I shot horsepower connection a email, hopefully they have some UTEC experience

 

Anyone ever heard of these guys?

http://www.kitoautosport.com/

Wonder if they are any good, I know they had a NW ferrari dyno day before.

 

^^ SEen that website before but never heard of them before.
Send your car to GTM dude.

 

For local shops, I'd say Drift Office or Advantage Nissan. DO is doing an APS TT right now. My homies were down there today, and checked it out. Advantage does quite a bit of custom work too, from Stillen superchargers to RB26 swaps in 240's. Call and ask for a tech there named Lou. We go way back...he's a good guy and very knowledgeable.

 

Im just lookin for a utec tuner at the moment since my buddy will be doing my APS TT install so no need to send it all the way to Cali.

I spoke with Bob over at drift office, he told me he can find me a tuner either from bellingham or fly one up from oregon. Unless I can find one closer to home, I think I will try and have Bob help me find one once ive completed install. Looks like theres not many utec tuners around here... maybe a STI or Evo tuner with UTEC experience nearby could tune it for me, same concept I would imagine.

I heard about that 350z at drift office, its getting an APS TT Extreme with Fcon, should be sick. Still wondering whos it is..

Do they tune @ advantage nissan or do they outsource it?

Thank you for the help.

 

Well it seems that Kito does have utec experience and they tuned 2 utecs just yesterday infact. Looks like thats where I will be going for my APS TT tune. Ill keep you guys posted on their work. Wont be for a couple weeks, im going out of town and then I will begin the TT install next week with my buddies.

 

Unlike vstrizheus i've heard a LOT of good things about Kito autosport. their tuner seems to really know what he's doing and they have a great dyno. Another shop in the pac NW with some experianced guys and an excellent dyno is Dyno Authority in Kent. they have had a 4WD Mustang load-brake since 1999 and Dyno Authority is actually where I took my EFI 101 course back in october of 2005.

 

Im thinking of going to dyno authority for a retune, Dom, the tuner for kito, is a good guy, but just doesnt have much experience in the FI VQ area.

 

What were the problems specifically? Like I said in my earlier post, I fully believe that a good tuner is a good tuner, and I do not believe that a tuner having experience tuning the same setup or at least a very similar one will end up with a better end result. Someone who has encountered the same setup a dozen plus times will be able to take shortcuts and have better basemaps and a better idea about how the engine will respond, but take two good tuners, one who had never tuned a RB26 or any other semi-rare motor for that matter, before and one who has tuned 3 dozen, and ask them for a certain type of tune, and they should deliver very similar maps. I had never tuned an RB series motor in my life, and honestly have very little actual dyno time and even time behind a laptop tuning in general, but I had the knowledge of what changes you make in the maps corresponds to what happens in the engine, and the end result was basically "400 dynojet" wheel horsepower with a flat torque curve, fairly flat AFs at many different load points, a smooth steadily climbing hp curve, and more importantly a very well driving car with good response and no stumbles, and anyone with the very basic knowledge I have, which I hope most tuners do, and an eye for detail, should be able to do the same on any car. If you are unhappy with any specific things about the tune, I hope your first thing was to go back to the tuner and explain what you were unhappy with, so that they had a chance to rectify it and possibly give it another shot.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I have to disagree. I think that it IS helpful to find an engine building shop, or a shop that does a lot of a certain make or even model of car when it comes to helping select the right components and knowing what mfg's parts work well and work together and what doesn't. And definitely when it comes to diagnosis - knowing what is prone to fail and anything that a particular car is finicky about is important too. The average good general performance/repair shop can go to the trouble to do research, call around, look on the net, call parts suppliers, etc; but a specialist that has done work on that setup several times has gathered his own empirical knowledge, and will be invaluable in time and money saved in this area. Even if you do all this yourself and pick the parts and take it to a shop to have installed, the specialist shop will have done that motor pull or turbo install a dozen times, or maybe ten dozen times, and will know the tricks to get the job done more quickly which will end up saving you money.

