Thanks for the post. The truth is out there; the Dynoflash guys are in denial. I wish more people who speak in private would speak in public.

 

Josh - these forums are starting to remind me of a girls high school gossip circle. Its regretable that you are choosing to involve yourself in this circus of stupidity. I am not desperate or throwing any tantrums, I was sharing my personal opinion with some one (you) who I considered a friend. You can take my comments for what they are worth, however they were between you and I - not to broadcast on the internet.

Frankly, I think its beneath you to conduct yourself in this manner.

Best of luck.

 

That's pitiful..... A private converstation from 2 person and now it's being broadcast? Damn...come on guys...There are happy and unhappy customers everywhere no matter which tuners you go to. That's just the fact of life. As for me, it's better u than me.....

It's just either bad luck on ur side that the tuner screw up or whatever happened in btw. This will happen no matter how good the tuner is. Well, at least Al didnt blow up any engine....

If you are knowledgable about ur car and how it works, I think that it will help you from running into situation that are unsatifactory. Just my .02 cent...

 

Jeez Al! I thought you said you would not answer in this thread because it went to Iraq ( whatever that means ). I've been reading this all hoping that someone would prevail, but alas, it would seem that even those loyal to you, Al, are jumping ship. You stated earlier that you would not get caught up in name calling or degrading other tuners, yet it now seems that you're calling one a "buffon". Seems like I've gotta call BS on you dude.

 

Al, no one is throwing tantrums and all I or anyone else is doing is sharing personal opinions. Don't make it out to be more than that, please. You act like everyone is against you when all I do is make my recommendation based on my and some close friends experience with your product. People don't have to listen and I am sure some don't. Either way, you should just take the good with the bad, IMO. I'm not trying to change your buisness, just let people know what you are capable of.

Al, you should learn to take the bad with the good. You pull in a lot of money from people putting their faith in you to take care of their cars. Everyone screws up sometimes, man, but it's all about how you manage the situation. That is my biggest problem with you. Once someone has trouble with your product, you sweep them out of your care. For me, that's a problem. It's arrogance and denial. Not a good trait to have considering a HUGE part of business and marketing is POST TRANSACTION ACTIVITIES. What you do after the sale sometimes matters more than what you do before or during. Sometimes it's a hard lesson to learn, and that's ok.

 

Regretably you seem to have come to the impression that I do not provide adequate post sale care of my product. I do not recall what where the particulars of your transaction, so i am not able to comment on your situation.

However, generally I spend at least 5 hours a day on these forums responding to IM's about questions, emails and returning phone messages. I attempt to reach and respond to each and every inquiry in a timely fashion. I think in your case you simply did not concur with my suggestion - (boost issue) - but my memory is vauge on the particulars as I deal with a large volume of questions.

I want to tell you that customer service and attention is one of my priorities and despite your critque on this area my percentage of repeat customers is huge

IN FACT - the last two tuning trips I made - Chicago and LA were 90% repeat customers for re-tunes on previous Dyno Flashes.

While in any business it is impossible to satisfy everyone - I do try very hard to conduct my business in a honorable and professional manner and give my customers the best care and attention I can.

Thanks for your concerns - I will keep them in mind

I can certainly say they are more productive than your previous "BIg GAY Al sucks" tact

 

All you can do is your best. Sometimes a third party perspective is good to see something that is invisible to you, being so close to the work. It can get quite myopic. Seriously though, I'm not against competition in the marketplace by any means, but I don't think that competition should mean disparaging your competitors (by PM or otherwise). Stop badmouthing others and a lot of your surrounding negativity will go away. Hate breeds hate. Just because you do it in private doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Ah, whatever, your work in Dallas speaks for itself. Just ask anyone here. Either way, my point is made and I hope people make good decisions for themselves and learn from my mistake. Peace.

