I know my position on this topic has caught some of you by surprise. I have always been a proponent of individuals learning about the ECU and getting a better understanding how tuning works in general. ATR is a great chance for this type learning, so I do feel bad for completely discounting it right off the bat. Honestly I have no problems with some people having their tuned map as I trust that they would not share it and would only use it for their own car and their own educational purposes. The problem, however, is that this is not necessarily the case with most of the customers out there. I do agree that this sort of overall blanket denial approach is not the right way to go about it as it excludes honest users who would stand to benefit from ATR. So I spent much of this weekend thinking of a few ways to make this more fair to such user as well as provide me some peace of mind about how things will be used. Here is what I've come up with so far.

I'd like to start offering some basic to moderate instruction/training sessions with ATR and my maps for customers who want to learn more about the ECU and tweak things on their own. I envision this as a 2-3 hour one on one training session including a detailed overview of the functionality of ATR, the logic and functionality of the Subaru ECU, the logic and functionality behind my custom map specifically, some general tuning work flow procedures, as well as some guided tuning in your own car. All of this will be designed to make sure the user is well prepared, educated, and comfortable making safe modifications to my custom tuned maps. Upon completion of the training session, the customer would receive their custom tune in ATR format as well as a certificate which will also serve as an agreement waiving my liability and defining some basic use terms.

This would make me much more comfortable that the customer has a good understanding of the ECU and can responsibly and safely make tweaks and modify one of my maps. This would be a good educational experience and ultimately will give you a great base to work from for any further modification and tweaking of your own ECU. For further support, I may also consider offering some optional long term support program where I will review any maps and logs the customer has created, offering any advice, tweaks, or just a stamp of approval. This could be done on a case by case basis or as a longer term program.

Please remember this is aimed at the people who truly want to learn their ECU as well as my particular tuning approach and then use the knowledge to tweak their own ECU. This is certainly not for everyone. I know there are also many people who would like to just be able to log their ECU and I'm working on a separate easy solution for that crowd.

As you can tell this is all mostly in the planning stage, so I'd greatly appreciate all your input.

Would you like a training service like this and would it be beneficial to you? Do you believe it would ultimately help you tune your car yourself as apposed to working from scratch and figuring everything out on your own? If so, what do you think this would be worth to you?

Than you for the feedback!