Hi everyone,

So about 2 years ago I had my 08 HR 5at reflashed and dyno tuned by Tadashi at Technosquare in LA. My mods at the time were: Injen intakes, Stillen headers, Stillen HFCs, and a Bassani exhaust. I don't remember the exact numbers my car made but they were pretty low, around 250-260 whp. My car is auto and had <13k miles at the time so I wasn't too disappointed by the numbers.

While tuning the car, Tadashi told me that he doesn't recommend aftermarket intakes (contrary to what he told A.H., for those of you who remember him) and said that I should install the factory intakes again. He said that they have the best design out of all intakes and that I would notice an increase in power after swapping them and my car would run better with them. He loaded a base map designed to run with the factory airboxes and told me I should get rid of the injens asap and put the factory ones back on.

Now fast forward a few months later...I sold the injen intakes and installed oem ones. I've noticed that my car doesn't pull as hard as it did with the injens and the throttle response is now sluggish. When I first got the car tuned and was running injens, it was pulling a lot quicker and felt much more aggressive throughout the powerband. I would break traction a lot before. Even though I'm running a map designed for the factory intakes the car feels less powerful than before.

I'm not sure if it was the intakes that were making the difference or if somehow my tune got cleared out. I've been throwing a lot of CELs because of the HFCs but from what I've read online clearing the cel does not clear the tune. However, having a cel does affect the performance of the car (from what tadashi told me). I'm not too sure what to do now. Should I get another reflash and/or pick up a set of stillen gen 3 intakes. What could be causing my car to run like crap? The car was running better with the injens even though the tune was for the factory intakes (tadashi had specifically used a map designed to run with factory intakes). Unfortunately Technosquare no longer offers a tuning service, so I have to go a different route (most likely uprev).

Sorry for a long post, but you guys know a lot more about this stuff than I do and perhaps you can chime in.

Thanks

 

1: 260hp on a simple bolt on auto engine is decent power. It also greatly depends on the dyno.

2: factory intakes aren't the best but the difference on a NA car is going to be negligible. Dyno might show 5-10hp which is only 3-5% power increase. Dyno can vary that much on the same car without changing anything.

3: CEL codes will not affect the tune of your car. It's a warning light only. It doesn't change the way the car drives. Having hfc can alter the a/f ratio which will change how the car drives but the little light on the dash is nothing more than an indicator. You can have them flashed to not show up on the dash.

I would choose a better tuner but I wouldn't expect much more out of it since the manual transmissions are putting down just a little more than your auto. Auto eats up quite a bit of power at the rear wheels.

 

Techonosquare quit got out of the reflash business... Only real option is uprev now OP. I wouldn't worry about the dyno #'s, but if something feels off it would be worth getting checked out

 

The intakes & headers of an 08 HR are the best!
When a stock 08 makes 250hp to 270hp(depending on the dyno). Making 250-260hp with all those mods tells me that some of your mods are hurting your H.P.....