 

i just want to say that when me and evotexas got our evos we went totally oppisite directions in the way we modded our cars. and i will tell you that evotexas talked very big about Al, he thought Al was the best bang for the buck and overall had the best product money could by. in fact at one of the club meetings i thought evotexas was going leave because someone was giving Al a hard time and evotexas was defending him to the bitter end.

i also want to say that there has been alot of talk about mail in flashes and i want to get the facts straight, the flash evotexas got from Al was done in his evo on the street by Al himself, nothing was mailed in. Al personally tuned his evo, street tuned his evo while he was here in dallas.

we always ran each others evos on the highway 5th gear pulls, 4th gear pulls, 3rd gear pulls no matter what combination we used our evos were always even.

then we each ended up with these mods

evotexas:
street tuned dynoflash
mbc
k and n drop in airfilter
downpipe
cat delete
catback (all 3inch)

jason@NTEC :
hks rs intake
3inch catback exhaust
works p2


now no matter what kind of runs we did wheather it was 3rd, 4th, 5th gear pulls, from a stand still my evo always pulled evotexas' evo. now we all know that shouldnt happen especially since he had a downpipe and no cat!

now evotexas is not satisfied with what he has and tries to get the problem resolved but it doesnt get resolved. so evotexas ends up talking with mark from TT and marks like send me your ecu ill flash it for free, so he does. evotexas gets it back and we go for a drive, and i will tell you that i couldnt even keep up with him now, and all he did was get reflashed (through the mail). i mean you all have to understand that evotexas' evo with a flash now pulls on members in our club who have vishnu stage 1+ thats pretty impressive!

now the real question comes to light, "isnt all flash technology the same? i may be wrong but if it is the same why didnt he just get what he ended up with the first time? maybe 199 dollars only gets you so much power, 350 gets you alittle more and 500 gets more power? or maybe there are other tuners out there that know you can give a customer excellent power gains(sometimes for free) and the flash be totally safe. think about it, do you want a tuner that says, "for this amount of money you'll get this much power for more money you get more power and for alittle more money you'll be running 11's"or do you want a tuner that says, "hey man this is my charge and you'll get the maximum safe power i can offer your car for one price and ill always take care of you no matter what i need to do because i want you to stay my customer."

its no competition i would take the tuner who wanted to give me the best for my dollar not up sale me into spending more money.

 

Very good and valid points

I am more than willing to discuss this with you gentleman - in a civilized manner - without speading insults and making personal attacks

You raise some valid concerns and I would like to respond

First, Evotexas recieved a BASE Tune - installed on location and road tested. This is a service that i offer with base tunes installed in person in which I do a OBDII log and quick road test to veify that the car is not actively detonating and pulling timing. There is NO tuning or wideband involved. Quickly road testing the tune rules out any possibility of GROSS or SERIOUS tuning incompatability and gives me a comfort level.

Base tunes are very conservative by design

This has NOTHING to do with pricing and EVERYTHING to do with car to car variance and saftey concerens

Through dynoing hundreds of evos we have come to general conclusions regarding how far to DETUNE a tuning calibration in order to provide a sufficent margin of saftey to ensure that the car will NEVER be too lean or too far advanced in timing. Dealing with a wide variance of individual cars which are tuned remotely a PRUDENT through the mail tuner MUST tune for the lowest common denominator and present a safe product which will provide a resonable power gain in all cars with similar mods - and most importantly NOT result in engine failures or other tuning problems - such as the pulling of ignition timing through detonation.

I would easily provide more power through more agressive tuning settings - a/f and ign timing on the through the mail tunes - however this would result in the occassional issue with a particular car running too lean and I have elected to stray on the conservative side for my through the mail tuning products.

With several hundred of them out there and zero reported engine issues of which I am aware I think my startegy has been effective.

Now - in a custom tuned situation, I hook up a wide band o2 sesnor and read the data from the car and asjut the original base maps to dial in a particular car perfectly. In 95% of cases 5 - 8 remaps are required on a base tune to dial it in 100% to our desired a/f and igntion targets. We strive for a very safe and conservative 11.1 - 11.2 a/f target on full boost and the total absence of any knock or timing pulling by the ecu in all gears and under heat soaked conditions. Although, again, our tuning methods are generally CONSERVATIVE - we feel that the street cars are best left a bit rich and under tuned to promote reliablility and smoothness.

Other tuners have tuned more lean and made more power - however my experience has been that such settings will not hold steady over time and that the ecu will start pulling timing in some areas of the power band when you tune a leaner a/f than 11.4 / 1. I am not interested on making 10 more whp and winding up with a tune that pulls timing in a few hours of driving and makes a rough power band.

Of course - custom tuning CAREFULLY takes time - in my case 2 hours - so it costs more than the base tune. I note that my fully custom tuned flash $399 still is lower than other tuners charge for a base mail flash.

