Prime Motoring and JR Tuned....NOT the best

[EAGLE5]

For goodness sake. Fuel cuts aren't a panacea, and they can destroy your engine in a flash. You have four cylinders going. While one is firing, another is fueling. Your boost spikes. The ECU cuts off fuel to all cylinders. The fueling cylinder gets the overfull load of air but only part of the fuel. It runs lean then detonates like a mofo. Cylinder temps and pressure spike. Your engine is toast. It's that simple. Fuel cuts won't save an engine every time, and they can add to the shit storm. This stuff is complicated, but it isn't that complicated. ECUTek isn't perfect on the logic. Maybe another solution is. I just hate to see another tuner burned. As far as I can tell, this behavior chased away Robispec and a few others. Our losses, not theirs.

I have no connection with JR or Prime other than a couple messages asking questions with JR. Save the flame storm for the Pokemon games.

[BadBRZ]

1lean firing in one cylinder 1 time would never "toast" a motor... Takes a bit more than that... Not a lot but yes a bit more than 1 millisecond fuck up

[JuniorAWD]

Originally Posted by BadBRZ

1lean firing in one cylinder 1 time would never "toast" a motor... Takes a bit more than that... Not a lot but yes a bit more than 1 millisecond fuck up

One lean fired 12:5 to 1 cast piston/rod motor running 15-16psi creating high cylinder pressures will surely get destroyed by a spike in cylinder pressure. You have full ignition and boost present to fire on a cylinder that received partial fueling due to the cut or even worse one that just fired on a cylinder that had "residual" or "cylinder wetting" fuel left in the bore. It will detonate badly and blow shit up.

On factory turbocharged subaru platforms you have a fuel cut BOOST RESUME which is another huge safety. When fuel cut is activated, boost is not allowed to go back to a normal level until a lower level is achieved and a predetermined time limit is met. That saves the motor by preventing the ecu from resuming so quickly that it fires lean on the first cycle after the fuel cut.

So yea.. It will happen on a 1 millisecond fuck up. I even incorporate extra fueling in over-boost situations, lowered timing and error corrections on the boost control... BUT the ecu still uses a fuel cut off, which causes a hot/lean condition and error corrections wont help when a mechanical over-boost is present. Will a car running 7psi and fuel cutting at 10psi blow up? Probably not, 10psi cutting at 12-13psi .. maybe.. maybe not.. The higher the boost the higher the risk of damage to the oem cast parts in an over-boost fuel cut situation.

Jr



PS: DP1 your gripe and VGI are not even close to the same. His was a case of lack of support, which I fully agree and blame myself for and agree with a refund. I was not there to support him as I should have. I wish him the best and wish I could take back my lack of response time and lack of support. 0 excuses on my part. he has every single right to say I did him wrong.

YOU on the other hand, came in for "touchups", add ons to your maps like autoblip, extra maps etc and left me with nothing but positive responses. Your reasoning the day of going else were was "wanting to try something new" You send a reply saying how much better your car is at 11am then 3 hours later how I blew out your cat from my tune. At 11am your car was "PERFECT" 3hours of tuning later its my fault you have a "blown out cat" because a competing shop told you so. Oh and you lied about P&L saying that MY TUNE caused the cat to melt, would be a first since I have tuned every single one that P&L has installed in house without any issues.
Like I said its hard to deal with people who are not honest. Oh and I did such a horrible job and tune so bad that you raved about how fast your automatic car was around the track etc..

So why are you entitled to a refund again?

[s2d4]

Originally Posted by vgi

here's update on my experience:

If you paid for tuning/installation services by PrimeMotoring and got screwed by JR (no support or retuning) you can count on PrimeMotoring stepping in.

PrimeMotoring has refunded me money for tuning.

I believe you are smarter than the average guy, your MAF tool is awesome, why not have a go at tuning yourself?

[s2d4]

Originally Posted by JuniorAWD

His was a case of lack of support, which I fully agree and blame myself for and agree with a refund. I was not there to support him as I should have. I wish him the best and wish I could take back my lack of response time and lack of support. 0 excuses on my part. he has every single right to say I did him wrong.

Honesty is an awesome trait!

As for kingkai and dp1, I think you guys needs to be more accountable for your own actions.
Watch all of the video.
http://www.thatvideomagazine.com/new...nny-ten-racing

[vgi]

Originally Posted by s2d4

I believe you are smarter than the average guy, your MAF tool is awesome, why not have a go at tuning yourself?

maf tuning is pretty well covered on romraider and nasioc in just a few threads, the rest is not. there is a lot more to tuning than just maf.
besides, i'm too lazy. a proggie though i can write while sitting on my couch and watching tv.
also, for the extra price of racerom i can have my car tuned.

[PrimeMotoring]

Originally Posted by s2d4

PS: DP1 your gripe and VGI are not even close to the same. His was a case of lack of support, which I fully agree and blame myself for and agree with a refund. I was not there to support him as I should have. I wish him the best and wish I could take back my lack of response time and lack of support. 0 excuses on my part. he has every single right to say I did him wrong.

