Would you goto a tuner who has never blown an engine? I sure as hell wouldn't. You can not always blame a blown engine on the tune unless you can prove it. I've read Dom's reviews on some Subaru forums seems most people are happy. Clearly you can not please everyone, sounds like he knows his stuff more than you may think. Looks like he also knows how to build a good engine..

 

Huh, are you sure about that? I don't know if I want to take my car to shop that talks **** about other shops... again not very professional. Plus I know for a fact that ER has blown plenty of engines, but you can believe what you want.

 

First of all - why do you keep putting words in Dom's mouth unless you are Dom or are close to him? Dom never "stated" that he used this map as a base; Aaron mentioned in this thread that it was a variant of one of his.

Secondly - I thought I was answering the stealing aspect while going around with examples/analogies. You stopped replying so I made the assumption that you were done on that point.

Finally - by all means take your car to Dom. It sounds like Sass has had good luck with Dom, but it also sounds like Dom is the first to admit he isn't the most familiar with our platform. For my money, I'll take my car to the experts even if they might occasionally get a little bent when people steal from them (even though they are a vendor they are still human, afterall).

 

You are so blind at times it truly amazes me. I would rather take my car to a shop that talks crap about other shops stealing from them than take my car to a shop that talks crap about the car that I am paying them to work on!

 

I don't think anyone has been overly douchey towards Dom, certainly not in the sense of blaming his tune for something going wrong. Even Mo said he couldn't know this for sure of his friend's car.

There have been comments regarding Dom stealing tunes but I don't think any of us have the context to say for sure, other than Aaron.

 

Here is my take on the situation since myself and Eric pulled the map and attempted to help Mo out back at the XXX rootbeer meet a while back. The tune was registering 36 counts of knock which told me it had the dreaded phantom knock problem, or that it has skipped a few teeth. When we looked at the map origionally the map looked like as if it were mapped for a larger turbo, or meth as it was running quite a bit of timing. We decreased the timing to try and get it from knocking and when we took out 10 degrees and it was still knocking we put the origional tune back on and told Mo that there were bigger problems such as the timing belt being off... it turned out that the balance shaft belt was off... If anyone tuning a car when it is in this condition needs to stop and tell the customer that something is seriously wrong with the car and to get it diagnosed... BTW I could tell it was a variant of Aarons map also due to how the timing was layed out on the left hand side of the map, and the way it was scaled... just my .02 cents...

 

I have never blown an engine up because of a tune, to answer your question. We have never lost an engine on the dyno. I have had customers lose engines because race motors are exactly that, RACE motors. If you dont like my apparent lack of professionalism, then you need to examine the facts.

#1, My tunes are blatantly ripped off with no apparent attempt to learn and modify them.

#2, I get a call from the shop that needs advice because they dont even know what is allowable and what isnt with a 4G63 (imports really), I answer these in order to save them and their customer money. I did not charge for my time, I cooperated, and had no concievable way to profit. The only way I could have come out ahead was to let them do what they wanted and pick up the pieces...ethically and morally unacceptable however.

My statement was not about any shop, but one "tuner" in particular who is neither a vendor here nor would I suggest consulting. You seemed to come in here with a vested interest in my statement about Dom. I have "tunes" I have taken off of peoples Evos that had been "tuned by him" and it was obvious he had downloaded them from a car I had previously tuned and then uploaded them as a baseflash/blanket tune. The first one was in late 07 and the last one was about a month and a half ago...there was no difference in the tunes. By the usage of the word variant I mean that when I tune a car my basemaps change to suit the car. His have not, this much is sure.

Ruined a car? WTF does that mean?

Again there is no shop bashing, this is about someone who is tuning with my stuff and claims it as his own.

If you have *****, tell us who you are.

 

For the record, I do not work for English Racing. I can bloody well say what I think public or not.

 

Name the blown customer engines as well. Even Jeff's did not blow when it hit 14k on the mis shift. You want me to air the laundry list of everyone in the NW? You want me to tell you about all the non vendor shops that claim to be authorities on Evolutions and Subarus that cant tune their way out of a cardboard box? Subarus practically tune themselves, so mentioning that doesnt really mean much.

Its obvious you are either Dom or someone from VTR and are a little hurt by my statement. I dont sugarcoat the truth, 18 years of a Drill Sergeant for a father saw clear to that. Being professional would have meant that this never would have occurred and I wouldnt have had to make the statement.

All clear?

 

Freddie,

The timing was deliberately advanced far enough to keep the car running "normal timing" despite the knock. He added 12* across the board rather than be professional and try to determine what was wrong. I had the hood up for 3 minutes and knew what it was. I had someone double check my diagnosis, we pulled the timing cover and it was 180* out. Anyone who tunes anything should have realised the sensors were explaining something was wrong. He tried ignoring it and tried to make the car drivable, it wouldnt have blown up (most likely) but it was definitely not right.

 

You can read more than 12. I myself i hit 20 when i first started retuning the car after another vendor on here had "tuned" my car back in 2005.

36 is the max from what i remember from the dissassembly so if it was really hitting that then you were indeed in trouble (assuming it wasn't some other noise tricking the knock counter) Edit now saw the later posts on the issue.....

So whoever is telling you 12 is max you probably shouldn't listen to them when it comes to tuning Evos .

 

Mo got confused with 12* I think. 36 counts mean it pulls 12* of timing (3 counts per degree obviously).

 

Noted

Thank you for clearing that up for me

 

Who is this EvoFace guy though? I mean not that you guys really should get into it here but seems like this is either this Dom guy or someone close to him and its really lame to come on with that type of account and claim "you'd take your car to him"

 

Your only pulling 4 degrees of timing with 12 counts...ol' 4g can take that for awhile . I remember a friends 1g untuned, stock fp, 20psi on a 14b, and 550cc injectors (not tuned scaled nada) That car lasted almost 200k miles...gotta love low cp.