Cobb Tuning First Thursday

[stockysnail]

Originally Posted by Fascist Fish

To answer this better. The cobb home office purchased a launch brz for testing. After getting into it they determined that an accessport would not produce much power and they would have issues selling them because the gains would be to small. If you look at their past product line, they tried to do the 350z and it was a failure because the gains were not great so no one purchased them. They saw this as another one of those so decided not to put the r&d into making one. If there is a turbo, they will likely make one because there are good power gains in a turbo with just a tune.

People tune their N/A cars to get rid of the torque dip and for a little bump in power (10hp). Swapping the header will get another 10hp and other bits like exhaust another 5hp or so. People have been paying tuners all over for this little bump in power so I'm not sure why they don't think it's enough. It shouldn't be all about big numbers.

Our engines are now in the WRX and Forrester, which they said they will work on if they are of the turbo variety.

[Fascist Fish]

Originally Posted by stockysnail

People tune their N/A cars to get rid of the torque dip and for a little bump in power (10hp). Swapping the header will get another 10hp and other bits like exhaust another 5hp or so. People have been paying tuners all over for this little bump in power so I'm not sure why they don't think it's enough. It shouldn't be all about big numbers.

Our engines are now in the WRX and Forrester, which they said they will work on if they are of the turbo variety.

Yes, $650 for a +10 hp boost is seen as a horrid dollar to hp ratio. They tried it with the 350z and found there is enough of a market for it. People who want real power out of a NA motor end up going forced induction or for a massive over haul. They tested this NA market with the 350z and people purchased the device and bitched about not seeing much of any gain. I am just passing on the history of what happened and what shaped their decision.

They don't see it as a big enough market because you forget they need to make at a minimum 3 maps for all the different fuels in america. And then they have to be able to stand behind them. They don't have the time to have a tuner work with every person.

Look at the only big name company who sells a ecu tune for the NA20, it is ECUTek. That has a price of $800, even worse gains per dollar ratio. That is $150 more than Cobb charges for an accessport and requires you to provide your own laptop to load maps. For Cobb to make money at the low cost of their device they have to sell in volume. The volume just is not there when, like I said, the people who really want power gains go to forced induction or have to go for a massive rebuild. Look at the people on this forum who first tried to add some power with tune, intake and exhaust. Most of them have now gone forced induction because the gains for the other bolt ons are very minimal. The stock motor is already pretty well set up from the factory and doesn't have a lot left in it in the NA form.

On the note about the FA20 being in the other cars, they already have a WRX accessport. They don't have one for the forester, probably because there is not a lot of people in the market since the turbo forester only comes in an auto now.

[BRZPDX]

I was going to mention this on the Sykart thread, but if the Cobb guys are going to SyKart on first Thursday's as well, we may need to change it to 2nd Thursday or something so we don't get jammed up there. This was brought up by the Sykart employee last first Thursday when it was me and Brandon.