Some guy doing $70 tuning in Chico. Scam?
08-08-2012, 12:50 PM
#31
Technical Know-It-All
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Sterling, VA
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Talk about a thread full of fail!! Why do professional tuners charge as much as they do? Because they are PROFESSIONAL tuners.., they generally have a shop to pay for!! A guy that tunes on the side can afford to do it cheaper because he has a day job. NOTHING wrong with that.
Do any of you have any ACTUAL info or are you just a bunch in Internet dorks jumping on the bandwagon of hate and posting out of your asses?
Then again, I guess you can never truly be good at something if you misspell words and don't rip people off!! Almost forgot, you have to live on the forums too... As if every respected tuner in the industry does so LOL!!
Do any of you have any ACTUAL info or are you just a bunch in Internet dorks jumping on the bandwagon of hate and posting out of your asses?
Then again, I guess you can never truly be good at something if you misspell words and don't rip people off!! Almost forgot, you have to live on the forums too... As if every respected tuner in the industry does so LOL!!
Tell us about how safe you feel on your $70 CL tune.
08-08-2012, 01:04 PM
#33
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Talk about a thread full of fail!! Why do professional tuners charge as much as they do? Because they are PROFESSIONAL tuners.., they generally have a shop to pay for!! A guy that tunes on the side can afford to do it cheaper because he has a day job. NOTHING wrong with that.
Do any of you have any ACTUAL info or are you just a bunch in Internet dorks jumping on the bandwagon of hate and posting out of your asses?
Then again, I guess you can never truly be good at something if you misspell words and don't rip people off!! Almost forgot, you have to live on the forums too... As if every respected tuner in the industry does so LOL!!
Do any of you have any ACTUAL info or are you just a bunch in Internet dorks jumping on the bandwagon of hate and posting out of your asses?
Then again, I guess you can never truly be good at something if you misspell words and don't rip people off!! Almost forgot, you have to live on the forums too... As if every respected tuner in the industry does so LOL!!
08-08-2012, 02:14 PM
#34
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Location: Sacramento CA
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Car Info: 02 wrx love-wagon
^lol
this escalated fast; still on topic, however.
undeniably, forum (community) involvement is the number one way to build a reputation as tuner.
having a website is probably as important as forum participation.
also, every tuner that i know of posts their calibration results. and there is a reason for that; to show what he/she could do with a particular setup.
i agree, some tuners like to throw out big numbers for bragging and what not, but they're still involved and it's up to the end-user to decide which tuner to go with.
a CL posting is as good as scam. if he had posted perhaps some pictures of prior tunes and some more info, it would have looked more credible. but still, fishy.
should we invite that mystery CL tuner to i-club for a "friendly" (emphasis on that word) discussion?
i'm curious to see some of his prior work,
will he respond to that? a good tuner would never decline a friendly discussion!
this escalated fast; still on topic, however.
undeniably, forum (community) involvement is the number one way to build a reputation as tuner.
having a website is probably as important as forum participation.
also, every tuner that i know of posts their calibration results. and there is a reason for that; to show what he/she could do with a particular setup.
i agree, some tuners like to throw out big numbers for bragging and what not, but they're still involved and it's up to the end-user to decide which tuner to go with.
a CL posting is as good as scam. if he had posted perhaps some pictures of prior tunes and some more info, it would have looked more credible. but still, fishy.
should we invite that mystery CL tuner to i-club for a "friendly" (emphasis on that word) discussion?
i'm curious to see some of his prior work,
will he respond to that? a good tuner would never decline a friendly discussion!
08-08-2012, 02:57 PM
#35
$70 is a freaking steal... cheaper is better right? 
Its pretty amusing to see this kind of stuff these days. Back when I got started tuning Subarus, I was doing it part time in college with no shop and no dyno as well. There's nothing wrong with that IMO if you're still using the necessary tools such as a wideband and some sort of power measurement like road dyno software. And of course appropriate roads that will not result in accidents, tickets, dead pedestrians, etc.
The difference back then, however, was that there were no free open source tools... the only option for me was to buy Ecutek software for roughly $6k. So even though I didn't have a shop and a lot of overhead, I did have some decently large up front costs to recover and my time was also worth a lot to me, so I charged accordingly. In fact I even made a point of not undercutting what other tuners in the area were charging because I did not want to be known as the "cheap" option.
Doing actual tunes for $70 is pretty silly even with nearly free tools. It means the guy's time is worth nothing to him.
-- Ed
Its pretty amusing to see this kind of stuff these days. Back when I got started tuning Subarus, I was doing it part time in college with no shop and no dyno as well. There's nothing wrong with that IMO if you're still using the necessary tools such as a wideband and some sort of power measurement like road dyno software. And of course appropriate roads that will not result in accidents, tickets, dead pedestrians, etc.
The difference back then, however, was that there were no free open source tools... the only option for me was to buy Ecutek software for roughly $6k. So even though I didn't have a shop and a lot of overhead, I did have some decently large up front costs to recover and my time was also worth a lot to me, so I charged accordingly. In fact I even made a point of not undercutting what other tuners in the area were charging because I did not want to be known as the "cheap" option.
Doing actual tunes for $70 is pretty silly even with nearly free tools. It means the guy's time is worth nothing to him.
-- Ed
08-08-2012, 03:29 PM
#36
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Location: Sacramento CA
Posts: 473
Car Info: 02 wrx love-wagon
wow $6k for some software.
am i glad for the opensource developments!!