YOU on the other hand, came in for "touchups", add ons to your maps like autoblip, extra maps etc and left me with nothing but positive responses. Your reasoning the day of going else were was "wanting to try something new" You send a reply saying how much better your car is at 11am then 3 hours later how I blew out your cat from my tune. At 11am your car was "PERFECT" 3hours of tuning later its my fault you have a "blown out cat" because a competing shop told you so. Oh and you lied about P&L saying that MY TUNE caused the cat to melt, would be a first since I have tuned every single one that P&L has installed in house without any issues.
Like I said its hard to deal with people who are not honest. Oh and I did such a horrible job and tune so bad that you raved about how fast your automatic car was around the track etc..

So why are you entitled to a refund again?

also for @vgi, he provided logs, detailed logs of different scenarios to display the issues he was having. @dp1 provided us also with a play by play of his experience the day he was tuned at moto east as @JuniorAWD mentioned. Lets take a look and see if this makes sense at all that we/junior were the cause of his "bad tune" and clogged cat.

So at 11:43 we get this email explaining that the car was on the dyno for TWO HOURS and that the difference is massive. Seems as the car is finished and he will be back in a few hours to drop off a noisy ACT clutch we were going to warranty for him that he decided he rather have Moto East replace rather than the shop who was going to warranty the defective unit out of courtesy.



At 11:53 am....remember how there was the BIG DIFFERENCE with the car? How so if there was a supposed clogged cat? Maybe the car was perfect heading in but after TWO HOURS on the dyno at a competing shop with a competing tuner trying to get more power out of the car in order to hook this customer in, they find out the cat was clogged. Has anyone else here had a cat clog on their car? How could it possibly be perfect and make a HUGE difference? Doesnt make sense...



Hours later....3:27 pm another email saying that Jr's tune was "shooting flames" at the cat causing it to melt. At the same time supposedly there are nuts on the header that are missing. Remember how everything was so perfect? How so now with a clogged cat and a massive exhaust leak from the header? What shop would tune a car for two hours with either of those symptoms? Again does not make sense. Finger is pointed of course at Prime Motoring. A tuner would be able to detect back pressure from the clogged cat causing an issue or anyone with decent enough of a hearing sense could detect a exhaust leak. Why would they be tuning for TWO HOURS on an exhaust leak? Again does not make sense.



And at this point @dp1 was still planning on using us for other work and that is when i emailed him telling him we can no longer warranty any work regarding his header (was cut open and rewelded) clutch (did not have us go over our work and remove it, had another shop do it and then have us deal with ACT to TRY to warranty an aftermarket clutch that chatters but in perfect working order and recently tracked (good luck) and also the tune and anything related to the tune (motor) since it no longer is running our/junior's tune. Why should WE over another shop's work? I can still cover the suspension work that we did granted it hasnt been adjusted by someone else....im sure @dp1 will try to find fault in that after again posting how wonderful the car was performing on the track.

Please everyone....there are two sides to every story. Please put yourselves in our position as shop owners and the responsibility we take with these cars.

[dp1]

(removed)

[dp1]

(removed)

[JuniorAWD]

Originally Posted by dp1

@JuniorAWD, take some time to read my previous responses, most of your comments have been addressed. I should have known better sooner, I didn't. I was nicer to people than I should have been when things went wrong and I was stuck with issues/expenses.

It was only when I couldn't achieve expected speeds at WGI with the new car that I realized I needed to try something else. It was only when I went to @moto-mike, saw logs from test runs, got a new tune (I was stunned at the difference of his initial baseline for my setup) and about 2 hours of refinements, then saw missing header nuts and melted cat element, than got that fixed and got a new tune right after, that I understood the sources of some of my problems and what I've been missing. Few thousand miles of street driving and 3-4 track days should not melt a cat. My AT car ran better on track than my new MT car, though it really woke up only at around 5.5k rpm. The exhaust tips and the rear of my car would get a lot more carbon deposits then I have now, and even after a short drive...and a lot more then after running on track for two days with a new tune from @moto-mike...and everything looks good on my AEM safety gauge.

Once again, please understand that I did not know what to expect until I got the new tune from @moto-mike, it's that simple. My car is so thoroughly transformed with the new tune, the power band is so wide and linear, and I am so happy to have this car drive so well on the street and track, that I finally see the value of spending $30k on all the upgrades. I don't know if the cat was fried on the old car or the new car, but I only dealt with you and Prime before @moto-mike discovered and fixed the issues.

I take full responsibility for making bad choices. I wish I would have taken my car elsewhere as I've had great experience with two shops since (just got a new tune after replacing most exhaust components). I don't care if you refund me the money for the tune or not, but I will thank you in this thread if you do. You will never tune my car again.

Having watched the video (thanks @s2d4), I agree that I have to take responsibility...I wish a thread like this was available. Once again, it wasn't all bad but it should have been better with less issues and related costs.

