jive with each other. Barometric, and temperature tables are barely involved.

We also have imperical evidence to back this up... Mikes car on a Q&D Nate tune ran like crap. More time and energy at Gruppe-S, and it ran like a charm... Hmmmm.

Lets just all get along... How about a round of I'd like to teach the world to sing...

On a related note..

In my opinion, it would have been extremely professional if Nate had provided his past customers with electronic, or paper coppies of their Maps prior to moving on, but alas, that is not the case. I wonder what happened to his copy of the ECUTek software and ProTuner... Aaron... Is that PC still around that we could get our maps?

Having those maps wouldn't do you any good in their current form. They're digitally "signed". The question is, can they be "unlocked" or "ported" to another tuner.

Ummm, Mike's old car was tuned by us, his new car was tuned by Gruppe-S. After tuning Mike's WRX, Nate found a way to smooth the OL/CL transitions, but Mike was onto his 05 at that point, wanted to go with AP, and Moike took care of him at a time when we couldn't. QED.

Regarding your second request, and your statement of professionalism, you're speculating on a lot that I'm not going to respond to on a public forum, as I'm not going to get into details on why the old shop went away. Nate is no longer tuning, but the work he's done over the years is his intellectual property. Maps cannot be read by another Ecutek license, so there is no reason for or method to provide those maps to past customers. The "computer" is not available for that information, and likely won't be, and while we have the Ecutek software, we prefer the Cobb solution as it offers much easier and quicker tuning, so retunes on Ecutek cars will be handled in a method to be determined once the new shop is up and rolling.

Until the new shop is open for business, I can't really comment anymore, but I felt the need to address some of the questions asked in this thread. It is not Paul's intetion to leave past customers out in the cold by any means, but he is starting a new business that is unique and stands apart from any previous efforts, and his purchase of the hardware and software does not imply a continuation of the previous shop.

Regarding what this thread originally started with; the old shop closed for multiple reasons, many of us had close personal and professional ties to it, and believe me, I know it sucks. Paul will try to fill that void as much as possible, but please do not expect him to answer for anything previous, as it's not his responsibility.

Shops close, people leave and move on, and we work together to keep everyone supported. Facts of life :(

Aaron are you going to be involved in the new shop?

Yup. I'll help out Paul as much as I can :)

You should start by telling him to work on Saturdays ;)

I'm working on it, boss ;)

I have printed paper maps for my STX boost map, so at minimum, we could have paper. For ProTuner folks, they should be open,or can be saved in Street Tuner format which is open...

I appologize if I did not have the whole story, I thougt Mike got his WRX cleaned up prior to sale, but either way, my point is made. More time was required to smooth the CL-OL transition. More time tuning is not bad in and of itself.

As far as the maps go, I know they can be printed, and PT maps can definitely be saved and shared in ST format, if not PT format. I'd also be surprised if there isn't a transportabe format for the ECUTek maps as well. or how would ECUTek distribute base maps, etc...

I realize they are intelectual property, but it is Nate's option to share that property with the customers who have supported him in the past. Choosing to do so is up to him. If he has moved on, I see no reason not to share that information, and having that information could be quite valuable to his past customers who are continueing to make mods to their cars. The relationships between at least some of the inputs/outputs will remain unchanged with additional mods depending on the mod. The customer will likely have to pay for more tuning time as that data will not be available, and the car will have to be retuned from scratch effectively. will have to start from scratch, not where the car was already tuned to. Again, it is, or at least was Nate's option.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not dissing Nate, as a past customer, I am voicing a request/issue I wish he had/would address.

I'm pretty sure the "Ed/street tuning bashing" is pretty non-existant in this thread. In fact I specifically stated that I'm *not* bashing Ed.

1) My comments about time spent on the dyno at ESX were not bragging about the quality of my tune, they were bragging about how much ESX was willing to spend on my sponsorship.

2) For about the 100th time this month: Hypocrisy is not a logical falacy. Even if I had in the past said that time=quality, it doesn't make my argument today false. I swear to god this is the #1 thing people on the internet seem not to understand about logical arguments, although it usually seems to come up in street racing threads rather than tuning threads.