However, as someone who has gone out and sought as much information as possible to learn how to tune automotive EMSs, from reading how tos, many books, taking classes from EFI University, and playing around with them as much as I can, (in addition to spending the past two years turning wrenches), I have to say that turning out a safe, reliable, stutter-free, low-backfiring, high power making tune does not require lots of experience tuning the same or a similar setup. Even experience with that particular EMS is only helpful to a degree as it really only takes about ten minutes to familiarize yourself with all the different basemaps and correction tables that need to be tuned and tweaked (given that the car is able to start and idle- the single most challenging EMS encounter i've faced to date was getting a turbocharged E30 running a $150 standalone to fire and cough to life). A good tuner who is unfamiliar with a given EMS should be upfront and honest, and say that they may need a few minutes to familiarize them self with it for a few minutes, and that the tune might take slightly longer than at a specialist (if you are paying by the hour). Having worked with both a $150 Megasquirt and a $1500+ AEM I can say that nearly all modern standalone systems will have you doing the same thing. The more expensive ones have more bells and whistles and make the tuner's life easier, and some of them can even let you define A/F targets and will 'self tune' to a point.

I'll go so far as to repeat what I said earlier- the only advantage of someone who has tuned the same or similar setups many times is that they will be able to take shortcuts and ultimately be faster on a basic tunesince they already know approximately how much ignition timing the engine will want at a given load and rpm, and approximately what air:fuel ratios will provide enough thermal management while still maintaining power and response. For what I consider a complete calibration the experianced tuner will end up spending a very comparable amount of time to the tuner unfamiliar with the setup - simply because if he's being **** enough for my likes, even though he already knows about what usually works, he'll go back and double check the timing and make sure its at minimum best torque per load range and rev range, and make sure that the accel enrichment and decel cutout are spot-on, etc. However most people aren't super concerned with absolutely perfect drivability and just want to make sure that the tune is conservative (safe, slightly fatter then necessary fuel-wise, and no more timing than MBT. Little known fact: Unless dealing with a severely knock limited engine, like lots of boost on pump gas on a high compression engine, you don't want to run any less timing than MBT, because less than 'ideal' timing will cause higher that optimum exhaust gas temperatures)not to mention won't make as much power and won't be as responsive)

The only exception to this rule that comes to mind at the moment are severely knock-limited engines, specifically rotaries. Tuning ignition split on an engine with multiple spark plugs per combustion chamber is a daunting task for someone who doesn't have a very strong knowledge of how they work and either very good knock detection equipment or a lot of experience with a LOT of setups.

 

Well, main issue was he didnt know how to use my HKS EVC boost controller, which I had previously asked if he had experience with and he said yes. He spent majority of the time reading the manual, and at the end ran out of time and couldnt even get my car to hold over 5.5Ib of boost... then later I discover he had taken the vacuum hose out of the fuel pressure regulator and never ended up tightening it, I found it being held on by 1 thread, so there was a vaccum leak so when I did tighten it, it screwed up the tune he had given me due to different fuel pressure. :P

 

Last time I checked Torque Freaks tuning shop was out of business, just the sales were left. Intec is more a Honda shop but did a TT 350z and were working on a 350z project car.
Honestly there are not really any shops here that specialize in the VQ or have done many builds. Im going to take my car to GTM in Cali. But of a drive but they have excellent reviews for quality work.

 

ya, torque freaks is gone. they were bought out by horsepower freaks (yes, they were 2 different businesses till now yet right next door to eachother). hp freaks only stores stuff in there and doing dyno days once a month with the shop right now.

 

That is another great issue I didn't touch on earlier. Experience with the specific EMU you are using, will also be a HUGE factor. If you are paying a professional by the hour to tune the car, as well as for dyno time, you DO NOT want to be messing around. It sucks to pay for the time it takes the tuner to read the manual and learn how to even operate EMU that you're using. Not all of us have deep pockets. If I did, I'd be running a built Greddy TT setup instead of messing around with the Stillen & Vortech S/C's!

 

Pretty sad situation we have up here in WA. I just don't get why there aren't any tuners up here for the Z/G. Makes no damn sense. I'm sick of driving around on the out-of-box generic tune. But without any experienced tuners for our cars, I just feel it's risky getting tuned around here, especially for us stock blockers.

 

jining. that's a pretty terrible story. i'd be pissed if I was paying by the hour and the tuner couldn't even get the boost controller set up correctly. that should the kind of situation where the shop bites the bullet, admits they should have had it fixed in a more timely fashion, and cuts you a deal on the labor.

By the way, do you guys not believe me? after I posted this:
I'm not talking out of my *** here. I spent quite a bit of money to take classes from what's considered the best place to learn how to tune EFI systems. You don't need to be looking for some VQ tuning god, just a good, reputable tuner. The single worst thing you could possibly do for your cars is drive them around on the stock basemap indefinetly without knowing exactly what the AFR is and if you are running enough timing or too much timing for the fuel you are using...

