Renting a Tuner?
 

This might be a newb question but is renting a tuner a viable option? The only place I have seen that rents them is EcuTek. Are there other places that rent them?

I don't really plan on doing e85 or really many other tweaks. I was considering the recommended tune, header, exhaust but.... it's hard for me to justify spending $500 on this tool that I use once or twice.

Maybe my knowledge is too limited... do you guys use your tuner alot to justify the money spent on it?

Thanks for your opinions.

Buy used oft, use it, sell it when done for little loss or small profit

Except that he has to flash back to stock when he sells it.

Yep, thats the way it works;)

Cheapest option is a Tactrix, but it's not the most user friendly.

I had forgotten about tactrix. That is probably the least expensive

Well, you essentially use it every time you drive the car because it makes the tune possible. If I were starting from scratch, I'd probably get an OFT. You can keep it plugged in for all sorts of data logging. You would do the same for EcuTek, but they're really only good for making some tuners happy and doing flexfuel. Tactrix, which I have, is a bit of a paint to use. You're also more likely to brick the ECU.

When you "rent" a tuner from an ecutek dealer your just renting the cable.

to use the cable to "tune your car you will need an ecutek licience and they are about $300 and non-refundable.

Then you also need a "tune" unless your going to develope the tune yourselft from scratch.

you can just get an ecutek tuner , or possible another tuner to flash you a tune to your car. This will cost about $600 for a flash and go tune if you can get to tuner.

you just leave with the tune in ecu.

If you dont live near an ecutek tuner then you can rent the cable to be able to flash tune.

Alternatively you can buy an OFT and it is a tuning device that comes with a set of tunes costs $500 and has other features such a gauge displays and engine parameter alerts like for oil coolant temps of knock ect.

Or if you do a fair bit of learning you could use tactrix.

see below.

Awesome. That cleared up alot of things I was thinking about. Thanks everyone for your thoughts.