Houston_JohnP

On March 31, 2010, Houston will experience the legendary Smoky Nagata of TOP SECRET Japan like no other has before. Smoky, along with one of his trusted Top Secret Mechanics will be coming to Houston as special guests to local Houston car show, Import Reactor. Smoky however, is not just coming as a guest, he will also be tuning TWENTY Nissan cars over the span of THREE DAYS at local tuner shop Secret Services with a new ECU prototype, Top Secret PROcess.

The Chosen Nissan Cars to be tuned will be selected from the Nissan 350z, Nissan 370z, Infiniti G35, Infiniti G37, and R35 GTR. Over the span of three days, the first two will be PRIVATE tunes only, no public access will be granted. But, on the third day, from 3:00pm until 12:00am the Houston tuning community will look on as Smoky Nagata puts his personal touch on the remaining cars to be tuned.

This is truly a golden opportunity for anyone who has dreamed of having their car tuned by Top Secret Japan.

Currently, out of 20 spots, 15 are gone. Owners of the above cars are welcome to sign up if there are spots left by the time this announcement hits the internet. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and we're picky about what cars we put on the list. Each car has to be approved by IR. For info on this email john(at)emotiongear(dot)com.

Smoky will also be giving autographs and and Q&A sessions at Import Reactor.

More Information and Updates about this event can be found at AnimeMatsuri.com and MaydayGarage.com

BornSlippyZ

iTrader: (1)

That would be cool to get the tune done by Smokey!

Houston_JohnP

It would be! A great opportunity, the guy is a legend.

siberian57

iTrader: (6)

This would be awesome but the whole car needs to be approved will probably keep me out

BrainLeash69

Well SecretServicesAuto.com is offline, and the Import Reaction website has no info how to get in contact to get in on this tune, so mega fail by the event planners when there is no way to sign up or get selected. There is also no info on what the process to get selected is. Otherwise I will be at the open tune session to watch I guess, and will attend IMport Reaction again this year. Good luck to those who enter, although last year there were very few Nissans that attended and even fewer Z's. Hopefully there is a better showing this year.

GeauxLadyZ

iTrader: (9)

Trust me, there will be PLENTY of 350z's there..... 5 i can count so far showing right off the bat.

Houston_JohnP

Contact "John (at) emotiongear (dot) com" if you are interested

Kwame

iTrader: (78)

Any info on the "Top Secret PROcess" for those wondering?

GeauxLadyZ

iTrader: (9)

Absolutely thrilled to be on board with this, thanks again for providing this incredible opportunity for the Nissan/Houston import community John!!!

CORNELL

iTrader: (3)

the import reactor thread said april 2nd-4th, is this a seperate event on 3/31?

GeauxLadyZ

iTrader: (9)

^ Yup, it is before IR.

CORNELL

iTrader: (3)

oh right... forgot it said he will be at secret services. i might have to go check it out

3hree5ive0ero

iTrader: (95)

So how was this? I know at least 1 350Z got tuned by Smokey, so let's see the before/after.

ReaganDee

iTrader: (2)

From what I have heard the tunes were not meant to show HP gains on the dyno ... I am sure Mike will weigh in soon with what happened with his 350. He posted it in a seperate thread that I dont want to look for and link.

GeauxLadyZ

iTrader: (9)

Yup, Reagan is correct, the tune wasnt about HP numbers but rather getting the engine to perform at its peak effieciency.

I can tell you this, the car is a TOTALLY different car now. Acceleration is 5x what it was, shift smoother, still gas effiecient, and performs incredibly.

The dyno read very low for some of our cars on the before and after.

For instance, a brand new 370Z 40th dynoed at only 260 after tune, and we know that car is rated at 333bhp.

My Z started at 206 whp and finished at 231 whp. why it was so low on this AWD Mustand dyno, i have no idea.

I have talked with those who got the Uprev and similar mods as me, and they have said the car was def different, but were not near as floored as i was. Thus far, i havent really found a way to compare the two.

3hree5ive0ero

iTrader: (95)

I understand that peak power wasn't the goal (which shouldn't be anyway) and max efficiency was (read: better area under the curve), but I'd still like to see a dyno graph of pre/post.

How many pre and post pulls were made on the dyno? Cobb (Plano) has a AWD Mustang dyno and I think I put down 23x whp, but I don't have a tune and only have a few bolt-ons. Those numbers seem extremely low, but as long as we can see several pulls for both pre and post, we can at least see how the tune affected your final output.

Also, do you know what parameters were adjusted? Any info on the tune itself? How much time was spent on tuning your car? Any and all info that you care to share would be greatly appreciated.

I just mainly want to know, though, if you feel you got your money's worth. I know it wasn't cheap just for a reflash-like tune and I want to know how you honestly feel about it (without bias, without subjective use of words, without you trying to justify your purchase, etc). Would you get this done again or would you go with a cheaper alternative with better support (i.e., UpRev, Cobb, etc)?


I was seriously considering this too, until I found out the price... and the fact that he wasn't willing to do any nitrous tuning due to "time constraints." I can see that, considering it was like a huge number of people that was to get a "tune" all in 1 day. However, it also made me wonder, though, if Japanese tuners were even comfortable/experienced enough with nitrous oxide.

GeauxLadyZ

iTrader: (9)

^ Ok, im gonna type you everything you wanna know, its gonna be long, and i have to do a couple things first, but hopefully ill answer every ? you have, just give me alittle.

3hree5ive0ero

iTrader: (95)

Cool. Looking forward to hearing your experience and thoughts. You can PM me your response if you don't feel comfortable posting it publicly for all to see. And your sig needs an update.

fithamoto

iTrader: (24)

I don't understand any of this ?????