You're not understanding my argument. If a tuner gets all the necessary maps where they need to be, then the tuning is done. Now I'm not a tuner, but I have to believe there is a point where "fine-tuning" isn't going to gain you anything. Hell, the consistancy on a dyno is +/- 5hp or so between back to back runs, right? If that's the case, how can you tune for that last 2hp or whatever? Anything you're doing at that granularity is going to result in fighting the ECU's learning ability. I'm not saying a tuner should rely on the ECU to finish tuning the car w/ knock sensors, etc, I'm just pointing out that once the car is "done", there's nothing really left to do that won't be undone by changing conditions. If a tuner can get the car running acceptably (hits target boost, AFRs, hp/tq, etc.) during the tuning session, spending another 2 hours to make it "perfect" is a waste of two hours because it's only "perfect" for that last pull.

That's how I understand it as well. And since 90% of the cars Subaru tuners see are so similar, they should be able to upload a map that's already 90% "jiving" right off the bat. And the remaining 10% of the work shouldn't be too difficult since it's stuff the tuner's got experience with. i.e. there should be very little guesswork or "tweaking" where you have to try something and see if it works, then try something else... etc.

...of course tuning something with significant mods, or an unusual configuration, or a weird target use (like a stock boost map STX car for example) is a different story.

In fact, claiming hypocrisy is a logical fallacy. Ad Hominem FTW.

As I understand it, tuning is a highly subjective art. The tuner has to make many judgement calls to balance safety with performance. He has to take into consideration the current environmental variables and decide how conservative/aggressive to tune the ECU. And I'm not sure you realize that the accuracy of a dyno (and even hp/tq numbers) don't have much to do with the tuning process at all. Sure, the power output is what you're working toward, but most of the tuners time is spent watching sensor readings like AFR's and knock. Power is mainly somthing you measure after the tune.

Back to using my car as an example, I'm not saying that my tune is better or worse than if I had gone to Nate for an hour, since, like I said, it's impossible for anyone to know with any level of certainty...especially considering he's out of business now. I'm just saying both sides of any argument should try to keep an open mind. :) There's nothing wrong with a tuner taking his sweet ass time when you're not paying by the hour. ;)

Stating it doesn't make it true. Your entire premise is that the extra time Ed spent on Cody's tune was unnecessary. How else would you frame your comments?
My point is, why weren't you done in an hour or two? You must have been wasting time by your premise.

These are directly correlated discussions about tuning IMHO and all I'm saying is that from my logical perspective, you have conflicting points. ESX many hours of tuning/dyno time = value, Cody's hours of tuning/street dyno = no value... The hypocrisy is only a added benefit.
There are hundreds of individual numbers in the tables we are talking about. Yes, there are tools to allow you to "smooth" the numbers and manipulate many at a time, but in my limited experienced the scale of what we are talking about could easily take hours optimize. I am not talking about tuning for the last .1 HP. this is about optimizing the base maps so that all the entries in the dynamic maps remain as close to zero as possible, and the car is drivable, and response is smooth and predictable under all conditions.

The slight differences between intake 1, and intake 2, even the same model from the same manufacturer might have enough difference that in an ideal base maps, 10% of the numbers might be off by single digit numbers. Making these minor adjustments is not fighting the ECU, it is allowing it the most accurate starting point to learn from, and give it the maximum ability to adjust as needed. If your base map is off by 3%, and the maximum dynamic adjustment is 5%, you may end up in conditions in which the remaining 2% does not permit the ECU to dynamically correct enough. And again, a significant number of these numbers do not necessarily change from pull to pull, so dyno consistency in meaningless. I would bet that to really do a good job, you need to change how the dyno is loading the car between runs so you actually exercise a significant portion of the maps, and not just a WOT line across them.

It's entirely possibly I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, or I might be blowing this out of proportion, but I believe more time tweaking has at least some merit.

Of course, I don't think anyone is arguing different. Its just a case of diminishing returns. A 2 hour tune is not 2 times better then a 1 hour tune. A 4 hour tune is not 4 times better then a 1 hour tune.

And the point about the logical fallacy of hyprocracy is that, lets say I tell you its bad to do coke off a strippers ass, then I turn around do just that. Does that make doing coke off a strippers ass okay? No, it makes me a hypocrite, but the point is still valid.

:roll: Dean, are you intentionally misreading my statments just to start an argument? How about instead of making up what I mean, you actually respond to what I typed.

Go ahead and quote every word in this post where I got back into the dead horse beating that is road tuning.