In conclusion, I have my stated methods of tuning which I have been using consistantly throughout since I started tuning evos. While such conservative and generally safe methods may yeild a bit lower power than the theoretical maximum possible I feel that leaving a few whp on the table is the more prudent direction. I understand that some may be disspointed if they do not achive the highest power humanly possible and I agree that those customers should seek other tuners. I have stated methods and concepts and the customer ideally will feel comfortable with my direction and concepts. This is one of the reasons why I offer a money back guarantee.

Finally, I note that I am STILL the reflash tuner with the most customers running 11 second 1/4 mile times and I am syill the reflash tuner who has the most whp ever made on a reflash with a evo 521. Obviously, I am NO stranger when it comes to power and perfromance.

Tuning is a compromise between power and saftey. It is silly to ciriticise one tuner who chose to err on the side of saftey over another who chose instead to push for more power.

BTW - as an aside - here is my latest tune from today which evidences my super rich 11.1 / 1 a/f tuning and very conservative settings.

Note the ultra smooth trq. curve. I can only tell you that driving a car tuned like this on the road is a sheer delight. Such results CAN NOT be obtained tuning leaner and more agressively with pump gas. The stock knock correction features will not tolerate such tuning without the pulling of ign timing.

Rather than brag about how much power you made - or about who beat who in a race - how about posting some dyno sheets so we can see what is behind all that power - what the a/f ratio is - how broad the power band is and how smooth it is ??? Facts and inteligent dialouge are what I prefer.

Here is my work on a car with minimal mods - intake, exhuast and MBC

There is no other tuner offering reflashes with dyno sheets that look like this one. This is not the execption - its the rule - go review all 16 of my case study threads on my forum and see what kind of results my product obtains.

 

Fair enough.

So the logical conclusion to draw from this is that if you want to make power, you are not the choice. If you want something better than stock, you are the choice.

Here is why my conclusion is such:

Your posted custom tune made the same power (1 less HP) as my TT mail in tune AND I do not have the IC pipe that guy did although I did have a fuel pump (only differences). The fuel pump is safety and not power according to you. Ok. Just to add, my AF ratios are not all leaned out as one might infer from your posted info of your said conservativeness. Your graph shows all the proof to my point. It took you TWO carefully spent hours to do what Mark at TT did in 5 minutes. Interesting. I am open to other interpretation. Thanks.

 

Dynoflush sucks. Heard too many bad things from other evo members to trust him with my car.

 

I made 296 on pump and had the boost higher than the tune called for. I turned it down 3 psi and put in race gas and hit 308 because at 21-22 psi it was pulling timing. To say that race gas is what did it is a little bit hard to say. However, I am sure it added a couple HP. In fact, I started the pulls even higher boost than that and turned it down each pull. The power went up each time. My gauge may be off, I don't know for sure. Either way, the last time I turned it down was a significant lowering of boost and it went up 10 HP. It doesn't take a big change in boost/timing to make 10 HP. While I realize that there is a little bit of error invloved, even a 10 horsepower difference is quite small. The point of my story is that a 50 AWHP difference for the same product at the same AF level is not small.

And might I also point out that we are talking about different dynos. I don't know what Pruvens equates to a Dynojet, but the Mustang we were on shows a little over 320 for my car on a Dynojet. The Pruven may be more or less I don't know. The dyno chart looks like a Dynojet chart I used when I had a 350Z. What is their dyno?

 

I am glad that apparently we are reaching some point of common understanding.

I would be curious to see your dyno sheet on pump gas and also to see the a/f ratios that you are running.

The magic or trick if you will to doing these tunes well is to reach a decent power level WITH the conservative a/f and ign timing settings.

I put it like this, you can quickly and easily produce some significant power with a flash or other engine management through the tested and common methods of leaning out a/f's and rasing timing. In my opinion, what distingishes a excelent tune is in achiving decent power levels while keeping engine knock to a threshold BELOW what the stock ecu is programed to allow. I have seen many "powerful" tunes that produced knock on pump gas and which triggered ecu induced ign timing retardation in some areas which makes for a rough power band and results in more long term stress upon mechanical compenents.

The stock ecu is a very complex and effective control unit and which has very sensitive settings for knock. Only through months and months of careful testing and trial and error could I come up with methods and concepts of reaching decent power levels while keeping the stock ecu totally happy with regard to knock counts under a wide variety of ooperating conditions.