So a Stock Z can show up and get tuned and supposedly have a better gain in HP...on the Dyno ...or not ???

What about slightly modded Z's...does the ECU get reflashed ?

and will it stay like that or does it revert if there is a problem and the Dealership tries to re-do the ECU ?

GeauxLadyZ

iTrader: (9)

Ok, so as i dont have to write a chit ton of stuff, im gonna address your ?'s one by one, with as much detail as i can, but without stating every little thing that happend over the span of 2 days.

First, i literally saw my pre/post curves but the tech at Secret Services showed it to me then tried to print it out but the file corrupted (i watched this happen, so its true) and he was only able to save my post curve and print out. (i will show you on Friday while im at work when i have access to a scanner, ill post it up here).

Something like 20 cars got the tune, but there were problems along the way. First, one guy had an 2003 model, one of the first off the line apparently, and it had an ECU model Smokey had never seen before. Apparently Nissan released the first cars with a totally diffrent hardware ECU, then quickly switched to a different hardware ECU and it has been same till 08'. Smokey didnt have programming for this, so he couldnt tune it.

In Japan, they take the whole ECU out of the car and plug to comp, because there is no OBDII in Japan, so thats what he did with ours.

First day: I got there around 2pm and he took my ECU out and plugged it to laptop. He then told his interpreter that he didnt have the programming for this ECU (Mine is 05' AUTO trans and Nissan has like 20 diff variations of ECU programming for the same ECU, or something like that) but i think some was lost in translation, so this may not be correct. Anyway, he had to download info from Japan, and it would take about 5 hours. He plugged my ECU back in, i left. I came back in 5 hours, everybody had same issue, all had to be downloaded from Japan. He got all tunes downloaded late first day, then started dyno tuning. When mine came up, he reflashed, then plugged ecu back in but it wouldnt start. He then tried loading stock manual ecu, and it started, but obviously that wouldnt work. So he couldnt get it started so we had to leave at 3 in morning.

Next day, he downloaded the OEM Japan spec nissan ECU stock tune for Z autos from Jap, and loaded it onto my ECU, and it worked. He then put on the dyno for an inital pull. He didnt max it out for some reason, but went pretty high up in gears, so sheet only showed max HP at 206. He took ECU out then did some tweaking, then put ECU back for another pull. He did again, but i didnt see numbers. He again took ECU out, tweaked some more, then put back. Then he did another pull and it showed 231hp, but i could tell he didnt max it out by knowing my car and how it sounds, and by looking at dyno screen. He then said "good" (like "im done") so techs took off the dyno and backed it out.

First test drive i was dissapointed, i felt alittle difference but not terribly much. Regardless, i gave him my many thanks knowing that it may take time for the ECU to "learn and adjust". Half way home, it fuking learned and adjusted, alright!! half way, the car suddenly kicked into action and OMFG i was floored. The car picked up as if i was mini FI'd or something, or had 4.08's put in my pumpkin. It was a REDICULOUS change, like nothing ive heard from the Uprev tune guys) I mean DRASTIC. Other than that, i cant explain without being able to show you the curves so you could see. The change was incredible, and got even better next day after my car sat overnight (dont know why, it might have just been placebo effect)

Was it worth the money, ABSOLUTELY. I could barely stay neck to neck with many cars out there having an auto Z, but i ran with a heavy moded WRX and an STI and gave them one hell of run, staying ahead most of time. I was never able to do this before. From a dead start, the car literally sits on the back wheels only by giving almost nothing on the throttle, its crazy man. Everything is smoother, startup, shifting transition, different shift points, high rev limit (same as all reflashes) so its hard to tell.

Anyway, back to your ?'s:

I dont have all my curves, I literally saw the 3 diff curves on the dyno screen for myself, but he couldnt print them.

Another member on here (Blackheart) got his tuned, and ill bet you he has his curves, and i can def post for you the one they did on the GTR, and at least my final pull. I dont know a great extent on tuning, but i can tell you the curves on mine were WAY higher on the beginning and middle of the curve from first pull, then kinda tapered off close to what stock was towards the end (high point of curve or max hp/tq)

i do not know what parameters were adjusted, or how, sorry bro. Prob for 2 reasons: first, Smokey speaks absolutely NO english, so none of could really ask ?'s, just rely on his experience and expertise on tuning. Second, this is a protype tune, so spilling the beans prob isnt the best idea for Smokey to do. People are saying it may be similar to what the guys at Mines, Japan are doing with the GTR tune. (dont know much about that)

Do i feel i got my money's worth?

Well, thats hard to answer. For me, absolutely because its a whole new car, almost literally. The difference is astounding, i mean incredible. BUT, i have yet to drive an AUTO Z with my same mods or similar, with an Uprev tune. If you can find someone or someone will chime in, we could setup a test run, which will leave little driver error because its an auto (even in trip mode).

The Support is my only issue, but im willing to deal with that once i felt the results. There are ways we can get support, but it will take longer time than say, Uprev. Also, only one map and not 3 or 5 like Uprev, so thats a negative, although me personally...i dont mind it. At this point, its hard to say was it worth it for more of a cost, cause i have little to compare to but my own car, before and after.

Yes, he wanted near stock cars, because time. He spent about 2-3 hours on mine alone, although some, like the 370s, could be done in 1 hour or less because bone stock and brand new, with a pre map already made by Smokey. Our Z's took actual on the spot tuning of a map, no pre-maps.
Yes, the price was higher, but trust me when i tell you the 370 guys and GTR guys had it MUCH worse as far as price. The 350 was the cheapest.

Anything i left out? Anything more you wanna know? lmk bro.