Our Remote Tuning Process (E-Tuning)

We get questions daily about our response times, how remote tuning works, and what is needed. This guide is for new customers to get a better understanding of what we do, how we do it, and why the timing can vary drastically throughout the process.

First, let us put the value into perspective when dealing with a typical turbo or supercharger kit:

Hardware, software, basic map that errs on safety from a typical vendor: $1000. This gives you a nice starting point, but you don’t get the level of customization we offer, and it does not take into account any other modifications you make. These are solid tunes, but they have limitations.

Custom dyno tune from a brick and mortar shop: 4-8 hours on the dyno at 150-200/hour. Tuning license: $399. That puts you at usually 1500+ when everything is done. Quality? Varies greatly. If this is one of only a handful of times working on the particular car, you can bet it won’t be up to the quality of a tuning shop that specializes in your vehicle.

Our tune with all hardware, license, base tune, fine tuning, and customized features: $699-999. Not only do you get the custom tune, but you also get to keep the hardware, and we continue to support the customer without having to pay the expensive dyno rates. That means if you add an intake, exhaust, up the boost–we charge only a modest 79 re-tune fee and you’re all set.

To keep up with the dozens of emails and phone calls we get daily requires someone to sit down for hours at a time.  This can’t be a receptionist, but needs to be a expert in your vehicle. To do the R&D that is required to make the tunes requires being on the dyno hours at a time. To understand the vehicle inside and out means we need to have our hands in it and install/repair/build them as well. As you can imagine, things get awfully busy very quick. We have two options to deal with this. One is to raise the price and make it an exclusive service for high end vehicles only. This is not how we like to do things. Instead, we have a system set up so that we can as efficient as possible and yet still deliver the best tunes and service. So to make this a reality, this is how it works:

Pre-sale questions and inquiries: Please browse through our website, youtube channels, facebook page, and other media. This helps you become familiar with what we do and what we are about. We LOVE to talk to our customers on the phone, email, or talk in person, but it is not always an option since we have work to do as well.

Initial tune: 1-3 days. Often times it is delivered within 24 hours, but for more complicated and custom tunes, we will wait to write it. This is because once you flash it in, you may need some immediate assistance, an updated revision, or we may have missed a modification along the way that needs prompt attention. So we prefer to send those out when we know we will have some time to devote to you should any of those arise…not the day before a 12 hour dyno session. We will then try to turn the tunes around within a few hours of receiving the datalogs.

Fine tuning: 1-5 days. Once we determine that the tune is safe to drive on, we slow down a bit with when we send out tunes. This is partially because you need to really put the miles on the car for learning to take place and to make sure we don’t overshoot. It also gives time for the hardware to settle in. Please understand that we have the highest standards, and we like to start off with the greatest margin of safety to ensure that your car (and our reputation!) are unharmed throughout this process. If you’re coming to us, then it is pretty much because of this extra effort. It means more revisions, more time, but a much better product in the end.

Followup tuning and splitting hairs. Once the car is really dialed in, you may have the need to send a datalog over for us to review. Maybe you changed air filters and want to make sure the airflow is still reading correctly. Sometimes it may be that we looked back at the datalog and saw that we could do just a bit better. Perhaps chasing a mechanical gremlin. Maybe you have a car we are quite interested in and we offered to work with you on an extended basis. In these cases it may be a week or more to get a response. These we often do not charge for, and if you need more immediate assistance you can do hourly tuning to speed things up, but it allows to fill the free time with supporting existing customers.

Understand that remote tuning has historically been a side-job for many brick and mortar tuners. Using secure platforms like EcuTek and Cobb, it allows the tuner to maximize platform specialization, and to share the exploits learned from the dyno/race track with the customer often thousands of miles away. However, with the popularity of e-tuning, this has turned into a profession for some. But with that come limitations in that to have good remote tunes, you have to have a real presence. For this reason we maintain a fully equipped shop, race, and unfortunately have overhead. For this reason we cannot offer “free lifetime updates” and we try to be as upfront and honest about our turnaround times. We also have an online store and can get just about any part. Buying from us or one of our partners allows us to keep prices down and service at the highest level.