As for tuning a particular ecu, I find that through very careful and methodical adjustment of the timing and fuel settings I can reach a optimal balance where the engine starts to have a wonderful smooth and quiet balance between power and knock noise. At this area, the tune becomes powerful, smooth and totally safe.

In my own personal epxerience, reaching a result that is perfectly balanced where I can see NO reason for further corrections or adjustments takes me between 1.5 to 2 full hours of testing and adjustment and then retesting. I CAN NOT speak for other tuners. Perhaps someone gifted with a greater sense of predictive intuition could more readily estimate and pre-determine what kind of corrections a particular car will need to dial it in? I know from my experience tuning several hundered evos that 1.5 - 2 hours is the average for me to dial in a particular car. Of course, there are many cases where I get it done more quickly when we find a particular car that more closely matches our base calibrations - particularly when we are road tuning where we have less of a cool down period needed between runs.

Speaking frankly, I have not seen many dyno sheets from ANY other tuners which look as smooth as the ones I have been posting - regardless of how little or long they spent tuning the cars.

I can assure you that you will NEVER see me ever bragging about how quickly I can get a tune done. We don't charge for our dyno time or tunes by the hour so generally there is no disadvantage to the customer that i may take longer. Inb fact the custom tunes here on my own home dyno shop in CT last as long as they take - with some taking up to 4 hours of dyno time - ALL at the same flat $399 for the flash and all the dyno time.

A little known fact is that I actually make alightly LESS money on the custom tunes I do here in CT after paying for the dyno time than I do with the mail in flash of $199.99. We do the custom tunes here on the dyno for research and deveolpment fo our library of base tunes and for marketing purposes. In many cases we give the cutomer more value in dyno time at an hourly rate than the total cost of the flash $399.99. Either way, its certainly a good value to recieve a custom tune here with two hours of careful testing and dyno time included.

I have came to the personal conclusion that in tuning "haste makes waste." This is the # 1 reason why I elected to STOP the very popular dyno days we used to conduct at my home dyno shop which resulted in a time pressure factor which I did not feel was condusive to a methodical and careful tuning job. I do them 1 at a time and take as much time as I need to feel confident enough to have my name on the tune.

To sumarize :

My mail in tunes are generally on the safe and conservative side

My custom tunes take about 1.5 to 2 hours and produce slightly more power

Other tuners can tune faster and make just as much power if not more.

 

BTW - HOW was it possible to be pulling timing on RACE GAS that has a higher octane ? Usually pulling timing means there is knock activity.

Also, 50 whp variation between the two competing flashes is virtualy impossible unless my flash was making less whp than stock.

A stock evo makes about 240 to the wheels on the average

Add an intake, MBC and Exhuast and your making 265 - 275 WITHOUT ANY TUNING OR FLASH

Even a weak *** base flash will get you 280 - 285 to the wheels - this is all pure mathematics and physics through leaner than stock a/f ratio and more timing

On a car without cams - the best flash you can imagine in the history of the world done by a master flasher could maybe get you to 317 whp - 320 MAX on pump gas. Most flashes would yield about 300 - which is what you seem to have gotten.

Somehow your numbers dont make sesne to me.

BUT - I can tell you that if you took the time to post the dyno sheets with a/f ratio and you logged your OBDII ign timing numbers you are pulling then we could start to make heads or tails of what is going on and discover more about where the missing whp is comming from.

 

Nice of you to summarize!

So my summary to this thread would be that if you are not concerned about the last 20-50 HP available, Dynoflash should be in your option list for a flash as long as you believe that 11:1 AF ratio is as risky as you want to take it.

If you are ok with high 11's AF which I think is very safe on 93 octane, and want that extra 3-5 car lengths in the quarter mile, couple seconds on the road course, or the extra boost of power on the street, while having lower injector duty cycles, maybe something else should be considered (TurboTrix, IMO). I know Mark is probably not going to chime in here to keep the tuner wars to a minimum so take that with a grain of salt since he might run 10:1 AF for all I know.

Either way, all I wanted was to express my opinion, my story to people in the market for a flash so they can make a decision based not only on "tuner advertisements," which are only so valid, as well as hard user experience, good and bad.

And that is just addressing the product. The persona is a whole different ball game. However, I'm tapped out at this point and don't want to bite into that. Peace.