After getting my cams put in, I'm looking for a tune. Now I'm torn between Mellon and Ivey... Mellon has great reviews and is a lot less $$. Ivey also has only had rave reviews, has a dyno, and the shop is half an hour away from me.

What can I expect to receive from a custom dyno tune that I wouldn't receive from a Mellon tune? (aside from the price difference) All I can think of is road tune vs dyno tune. Any thoughts?

 

I actually prefer a road tune over a dyno tune. In my opinion, a dyno tune offers only the HP/tq readout and a before/after comparison.

 

Get the ivey dyno tune and log it after on the road to make sure everything is good.

 

Tuners aside, at it's fundamental core there is a tremendous subjective element lost over a mail order, E-tune, or web tune. Vs, having your tuner be in your car at the time.

Road tune and dyno tunes are a completely different argument, but at its fundamental core, there are certain things (like intake calibration) that are paramount for a MAF based car, but impossible to do properly over the mail.

Jorge (RiftsWRX)
www.ProjectWRX.com

 

Road Tune Is The Way To Go
Every Good Tuner Will Dyno Tune Then Road Tune & Make Some Changes
Im Dropping My Car Off To Alex @ Dox Box For An Ems Road Tune On Sat Cant Wait I You Dont Need To Know Hp #s Just Look @ Your Mph In The Quarter & Estimate Haha

 

The reality there is that even trap speed is still a subjective estimate of Horsepower.

Case in point.

Had a customer I tuned with a version 7 swapped WRX at one of our regional shootouts.

Started the day doing a 12.5 @ 107, and by the end of the day, dialed in his tire pressures and launch control to get to an 11.8 @ 121.

Nothing else changed.

EDIT: as another example, I have one customer who made 423WHP on our dynojet, and can pull off a 10.8@127 with a full interior WRX.

Another STI customer making 560 WHP but with no track experiance ran a 11.6@122.

Same tuner, same dyno, same EMS, same day. Go figure.

 

i was just being a smart ***............
dyno`s are just estimates anyway every one reads different #s dyno jet reads high mustang reads low.....
then most tuners road tune after the dyno tune
dyno is just for saftey really to avvoid accidents & tickets

 

i think for me a big argument for a mail flash is its price is around $300 less than a custom one. $300 that could go towards a new intercooler, for example... is the price difference worth it?

 

No.

Rifts does have a point ... there are some things that you can't dial in from afar simply because you can't experience them in the car. However, I'd guess that about 98% of what a tuner uses to dial in a car is shown in the logs, and that's what the tuner will use for a remote tune.

 

I would say mail tune too.
A custom tune would always be better because every evo is different. But the person providing the mail tune should have a lot of experience doing mail tunes you'll get a near-custom tune.

To put it another way.
mail tune - you should get a dramatic change in your engine performance
custom tune - you'll get above + a little more

 

Mellon's e-mail tunes are custom tunes ...

 

You can't go wrong with Sean Ivey at the controls. +1 for iveytune. He has 20 years experience which is more than some "tuners" have years on earth.

 

Thank you for clearing that up.

If anyone has questions about our service I can be reached in PM or on AIM (mellontuning).

Thanks,

Brad

 

You're absolutely correct. In general, this is the workflow that I've found can delivery a CONSISTENT tune across various conditions. It ALL stems around the necessity for proper MAF calibration

What it boils down to is an intimate understanding of how the majority of US based OBD-II systems work.

Since it ultimately boils down to emissions in the US, OBD-II's really started to rely heavily on LTFT (long term fuel trim) as a modifier to compensate properly for environmental and chemical composition changes of gasoline.

Case in point, the majority of the snow belt regions, and almost all the ones in metropolitan areas will go through a winter/summer cycle of fuel. While the exactly chemical composition changes from pump to pump and brand to brand, the vast majority of what happens is consistent. Oxygenates are added to the fuels in the winter months to help burn off the mixtures which become harder and harder to combust due to the fact that the vast majority of engines simply never have an opportunity to properly warm up. On a speed density car it's a completely different issue but, to stay on topic, with MAF based cars you find that there is still a level of enrichment that happens on colder coolant temperatures. Which means you use more gas, and mixed with the colder denser air means you're needing those oxygenates to help reduce emissions.

I could go on in terms of how the reduction in aeromatics also affects fuel consumption and power, but that's a completely different conversation in chemistry.

Regardless, I'm still digressing, so back on topic.

Since LTFT is this innate system used to properly compensate for fuel qualities, it's paramount that whatever feedback systems are used to calculate these values are in proper sync.

That would be the mass air flow system as the font of that data, and the primary oxygen sensor as the feedback.

When you guys swap intakes, filters, and even take into consideration production tolerance; you find that 2 factory cars register different trims and flow differently. This becomes a classic case of the old saying "garbage in, garbage out".

How so? Well simply because it's a vicious cycle of long term trend setting a wide open throttle offset.

What does that mean? Well, if you tune a car for say, 11:1 AFR, and then overtime have the LTFT drift to negative 14% because the intake you used had a 1MM smaller inner diameter, all of the sudden your WOT fueling has removed 14% of fuel.

Need I really go on there? To the same converse, if someone has a boost leak in a pipe,and are always hemoraghing air to the atmosphere on highway cruise, the fuel trim system will detect the metered air, adding an excess of fuel, the trim system starts pulling fuel out over time, and you have the same result again.

Flip it around, if you have a tear in the inlet hose going to the turbo, loose clamp, etc, and you now have a draw of un-metered air, all of the sudden you have a lean mixture which is compensated for with a positive enrichment, which leads to misfire, fouled plugs, etc.

But you can quickly see how the long term trend can really mess things up.

I personally have been asked for a long time about mail order tunes, and while it is possible to make it consistent, the margin for error is nil in the event a car is not what it seems.

Just my $.02, take it for what it's worth.

Jorge (RiftsWRX)
www.ProjectWRX.com

 

You are mostly correct, and obviously know what you are talking about.

However, with the Evo's 3 separate LTFTs, very rarely does a shift in trims affect the tuned AFR in open loop. The LTFT low and LTFT mid are usually the values that drift, and thats because they mostly apply to the idle and cruise airflow ranges (0 - 500 hz) and thats where most closed loop driving occurs.

The LTFT high corrects for closed loop fueling at airflow ranges >500 hz. This much airflow usually means open loop and therefore no trim is applied. This is why almost no Evo will register correction for LTFT high.

We have witnessed slight shifts in open loop AFRs that seem to be related to fuel trims. This usually occurs when LTFT low or LTFT mid go beyond 10% correction or so. If the LTFT high ever changed from 0% correction, I believe that would likely affect the tuned AFR, but I've never seen it happen.