Wasn't this a trick tuning companies were using for all cars, claiming increased HP but all they were doing was modifying the throttle response sensitivity?

 

Yes alot of them were/are doing this for a quite sometime.

 

This is disappointing to hear all of these negative comments about tuning performance shops. So how are we going to determine if a remap is actually legitimate and if it is going to stick? What reassurance do we have that these performance shops will refund our money if the tunes do not stick over time and the ECM is not actually reverting back to a stock map?


It is obvious dyno charts can be cooked to look like anything and may not be as reliable as we would like to validate the performance of a remap. Limited available track results have been disappointing to date.


I have been on the fence now for about a year searching for the uncompromising performance gains from an off-the-shelf tune. I'm sure the 5L SC engine has a lot to give. Are there any legitimate tunes available?

 

Will I have a baseline so Friday we will do a before and after run. If the before run( I wont tell them) is close, we know the Dyno is somewhat in line with what we have. Then if the after run is on the 550 range we know we have some success in the tune. So if the Dyno is "cooked" we will see it right away. Now if they cook it for a second run then I won't know until I visit the same dyno again.. Which can be done!

As far as holding the tune I'm calling some BS from the actual programmer. in 20 or so years in dealing with factory and aftermarket Motec ECMs they don't just revert back to a setting.

 

So r u saying the tuner guy from RSC is full of sh**, or is the tune device itself not what it is advertised as being capable of. Th whole situation is so disheartening, for what the tune costs

 

It sounds as if Matt from Houston got a live dyno tune and is very satisfied....Matt can you comment?

Lotb

 

Its the Device tuner, I'm sure he's done some decent tunes but Jags not so much. RSC is a good company but this tune isn't cutting it.


Thats what I'm getting Friday, same tune that Matt got from Eurocharged while on a dyno. This allows some tweaks for that specific car. After that I'm going straight to Palm Beach Raceway for test and tune Friday to see what kind 1/4 mile times I get.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that my car still has the Eurocharged tune. It is very noticeable compared to stock, and it don't mean throttle sensitivity. It pulls extremely hard all the way to redline, much more than stock.

I might decide to go back up to Eurocharged to get another dyno and will report back. This should clear any doubts since I have had the tune since last year.

 

I doubt there are any problems with it holding a tune. I call straight BS on the tune reverting back, or its some hideous programming. Either way on the third pull I installed the tune again and we got the same result. Tells me the tunes bad. I can tell Jerry's tunes are on, I can't find a disparaging remarks when it comes to their tunes.

The final test will be taking it to the track Friday night.

 

Is anyone doing a live dyno tune or are all of these ECM flashes?

 

Mine was just a out of the box flash..

Now I'm getting a live tune.

 

From what I understand, the dyno tuning of a car creates a tuned file and replaces the stock file. This file can then be copied and flashed into another car (of the same model) and will give similar results to that car even though it never was tuned on the dyno. This is one way tunes can be made. To claim that any flash based tune is worthless is an erroneous statement. There are many cars that have proven results from a pre-written, flashed in tune. There are tons of members in the Lotus community for example, that have purchased a Katana supercharger kit that comes with a pre-written tune that is flashed in. They all work great.

I think of it like this...If you are actively tuning on the dyno, you are modifying the tune in real time and the end result is a modified file in the ECU. If you flash in a pre-written tune, then you are replacing the stock tune. Either way, you are no longer running the stock tune, it doesn't matter which way you do it. The file is modified or replaced, and is no longer the same.

That being said, so far I have had better luck from my "flashed" in tunes than I have had from my custom tunes from MTI on a Z06 and a VF tune on my Lotus. Softronic is another company highly respected in the Porsche community for their flashes and I had one in my 911 C2S that was also excellent.

 

Flash based tunes work great on many cars, my Corvette(before I moved to Motec) was flashed and so was my P car. Great results as the tunes came with mods. If you take that "flash" and modify it for a particular car you may get another ~5% out of it.

 

I wonder if these modified XKR-S based flashes are only "fully" compatible on an actual XKR-S like Matt's, and not on an XKR? Where it's always mentioned how there's little difference in the mechanicals between the two models, perhaps the actual ECU and TCU are different in a way that makes the XKR/XFR unable to properly accept the tune.

