Mellon Racing

iTrader: (38)

***EDIT**** It's official! I'm proud to say I'm a sponsor of EvolutionM and ready to do business (see sig)

First let me start of by saying that right now this is merely a feeler to see if there's enough interest to warrant doing this. I've inquired about advertising on the site as well to see if this is financially feasable, I'm just waiting to hear from someone.

I'm thinking about offering my e-mail tuning services. I know there are several others on the forum who sell ECU Maps but the more I read the more I see a need for a better service.


How would this work?

I'd be asking you to make a log of your current tune and backup of your current ECU maps and send those to me. In return I would re-work the maps and send those back to you with improved a/f, timing etc.. and make sure it's safe. You would apply the new flash to your ECU. Then you would record another log and send that back to me. We would repeat this process until the your tune is perfected, meaning better hp/tq and safe.


Now you're probably asking yourself.. "how is this different than the services others are providing?"

1) I'll be much more responsive... I can't count how many threads I've read about people being left high and dry with a tune that knocks. They send e-mails frantically to the tuner for help and get no timely response and have to resort to making forum posts for help. That must be terribly frustrating.

2) I will not lock your ECU - Most tuners send you a flash that when loaded into your ECU locks it so that you cannot get back in to make changes. That means you're at their mercy. I find this very disturbing, expecially when you need to make a tiny adjustment or need to flash it back to stock to go to the dealer or if you want to sell the car etc... in exchange, all I ask is that my flash/maps and your logs aren't shared with others. It's YOUR ECU, tuners have no right to lock you out of it.

3) No canned tunes - Some tuners send the same map to everyone and call it a day even though each car is different. I will be creating a custom map tailored for your car.

4) I will run your before and after logs through DLL and provilde you with an overlay so that you can clearly see the improvement in a vitual dyno graph.

5) Pricing - I'd keep it in line with others see www.mellontuning.com even though I believe the service will be much better than what I've seen from some other tuners.

I've setup a poll and would like to get some feedback so please vote and also leave a comment in the thread, I'm open to suggestions as well. Tell me what you don't like about the current situation with tuners and how I can improve that for you.

newbieEVO8

iTrader: (9)

This guy is golden.

He and I meet one day for lunch and within 40mins had my car making the same power as before just without the 15 counts of knock.

I actually get better gas mileage as the car is not having to throw fuel and pull timing to try and correct the knock.

I for one can stand behind his work ethic as it took two different tuning sessions to get my ECU UNLOCKED from where my mailin tune had locked it up.

For me he did this for no additional charge.

Will your tuner spend two separate days for an hour or 2 and not charge you any additional $$?

Big thumbsup to Mellon.

He saved my car from future problems by eliminating all counts of knock.

Thank you can not say enough about what he provided for me.

#2 SM

iTrader: (8)

Mellon will not dissapoint...

I took my car to Mellon to ensure that I had a safe tune on my '03 GSR (bought it used with BPUs). We discovered that not only was my car not knocking, but it was Pig Rich throughout the entire RPM range, robbing me of potential power.

Not only did we find significant power (35 ft. lbs tq @5k, ~25 hp over 6k RPMS) he explained in intricate detail every motive, change, and possible outcomes each time he modified my map.

I took the car to him hoping to thwart knock, and ended up with +25 hp and 275 tq from 3500-5000 rpms. Hugely beneficial for Autox. All with 0 knock.

I highly reccomend Mellon's services. If anyone has any questions for me, please post here or PM for more details.

+1 for Mellon!

cij911

iTrader: (14)

What is your automotive and / or engineering background? What do you do professionally?

4WS Tuning

iTrader: (73)

good luck....

the problem is there are so many tuners and wanna be tuners. your gonna need to find a smack talking person liek warrtalon to hypnotize people into letting them do their tunes lol. then it'll work out


cheers!

4WS Tuning

iTrader: (73)

with ecuflash it doesn't really matter, everyone can be a pro after 2 hours of messing around with it.

look at AL he's a liar, i mean lawyer. he was banking off his 200$ mail in flash.

Mellon Racing

iTrader: (38)

I've spent most of my forum days over on www.3si.org/forum . I think you'll find that I'm a valued member. I have a reputation there for figuring things out myself rather than listening to the gospel which has produced a few revelations about limitations of the stock MAS and piggy backs etc... I've also done a few detailed writeups on installing and tuning with the Greddy E-manage and LM-1. I also created a dyno database to help determine which combinations produce the desired results someone needs for their style of driving to name a few.