Then explain to me how my claim that the time at ESX had greater monetary value has anything to do with the discussion regarding the time vs. quality discussion we were having. And for the record, my tune took a long time because it was the 1st time the tuner there had ever attempted to make a fuel/timing map that would work with the stock boost and a high boost map. Imagine that, inexperience caused a tuner to take a longer time!

As far as the rest of this... I'm not gonna bother attempting to discuss it in the manner presented. Neither of us know enough about the specifics of tuning to continue this argument with those numbers since you're attempting to attribute percentages that you've just pulled out of your ass as evidence for your point. What really is the percentage of adjustment the ECU can achieve? Can it even be logically quantified as a percentage... what's it a percentage of? How many numbers don't change from pull to pull on the dyno, how does that have any corelation to dyno consistancy? If you'd like to get into the details of tuning with me, we're both going to need a shitload more education on the topic, since what you're suggesting is nothing more than a projection of how you think tuning works without any real evidence to back it up.

Besides, my point wasn't intended to be so specific. I'm simply arguing that spending a really long time on the fine details doesn't seem to be a productive use of time. Hell, if it's free tuning time, then by all means, but if I'm paying for that time, I'd rather save my $200 for a track day and improve the driver. Emperical evidence says that the going time needed for a good tune on a bolt-on car is about an hour. I haven't heard about cars that make an extra 30hp because the tuner took twice as long.

Cripple fight!!

And I disagree with your assertion, and am attempting to provide at least a logical explanation to exemplify my point. It is not my intent to argue, only discuss. While my percentages may not be accurate, the principal is, and I did not exaggerate the number of individual entries in just the maps ST has access to, it is hundreds.

The devil is in the details. Yes, you can create even have on hand good ballpark maps for a given set of mods, the AP is a perfect example of that, but that doesn't make it a custom tune for your specific car/mods/driving style, etc.

How long did Mike K. and Eric's Gruppe S. tunes take? Unless I am mistaken, over an hour each, with a on-site visit on at least Eric's required. Mike K's WRX had some real issues on a 1 hour tune. Nate apparently figured those out later perhaps if he had spent more time on Mike's tune he could have figured them out then.

There is my data/evidence. Can you provide data do back your assertions? Or perhaps as first hand empirical evidence, you should volunteer your car, and only have a maximum of 1 hour worth of tuning done on it. Or is it already well past that number?

I don't know the details of MikeK's situation, so I've got no comment.

Eric's car had a factory defect, the restrictor pill wasn't completely drilled through, causing all the issues he had. Once that was fixed, his car came around immediately.

My car has never been one where a common bolt-on tune would be useful.

My first tune from ESX involved building a map that would work with both the stock boost curve and a high-boost curve, something the tuner had never done before.

My second tune involved protyping the GT30-10 for the 2.0L block, which S-Squared had never done before.

My 3rd tune on the 2.5 block that failed was plagued by a variety of problems due to the combo of ported/polished heads, BigMAF, TGV deletes, 800cc injectors, an oil breather issue, and incorrect spark plugs. That motor didn't even survive the tuning, let alone get near acceptable.

The 4th tune on my second 2.5L block couldn't be completed at S-Squared either because not all of the issues had been resolved since the previous block. However, once Mike at Gruppe-S got those cleared up, the tuning (of a break-in map) was completed in less than a day, though I don't know the actual time, as I haven't got the invoice for it yet.

Volenteering my car for a 1 hour tune is a rediculous idea as it would prove nothing. My car is well beyond the type of setup we're discussing, which is a car with common bolt-ons such as an intake and TBE. My heads alone would require going outside the normal tuning approach since they were ported and would certainly flow in an unusual way compared to any normal heads... nevermind the injector scaling, MAF scaling, and larger block.

Dean, what type of work do you do on a regular basis? Aren't there things you do everyday that are near second nature that perhaps took some work when you first started doing them? Is it too hard to grasp the idea that after seeing 500 WRX's with up-pipes, TBE, and intakes, a tuner would be able to nail a good, strong, safe map in about an hour? And that when he 1st started out tuning that combo of parts it took a lot longer before the tuner was satisfied?

So is doing coke off a stripper's a$$ bad or not?

OMG! I am LMAO!!

Well, "the devil's in the details" and "it becomes a case of diminishing returns," but if she's not charging by the hour, go for it.