I wish you all the best

I still love how you claim the new tune was such great leaps and bounds better with a "melted cat" aka a HUGE restriction in exhaust flow. It would have had problems and would have been down a significant amount of power right off the bat. You wouldn't be saying how awesome the car is, and it wouldnt take someone 2hrs of tuning and 3.5hrs after the tune to figure out the cat was damaged before the tune... So spare everyone more of your BS. You clearly sent messages bragging about how awesome the new tune was, then 3.5 hours later how I melted the cat? Care to explain how I managed to damage the car 3.5hours after you tell us how awesome the new 2hour tune is?


Either way at least we have one thing we can agree on. Trust me when I tell you that you wouldnt have the option of having me tune the car. I wouldn't touch it after all the lies and bs.

[dp1]

(removed)

[Xero-Limit]

This is not how I like to be mentioned. Now that our name is all over this thread and both parties showing email screen caps, lets first clarify about what this little "hole in the wall in PA" did here.

First off, DP1 contacted us to get a clutch put in, and have a look at the car because he thinks it should be faster. He is having doubts given the number of time another shop has had it. At first we had no clue what shop it was, only later on after we agreed does that come out. We take the car in because it is an easy enough thing for us. The car gets here and he first wants to tune it on the old clutch since it was coming out. Ok. At this point we knew who did the tuning and have seen published dyno charts, so my words to him exactly were that "I don't know if we'll improve, but if we can't I won't charge you." Remember he came for a clutch job not a tune.

We start driving. The car is rattling and the clutch is chattering. The car has a slight exhaust leak, drives as slow as stock. I'm puzzled. We hook up EcuTek to see if there's a mechanical issue. What do we find? Log is screwed up, won't report IAM (or shows 0), FKLC is way off, and it definitely runs like a turd. Screencap of the timing curve:



What you see is that it is the timing is down to 7 degrees in the low range. I can't tell if it is tuned that way or if it is because the AFR was 15 in the low range. Whatever, at this point we tell him we can definitely improve the tune. Sure enough after about an hour of tweaking it, we get it much faster. But it took longer than expected so I began to wonder if we had other issues.

Here's our final timing curve proprietary info be damned, a Rotrex setup does not need to be tuned like a turbo. No need to pull out 10-15 degrees out of the low end when it only makes 2-3 psi.



The other aspect to this is that this USDM car somehow came in with a JDM (G) ROM. Not sure how that happened, some tuners know how to get around this and we had to do that to convert back to a USDM ROM.

So then we got the car on the lift. Not to look for issues to bash another shop, but to do the clutch we were asked to do and confirmed a problem with. We did not offer any discounts whatsoever. But what did we find? RTV all over the exhaust. Head flange, vband in the header, vband in the exhaust, front pipe that had a warped flange...then my tech gets to pulling the header off, and there's only one nut on the passenger side head. A bit of an issue since they are a fine pitch PITA to find shoulder nut. But what do you know, as I look through my tech's cart I see them on the front pipe--they were holding together the front pipe bolts.... Then as we're working on the header, we hear a rattling. Shining the flashlight inside, we see a shrunken and melted cat. When that happens it isn't a defect. That happens because of an overly lean mixture and retarded timing. That doesn't take an expert to put it together when the datalog showed what it did. Metallic substrate cats MELT, not shatter like the OEM ceramics. No doubt track time accelerates the wear, but this rarely will happen after a dozen track days let alone just a few.

As with any job, we tell our customers EXACTLY what we are doing, and why a job is taking longer than expected. Our floor plan is totally open and it is obvious to see what we are doing or cursing at. Here we had to give him a choice as to what to do with the header. He can run it as is, it flowed enough for probably 240 whp, or we can cut it out and reweld the pipe. It is a weekend, he's from 2 hours away, there's no waiting for a P&L warranty unit. So we did just that. Got it back together and drove it, thing picked up another 20hp.

I told DP1 to go easy and keep us out of it, I'm not looking to pick a fight with another shop, nor do I know what may have gone on before hand. I have no control over what a customer does and how they handle their relations with a previous shop, but frankly the amount someone spent and how they were treated has absolutely everything to do with it. It didn't help that when tried calling and emailing before anything was public, he was being told some not so nice things. Those emails you're quoting I'm pretty sure he was acting content as he was trying to be NICE to you and just let you RMA the clutch and maybe refund the tune. Out of context and irrelevant at this point.

We always try to explain to customers that sometimes there's folks we can't always control (i.e. techs, bad parts, sloppy fabricators). I understand being defensive when a customer is ticked, but it isn't cool to attack their credibility, say that another shop is out to get you while quoting their name in a post, reference the Vinny Ten video (someone else I know, but I remember his Supra from 15 years ago when I was racing my DSMs...), call someone's hard earned shop "some hole in the wall," or go after a customer's character.

Again, this wasn't a case of "lets find shit wrong", but a case of explaining to the customer why we were doing what we were doing, and offering options for things like the cat. Not our first rodeo getting a customer that isn't thrilled, and you can bet we always offer a courtesy to the other shop and just fix the issue if it can be fixed. But it wouldn't be fair to throw P&L under the bus in this case either.

[King Tut]

Well said @moto-mike.

[blackhawkdown]

subbed