Dyno Authority, Horsepowr Connection. These are shops that can help you out. That have tuners with the knowledge to do a good job on your cars. Brian Macy at Horsepower Connection will not steer you wrong. He has an indepth understanding of every aspect of efi tuning from what the motor is doing to how the ECU processes its sensory inputs and will deliver a great tune. He has helped me with a few tips while I tuned my friends GT-R on his dyno (1st time being on a dyno with the laptop in my hands) to his own 1600hp turbocharged Chevy II dragster. He tunes alot of american cars, alot of euro cars, alot of Japanese cars. If he is able to get software for whatever system you have, i'm sure he will tune it. Hell I would offer my services if I thought anybody would take me up on it.

 

I somewhat disagree on this point. Although the tuner doesn't have to be a VQ tuning god, having knowledge of the limitations of the stock block would be very important. Without any experience tuning VQ motors, how would he know how much power to tune for? How much torque? How much timing? He would probably ask you what hp/tq numbers you wanted and then try tuning for it. That doesn't sound very safe to me.

 

Yea I think I am going to dyno authority after I have my exhaust leak fixed at drift office and have them look over my install to make sure everything is good. Going to driftoffice the week of the 24th.

 

I talked to the tuner at axiom motorsports in lakewood wa. He has tuned vq's and does the unichip.

 

The limitations of the stock block are found easily without lots of emperical evidence. A quick 5 minute session on forums and Google will give a good idea of what most people do on stock block cars.

The tuner does not make the power or make the torque or determine how much timing to run. The engine/turbo setup makes the power, the tuner just makes it safe. How much boost, how much timing, and how much fuel that the engine needs at every possible load point and RPM is already determined by the engine and turbo combination before you ever visit a tuner or a dyno. The tuner just has to work into the right numbers in a safe and efficient fashion. No reputable tuner would ever ask how much power you are shooting for, although it is always the customer's prerogative to set a boost limit.

I say this because the process of tuning the car is to start out with a basemap, or in cases of unique setups, make one, and then work your way into the right numbers very conservatively. If you are going to a tuner with a good understanding of how the internal combustion is behaving at different points throughout the cycle, tuning any engine is exactly the same. You start out with a very little amount of timing and work up, load site by load site. When you reach a point at a specific load point where the instantaneous torque figure is not going up anymore, then you may have reached "Minimum Best Torque". Once you are able to add 2-3 degrees timing beyond this, you'll know where that MBT point was and back off timing to it. This point almost always occurs far, far beyond any hint of knock or detonation at most low and medium load points of any point in the RPM range on most engines. Really you'll discover that this isn't the case only on poorly built or machined engines where quench area is f*cked and the combustion chamber machining is not correct. Rarely do you encounter this on a stock engine - they are usually designed to be pretty detonation free.

Anyways you move up the rpm range and finish out a row and then more up to the next load sites and continue tuning. When you start working into boost you want to be double and triple checking any knock, coolant temp, air intake temp, keep an eye on the wideband. Higher boost and decent power levels merit, imo, the use of an EGT gauge which will give a very good idea of the efficiency of the motor as far as timing and turbocharger range is concerned (Too little timing and EGT skyrockets, the turbos run out of steam and EGT will go up slightly).. etc.

"Boost" as measured in psi or kilopascals is, by itself, a pretty useless indicator of 'how much power' an engine is able to take. The limitations of the stock motor will never be found by a good tuner who has been asked by a customer to deliver a reliable, well driving, conservative tune.

Really there is not a lot of difference between a conservative tune and a power tune, just maybe a few degrees of timing in the higher load sites. This is becuase pump gas is just naturally a limiting factor and you want to leave a cushion of a few degrees timing in between the timing value in the timing map, and the degree advance of timing that gave the slightest hint of knock.

On the RB i was able to advance timing 4-5 degrees past MBT even at 6000-8000rpm at 1.3bar of boost on a pair of GT2530s (HKS equivalents to Garrett GT2860-5's, aka Disco Potatos) and at 400whp and note the dropoff of power as too much timing was put into the motor, and did so without any hint of detonation.

 

Could you make it sound anymore simplistic? If it were so easy, then why are we having such a problem finding a good tuner up here? The fact is, you can make power utilizing different tuning strategies and each tuner/shop will be different. Those tuning specifics are proprietary information and no tuner worth his salt will give that out freely. Experience tuning our motors is very important and all the great tuners like GTM, Forged, MRC, PF, etc. have built a reputation based on that experience.