I really didn't want to pat my own back and post a resume but I've been racing since the 80's and tuning with ECU's since the early 90's. Mostly on my own cars(88 conquest TSI, 91 Talon, 91 Stealth R/T TT, and now the 05 EVO) but I've also tuned quite a few local cars which are mostly Mitsu. I also do the occasional F-body or Grand National etc...some for free and others through D&B which is a local shop that needs the occasional tuning done for a customer that's getting upgraded turbos installed etc...

I've never had a complaint about any work I've done on anyones car and I think that's because I treat their car like it were my own and I treat my friends/customers the way I would want to be treated.

Brad and Seth that posted earlier were recently tuned by me and these guys are into Autox which means extreme temperatures during back to back runs. Great care went it their tune to make absolutley sure that they made gains but not at the expense of safety to the engine. We did multiple back to back to back to back runs to intentionally heatsoak the engine which brought any flaws in the tune to the surface to be ironed out.

nj1266

iTrader: (6)

This is a very bad idea for you to do. All you need is one blown up engine and some yahoo blaming your tune to be in the poor house. Think of the legal liability that you are putting yourself under. Do you have any business insurance to protect you from a lawsuit? If you do not, then do not do this.

I have no comment on your tuning abilities since I am not familiar with them. But from a stand point of headaches and laibility, I will not do it.

DJAuggie

Awesome idea. This is perfect for the person who is just learning to tune. It gives them an opportunity to learn from a person that has tuned various cars with different mods using various tuning tools. It's also for a person that has some problems and can't seem to figure it out. Imagine the amount of time you would waste sitting on a dyno letting the operator try and figure it out?

Mellon is one of the rare good guys in the world so take advantage.

#2 SM

iTrader: (8)

That issue can be easily resolved with a properly worded legal document.

FWIW, Mellon has the ability to tune to the driver's preferences. I, for example, was mainly concerned with picking up mid level power, and Mellon dished out 35 ft. lbs. of torque @ 5k rpms.

Think of Mellon not as a shop owner in need of another revenue stream, but the guy down the street who has grown up watching and learning ECU tuning technology as it's been developed.

When tuning with Mellon, not only do you get a safe and powerful EVO, you also get piece of mind through his in depth explanations of every single step in the process... You can't put a price tag on that...

MalibuJack

iTrader: (5)

I give you alot of credit for wanting to do something through the mail. I take on very limited clientele and keep a low profile. I only dyno or road tune because I'm not really comfortable with mailing maps and logs back and forth.

Just make sure you have your legal issues addressed.

Mellon Racing

iTrader: (38)

You guys make some valid points about the legal issues. Maybe I've just been lucky over the years. I've been tuning 3000GT VR-4's and Stealths via forums, e-mail and even Instant Messaging for a very long time without any problems. Maybe it's because in each case the reason they were contacting me was because they were frustrated with their existing tunes or just didn't understand how the ECU works so they could do it themselves. I was always able to identify their issues and correct them.

otbEVO

iTrader: (33)

I'm impressed by the idea actually... It would be great for someone to do email flashes that are adjustable by looking at datalogging. It's not the ultimate solution, but it's most certainly a start and I think it's a good direction for those who are unable to get tuned within any sort of convenient distance or for those areas that just don't have tuners around. Subscribed.

Mellon Racing

iTrader: (38)

Well it looks like there is a little interest but I still haven't heard from my inquiry about sponsoring the forum so I can do business *shrug*

jcsbanks

I used to charge the equivalent of $1000-1200 (obvious this is turnover not profit) for a road tune reflash in the UK a few years back when the prices were fixed (I wanted to charge less). Whilst that was too much, the hassles that come with it are not to be underestimated and I moved onto other stuff because the work was irregular, I didn't like high speed road tuning, and would have needed to diversify and get premises and larger overheads to make a business of it. It was only ever a part time thing, so I concentrated on my main profession and continued tuning as an enthusiast rather than a professional.

$50 is the other extreme, although doing it by email has its advantages and disadvantages.

Either extreme of pricing is silly, $50 probably isn't enough to make you a good profit to keep you interested for the hassle it will cause you I suspect. For a good service I would think $200 would be more like it for an email tune with excellent backup, but it is whether the value conscious US market will bear that price.