Alright guy's lets hear some users experiences from the local tuning shops. Things like customer service, your tuning experiences, how helpful were they with your questions etc.

These are the two I've dealt with thus far and although I have not had a tune from either I will be needing one shortly and am planning to give English my business the first go around.

English Racing - These guys have been awesome and so helpful with any questions and are totally open to give you suggestions. I purchased my Comp Clutch through them and readily gave me a tour of the shop without even asking. I have nothing bad to say. Aaron has built up a huge reputation for his tuning talent in the evo community, and I definitely look forward to doing business with them in the future.
I have heard of only one horror story from a "friend of a friend" who had left a supra with them for a week to get tuned and that they left it out back in the yard with the hood open and ruined some of his hand polished parts.


PSI - The first thing that comes to mind when I think of PSI is their tuning ability and the evo's that I have seen that were tuned by them among a multitude of other cars. Hold it right there though because my experience goes downhill from here. John Reed... has left me with one of the worst customer service experiences I have ever had. Thousands of dollars spent and only receive partial order of my parts, calls and calls and calls with no answers no replies for weeks, months... I would love to get a tune done by them but am wary of a half assed job.

so lets hear others experiences, and feel free to chime in on other local tuning shops etc.

 

Does John Reed work for PSI? I don't know much about him except he's "the man" for supras

Either way, I'd go to English just because evos are what they do

 

John has his own office at psi and I believe is sub contracted or something along those lines for them. He is the man when it comes to Supras but does extensive tuning for rally teams driving subuarus and evos and is also tuning alot of lambos for UGR.

I love seeing Aaron doing videos with his tuning and explains why and how he gets the car to do what it does. Just displays that he confidence and passion for what he does.

 

Seeing that I have been friends with Lucas for years, I'm going to say English is the best shop in the NW.

I have never dealt with PSI. I do have a friend that has had a lot of work done to his car by them. In the end they over sold him on a turbo that was over sized for a autocross car. That in turn made the car slower. The power delivery was a on off switch. The power went like this. Nothing,nothing nothing, everything. I have seen some of the evo's they have done. They make lots of power and look nice but at the end of the day they all seem to fail to perform vs the other evo's that are built by english.

 

I honestly don't know how you can leave English disappointed. I know it has happened but I think in those cases (the ones I know of) the customer went in looking to be disappointed and in those specific cases, I'm not sure the customer wanted to be appeased or could be appeased.

Whenever I had any sort of issue with English (and I'm not nut swinging, there are bound to be issues and I've had a couple myself), I went directly to Lucas or Aaron and let them know what happened. They always took this extremely seriously and worked immediately to fix the situation and also repair any confidence I might've lost with them.

I don't have any personal experience with any other local tuners, and I don't expect that I ever will need to have experience with other local tuners, as I plan on being a customer of theirs for life. I do have experience with other tuners around the country, but I'll leave that off here.

 

PSI isn't really an "Evo" shop..they work on a wide variety of cars so their evo knowledge isn't as extensive as ER...

John just uses PSI for his homebase when he isn't traveling around tuning lambos and other badass cars but isn't really an employee there..That being said im very surprised you had a bad transaction with him,I've heard he can be hard to reach(hectic tuning schedule with alot of traveling) but he is a great guy!

Jason is the co owner of PSI and the tuner there,he wont mess with stock ECU stuff last i checked so if you are sticking with that then definately go with Aaron @ ER.

I've been tuned by Jason & John multiple times and i have never been let down,they are top notch tuners.

Jason @ PSI and Lucas English have known each other for some time and unless something has changed since i last spoke to Jason there is absolutely no bad blood between the two,Jason speaks highly of Lucas. I hope this thread doesn't turn into a fanboy party with one side bashing the other side's shop of choice since they are both very competent tuning options.

 

I certainly hope a fanboy party does not start either. I'm glad you chimed in I'm just curious to hear experiences from both shops or any other shops for that matter.

 

I have no experience with English so I can't help you out there.

As far as PSI goes, I wouldn't let them put fuel in my car. Took a car to them and had a horrible experience.

And as far as other shops, I've had my car at COBB tuning a couple times and never had any issues. They actually wouldn't tune me one time because my tires were looking a little rough and didn't want to take any chances. Picked up some new tires and they had me back in within a week.

 

Don't have experience with PSI but when it comes to the Evo VIII and IX in the NW there is no other shop that compares to ER in terms of explicit knowledge of the platform and the fact that they have built and tuned Evos for everything from road to auto-x to rally to drag to road-course. No one else in the NW has that expertise on the Evo so what you will do is pay them to learn on your dime.

 

Been to both places. Even wrote a review about PSI.

For tuning an Evo, I wouldn't take my car to anyone but English, AMS, E-Spec, Jon@HBSpeed, or Razorlab. Those are just about the only tuners I trust when it comes to an Evo, especially a X. Lucas and Aaron know their stuff inside and out. They've been tuning the 4G63 since Talons, and really push the car as far as it will SAFELY go. The huge downside, is they are swamped. They must have 40+ Evos in their queue. I think right now, it's a 2+ week wait time, unless you're just getting a tune.

PSI: In the end I left happy. I wasn't thrilled the first time I left, but that was chalked up to a misunderstanding. I do feel they are pretty overpriced, but I feel they stand behind their work, so it can be worth it. I don't have any engine tuning experience with them, but they tuned my suspension and was quite happy with the results. I have heard of some horror stories come out of that shop, but I personally haven't had any bad experiences.

 

I don't have a dog in this fight but I wish I lived closer to the coast so I could get to ER..
Not sure how hand polished parts get ruined, polish them again--
Kinda hard to say what either place will say when they catch wind of your post-- the knife cuts both ways.
Good luck

 

Both Aaron and John Reed are well respected tuners. I don't think you could go wrong with either. That said, ER is obviously FAR more active in the evo community. So... doesn't it just make sense to support the guys that support us?

 

It would be cool if we were closer but that always means we are further for some so in the end we are where we are at.

As far as what I think about this post?

You have to ask questions to get answers, there are no hard feelings in here on our end. I am pretty sure I can speak for Jason and that he would say the same.

 

very well put, Jason.

 

I'll just chime in a little here since I have experience with ER and John Reed.

I've pretty much just gone to ER since they are more focused on Evos, and they've always been great as far as customer service and just the overall quality of the tunes / work they do there. John Reed is an amazing tuner, but I don't know what's up as far as him working for PSI. Like others have said, I think he's more on his own and just uses space at PSI. So I have zero experience with PSI directly, so I can't say yay or nay for them, but I keep hearing negatives...John Reed tuned my Evo 8 back in 2005 or so and did an amazing job, but that was ages ago with an AEM EMS. I've known John personally for over 15 years (omg I feel old...) since he worked for Beaverton Toyota and he's a great guy but very busy with all sorts of projects, so ER is where I go for work/parts/tunes. I have nothing negative at all to say about John Reed, but I do know he's very busy and kinda overbooked sometimes tuning Lambos etc for crazy standing mile events. I've known Lucas for quite some time too and I'm glad to see what he's built from the ground up!

Trevor