$60 cable with some circuitry to translate ecu signals.
and yes, i agree with you Ed. $70 is completely unrealistic.
even just looking at the mechanical soundness of the vehicle before the calibration process takes more than 15 minutes.
lets say that mystery tuner skips that step to save some time...automatic fail.
flashing a base map is quick, but then multiple logging sessions are needed in order to asses the direction that the actual tune will take. add timing? add boost? more logging; add fuel; more logging etc..etc..
it's not a flash and go process; even for the "pros with dynos".
am i glad for the opensource developments!!
$60 cable with some circuitry to translate ecu signals.
and yes, i agree with you Ed. $70 is completely unrealistic.
even just looking at the mechanical soundness of the vehicle before the calibration process takes more than 15 minutes.
lets say that mystery tuner skips that step to save some time...automatic fail.
flashing a base map is quick, but then multiple logging sessions are needed in order to asses the direction that the actual tune will take. add timing? add boost? more logging; add fuel; more logging etc..etc..
it's not a flash and go process; even for the "pros with dynos".
Last edited by alien_refugee; 08-08-2012 at 03:31 PM.
08-08-2012, 03:41 PM
#37
Enjoys his Ponies
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Roseville
Posts: 620
Car Info: 2014 Mustang GT Premium 5.0
And boom goes the piston
08-08-2012, 03:46 PM
#38
wow $6k for some software.
am i glad for the opensource developments!!
$60 cable with some circuitry to translate ecu signals.
and yes, i agree with you Ed. $70 is completely unrealistic.
even just looking at the mechanical soundness of the vehicle before the calibration process takes more than 15 minutes.
lets say that mystery tuner skips that step to save some time...automatic fail.
flashing a base map is quick, but then multiple logging sessions are needed in order to asses the direction that the actual tune will take. add timing? add boost? more logging; add fuel; more logging etc..etc..
it's not a flash and go process; even for the "pros with dynos".
am i glad for the opensource developments!!
$60 cable with some circuitry to translate ecu signals.
and yes, i agree with you Ed. $70 is completely unrealistic.
even just looking at the mechanical soundness of the vehicle before the calibration process takes more than 15 minutes.
lets say that mystery tuner skips that step to save some time...automatic fail.
flashing a base map is quick, but then multiple logging sessions are needed in order to asses the direction that the actual tune will take. add timing? add boost? more logging; add fuel; more logging etc..etc..
it's not a flash and go process; even for the "pros with dynos".
Oh and we didn't have a wealth of availablr base maps to learn from. I started with the factory ROM, and spent countless hours developing my maps from scratch for every new application and set of mods. Doing this right, takes a lot of time. I remember spending 8-10 hours on a single tune back then
. -- Ed
09-17-2013, 02:02 PM
#40
Registered User
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Chico, CA
Posts: 96
Car Info: 2005 WRX STi Blue Silver rims... Stock for now.
Sounds like I need to clear some stuff up
Sorry I made a mistake, it wasn't Boosted Tuning but someone else.
Last edited by Triple Threat; 09-17-2013 at 08:09 PM. Reason: Made a mistake.
09-17-2013, 02:49 PM
#42
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Location: Indian Ocean
Posts: 5,331
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This is an old thread I just came across via google and it perked my interest. Its clear that everyone in this thread is extremely ignorant of the situation here. The only person here with a rational brain seems to be this guy:
This is exactly what was going on as I got my car tuned by this guy for $300 now that he has a customer base and people drive hundreds of miles to get a tune from him as well as professional rally cars these days so while you where acting like ***gots on the internet you could have gotten a great deal from him but thats no longer the case.
Also, its not WRC Performance that was offering those cheap tunes but Boosted Tuning (see facebook page: )
https://www.facebook.com/BoostedTuning
All you guys did was give WRC Performance a bad name and the guy that runs that shop is a great mechanic. You should all be really ashamed of yourselves and its good thing no one took any of you seriously as both of these shops are going great despite the ignorance in this thread.
This is exactly what was going on as I got my car tuned by this guy for $300 now that he has a customer base and people drive hundreds of miles to get a tune from him as well as professional rally cars these days so while you where acting like ***gots on the internet you could have gotten a great deal from him but thats no longer the case.
Also, its not WRC Performance that was offering those cheap tunes but Boosted Tuning (see facebook page: )
https://www.facebook.com/BoostedTuning
All you guys did was give WRC Performance a bad name and the guy that runs that shop is a great mechanic. You should all be really ashamed of yourselves and its good thing no one took any of you seriously as both of these shops are going great despite the ignorance in this thread.
09-17-2013, 04:36 PM
#43
im sure he's a great mechanic. im pretty sure people here were just had their suspicions about a cheap tune post on criagslist. No one knew of them or the shop so why gamble it? heck im not going to name names, but there are "tuners" out there that have blown motors before. this fourm is entirely based on suggestions, you don't even have to take anything out of it.
it's your car, you do whatever you want with it.
it's your car, you do whatever you want with it.
09-17-2013, 08:31 PM
#45
Yeah, You've Probably Never Heard Of Me.
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wow you bumped a thread that was stupid over a year ago with an even more stupid reply? you have now doubled the stupid in this thread, Im closing it before we can see your Triple Threat.
Last edited by Krinkov; 09-17-2013 at 08:35 PM.
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