I recall quite a difference in Matt's Eurocharge tune compared to the same tune on another models results around the same time. AFR were completely different, with Matt's looking like a tuned map, and the other looking rich like stock and untuned. My thought at the time was that Matt's results may have benefited from being custom done by Eurocharge on a dyno, but perhaps it's a compatibility issue with non-XKR-S models.

 

Good question Bruce, I'll bring that up with Jerry today. They could be flashed with different checksums on what to accept. If the tune does not match the checksums it could be overwritten.

This is common in computer programming but I've never seen in used in ECM reprogramming although it makes sense as it protects the car.

 

Good point. The XKR-S comes with a beefed up torque converter and I'd assume a different TCM map to deliver the power. Also, the ECM and TCM on the standard XKR may have more restrictions. The parameters of the XKR TCM and ECM standard map may have higher safety parameters which are not being over written by the tune while these parameters on the XKR-S are more relaxed allowing the XKR-S tune to be more effective.

 

I think thats the biggest issue with the XKR tunes as those parameters are not being overwritten. they need to be or you end up with mess of a tune trying to work around the parameters. I'm more then happy to have them lifted and if I blow the Torque Converter or transmission, I'll go buy a XKR-S tranny tomorrow if I have to.

If you look at the Dyno of my car it obvious the TCU is kicking in around 3k RPM and restricting power. If that restriction was not removed I have a strong feeling the boost limit was not removed as well.

 

looks like I have to wait another week as the tools still aren't available

 

So I just had a good discussion with Jerry and basically the tune I have is totally fake. He has a customer with a R8 come in with the same device. They set the ECM to stock flashed it, looked at the tune and it did nothing. No wonder it felt like it was losing the tune all it did was an ECM reset, the car learned and went back to stock.

So hes offering money back if I don't see an improvement, you cant beat that. At least I bought this in a CC so I can dispute the charge. I'm beyond fumed at the moment!

 

Very sorry to hear that. Unfortunately AFAIK, the bank CC only covers you if you don't receive the product you paid for by CC, and does not protect you at all if you don't like what you received, or feel it doesn't meet expectations.

I guess my sceptical views are pretty well known at this point, but after viewing most of the dynos posted on these forums for over two years, and some sent to me by email, I sometimes struggle to see improvements beyond what simply leaning out the air fuel ratio would provide, with little evidence of increased boost across the powerband. Part of the problem is the lack of an independently produced base line dyno before tune to compare to afterwards, the inability to dyno the car in one gear from low rpm to high because it shifts on it's own, and the lack of independently produced results on the same dyno afterwards. There's always something missing to make a valid and meaningful comparison. Without proper documentation there simply is no way to quantify changes resulting from the pulley and tune. Those who have tried to measure real world improvements at the drag strip have basically not seen any.

And we can't see how the engine is functioning because we aren't data-logging boost pressure and other vitals available at the OBD2 port under the dash. If we were then we would know whether the pulley swap was actually increasing boost pressure, where in the rpm band it was, and whether the ECU/TCU was bleeding it off to perhaps protect the tranny, or whether it did it in response to rising intake or exhaust temperatures, or the leaning air fuel ratios. Maybe the ECU is retarding ignition timing to reduce power if it's sensing the onset of pre-ignition caused by a combination of increased boost and leaner fuel. ETG told me their tune requires a minimum of 93 octane to perform their best, yet their customers aren't told that. What if you only have 91, or 91 with power robbing ethanol, and I hear California's 91 isn't the greatest.

Just an awful lot of questions, and neither ETG Tuning nor Eurocharge will come on the forum to answer any of these important questions, or make any attempt to provide information about the suitability of their tunes. In all likelihood the tunes all come from one vendor in Europe, and these US tuning houses buy the tune and may or may not have a limited ability to make minor changes to the tune. They also likely don't have knowledge of specifics about what limiters exist, how they work and interact with other systems, and which ones may have been lifted or changed.

There is not one member or vendor among us who has the answers, and that makes us easy prey, and each of our butt dynos are notoriously unreliable. European performance brands like Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, ect provide enough demand for tunes that they may be done quickly and thoroughly, and the new Corvette even had good after-market tunes available before the cars rolled off the assembly line. Not Jaguar.

For the moment it would seem that if you want XKR-S power, you should buy an XKR-S. And if you want to increase it further the tune just might be compatible. Everyone else can expect a more responsive throttle and improved fuel economy resulting from the leaner air fuel ratio, and should see at least some increased power from a pulley swap at some rpm and operating conditions, although apparently not under the demands of the drag strip.

Bruce