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So from reading the posts in the last few pages either A) Shiv is just bashing a vendor (it happens... its part of marketing. Or rather, I can understand as it is a common marketing technique). or B) Was not fully made aware of the situation with the previous tuner, and may have just accidentally bashed another vendor.
I however have seen Toni in a similar situation with plenty of room and everything he needed in front of him to properly bash another vendor/tuner that was dyno tuning on the same day. The difference however was that Toni said he doesn't like to get involved and would rather just do his job and tune the cars presented. Toni wanted to stay professional and honest and just do what he does. And he does it damn well. Ill be honest I was hoping he would get competitive a bit as I personally have a problem with this other tuner, but I really appreciate the fact he basically refused to get involved.
From what you have shown me is you took an "ECUTek" tuner and assumed it was a canned tune. Yes this is common for ecutek tuners. However the specific tuner in question does not function this way like the mass.
I am just going to be brutally honest. Toni's base maps suck. Simple. Hopefully he doesn't get butthurt for me saying it. But in honesty I don't think he will care what I say. I flew Toni to Arizona to host a dyno event as there is a massive lack of available options in my area. I would have absolutely loved a platform I could tweak my self. But due to the length of lifespan of the other products out I prefer to go with something with a corporate backing that I know will stay around for a while. So I dealt with 2 tuners and had a horrible experience with the first. Toni showed that he cared about communication and that he doesn't do the "canned" tune experience. And I'll be honest. I questioned him from the very start. I started off bitter, and untrusting as I had a sour taste in my mouth from a previous ECUTek Tuner. But Toni was about as far appart from the previous tuner as you could get.
I saw this first hand when flashing peoples cars and doing before & after logs every time I flashed (as in stock car, log, flash, log, get revision, log flash log). Every time I saw minor to major changes depending on the cars. I saw his base map having a pretty big swing from one car to the next. It was not a polished "one size MAY fit all". No it was just a generic whatever tune. Sometimes it looked stock, other times it looked just like he sent a tune from another car I had flashed. I am just going to assume he just sent a recent tune that he did to another vehicle with similar mods and did a slight fuel trim for safety. Hell I even asked once... he told me he sent my tune to another local that was having problems to use as a base. No lying there... He was open to both of us about it.
I personally have gone through roughly 30 revisions in my tune. Keep in mind I have changed my boost levels, changed my fuel type, and have been that customer from HELL from Toni. I am surprised he even answers my calls at this point. I have tuned all of my previous cars and I nit pick everything in my logs.
So bashing on a vendor who sent a basemap and never finished tuning the car vs your polished base map? Well 2 points to you. Congratulations you have a polished base map just like one of the other tuners on this forum. You might have heard of him. John Visconti. I have seen logs from many of his tunes and his base map is much more consistent than Toni. But then I have seen cars hit the dyno from him that have a major difference after a tune, whereas when Toni came down and tuned cars a number of cars made very little difference in performance from his street tune. My car included. I was not expecting this.
Now lets talk hardware. Lets get something straight. I fucking hate the ECUTek way. But this is coming from someone who would have tuned their own car. And is always modifying the car every week and needs to revise again, and again, and again. I would prefer to just run an AEM stand alone or similar and have someone like Toni who has proven to me their experience on a dyno get me a nice running "basemap" that I can then tweak from day to day as I make changes to my car. I am also one to do lots of before & after testing of modifications and like to have control. So looking at that? Sure the OFT would make more sense for someone like me. I would love to be able to tweak my tune my self.
But how about people who are not going to tweak their tune them selves & having the ability to have multiple maps from other tuners I think this is great (such as e85 map and 91 octane). They don't need a laptop to work with it? AWESOME! I think this is great! I personally believe that locking a tune is garbage. Why? Because my car is not stock. It is not going to be stock. My car is not going to run just like my neighbors. Sure if you are taking 2 stock STI's the % of difference when driven side by side is going to be miniscule. So "sharing" a tune you got for your car may benefit your friend. But for me? This is never going to happen. My car is going to need a unique tune and my tune is nearly worthless to everyone else in the world. So locking a tune is worthless for "higher calibre" tuned cars. Vendors do this to protect their tune from being stolen and given away for free. Sure some vendors are trying to hide "trade secrets" to something they have invested a large number of hours resolving. However from what I have seen from a number of tuners mentioned in this thread they have shown the exact opposite. I have seen a few Ecutek tuners offer to help another tuner by sharing what they found in their "locked" tune.
But in reality if you are going to use a specific tuner for their tuning experience it really doesn't matter... get the hardware they are going to tune the best on. IMO its better to contact a tuner that you trust and find out what they can work with. The only benefit I see of the OFT is being able to bounce tuners easier. And if your bouncing tuners that often you probably should try to spend more time finding someone you trust to tune your car more. I would recommend going with a tuner, rather than basing your car off of a cable.
So what am I trying to say? I think the hardware ability of this is better than ECUTek's crappy over priced cable. I think the ability to have your higher calibre car tuned (not a stock car with an intake) then be re-tuned by another tuner is quite nice if you are in a situation when your original tuner is not around, or you just need a minor tweak. I personally really like having this "openness". But comparing your tune to a basemap of a tuner who only does custom tunes? Thats just garbage. The dyno's in this thread are 100% worthless. I have plenty of dyno plots from N/A & boosted cars to show that Toni has experience, and knows what he is doing. I have personally had my car tuned again, and again, and again with Toni and have seen how he likes to make "baby steps" with forced induction, and seen the massive difference that comes after he tuned my car away from the basemap I had.
So really all I see in this thread is one tuner vs another, and then one hardware vs another. If you want to complain about OFT vs Ecutek that is fine. But comparing your tune vs another? This is out of the ballpark as you are comparing your polished "canned" tune vs a basemap from a tuner who custom tunes every single car. I am quite confident that Toni would show quite wonderful results on that customers car if he actually tuned it. And as Toni has mentioned many times before, he is more than willing to dyno tune customers cars.
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