Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

7 minutes ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Yes, here's a scenario.

Say your original tune by Tuner A has been done, with the wrong injector data, wrong sensor scaling, base timing not synced properly. Tuner B then hops on, fixes up the cock ups and now realises the fuel table & timing tables are pretty much invalid.

Easier for them to copy and paste a known working tune from a similar car they've done in the past with similar mods, then tune/calibrate accordingly 

Yep that makes a lot of sense, actually I was reading reviews a few minutes ago of this exact same scenario that you mentioned. Now, I wonder if they will do a copy and paste tune, doubt it lol. Less money that way for them.

1 minute ago, Dose Pipe Sutututu said:

Why? They will still charge you for a full tune.

Really even though they save a ton of time with the copy paste it's still the same price as a full tune? I thought it was a time thing where the more time they spend the more money they charge, now if the adjustments take the same amount of time then that makes sense to me, or am I missing something?

1 minute ago, silviaz said:

Really even though they save a ton of time with the copy paste it's still the same price as a full tune? I thought it was a time thing where the more time they spend the more money they charge, now if the adjustments take the same amount of time then that makes sense to me, or am I missing something?

Oh you sweet summer child. It might be easier to look at this from the Euro scene, in this case a Golf Gti. A super quick google... 

https://www.mountune.com.au/products/m52-golf-gti-stage-1-power-upgrade-mk7-5-only

$1,175  for a "stage 1" tune. 

https://www.vagparts.com.au/products/volkswagen-golf-gti-mk7-tuning

Oh it's on sale! $800 for a "stage 1" tune. 

So, in these instances the car never sees the dyno, no mechanic ever sees the car, no tuner touches the car. You hand over a large sum of money and you get a copy paste flash tune uploaded to your ecu. 

So much of the tuning industry is like this. 

Why would a tuner, turn down the opportunity to extract a minimum of $1,000 from you? It's an easier pill to swallow for the average customer when they sell it as a "full tune". Oh I'm sure they'll happily bill you for more if you want something special done on top, but the price of admission will always be for a "full tune". 

I really hate to be so cynical about this but it's reality. The obvious solution is to tune the car yourself. 

  • Like 2

But a Skyline is not a OEM hardware flash tune. Skyline mods pretty much START at Stage .. 8 or something like that.

To "fix up" a tune you have to first familiarize yourself with WTF is going on. Any tuner will realistically have a look and see if the baseline actually makes sense. If it does, then yes of course they will use that as a base and spend time tweaking and modifying it. If it's way too far from what they are used to they will start from scratch, but treating the current tune like a baseline is as good a place as any to start as long as it makes sense to do so.

However it is a CYA technique. They do not expect that the tune to be 30 seconds of work away from being perfect, and they have a paying customer with a complaint that they very much want to resolve. To do that properly they quote high and will go over everything to make the thing work as well as possible.

It would be crazy for them to assume that they can make a fast tweak to fix a tune made by someone else on a car they don't know. It could also not be a software problem as well.

  • Like 1
56 minutes ago, Kinkstaah said:

It would be crazy for them to assume that they can make a fast tweak to fix a tune made by someone else on a car they don't know

Hence they rather copy / paste a tune with similar mods from a previous car as a base, not to mention all the tables are scaled how the tuner likes it. And in the odd event, the car has like for like mods as the file they have on hand, even better!

Means less work.

I once did 2x S15s with GTX2867R turbos, same 980cc injectors, one had Procams & broken VTC, one had Poncams and working VTC. Did I start from scratch? hell no.

12 hours ago, Murray_Calavera said:

Oh you sweet summer child. It might be easier to look at this from the Euro scene, in this case a Golf Gti. A super quick google... 

https://www.mountune.com.au/products/m52-golf-gti-stage-1-power-upgrade-mk7-5-only

$1,175  for a "stage 1" tune. 

https://www.vagparts.com.au/products/volkswagen-golf-gti-mk7-tuning

Oh it's on sale! $800 for a "stage 1" tune. 

So, in these instances the car never sees the dyno, no mechanic ever sees the car, no tuner touches the car. You hand over a large sum of money and you get a copy paste flash tune uploaded to your ecu. 

So much of the tuning industry is like this. 

Why would a tuner, turn down the opportunity to extract a minimum of $1,000 from you? It's an easier pill to swallow for the average customer when they sell it as a "full tune". Oh I'm sure they'll happily bill you for more if you want something special done on top, but the price of admission will always be for a "full tune". 

I really hate to be so cynical about this but it's reality. The obvious solution is to tune the car yourself. 

Ah, I thought as much lol. Me tuning the car myself would be a disaster, I'll just pay the 1k+ 🤣

1 hour ago, Kinkstaah said:

But a Skyline is not a OEM hardware flash tune. Skyline mods pretty much START at Stage .. 8 or something like that.

To "fix up" a tune you have to first familiarize yourself with WTF is going on. Any tuner will realistically have a look and see if the baseline actually makes sense. If it does, then yes of course they will use that as a base and spend time tweaking and modifying it. If it's way too far from what they are used to they will start from scratch, but treating the current tune like a baseline is as good a place as any to start as long as it makes sense to do so.

However it is a CYA technique. They do not expect that the tune to be 30 seconds of work away from being perfect, and they have a paying customer with a complaint that they very much want to resolve. To do that properly they quote high and will go over everything to make the thing work as well as possible.

It would be crazy for them to assume that they can make a fast tweak to fix a tune made by someone else on a car they don't know. It could also not be a software problem as well.

That makes sense.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • I did end up getting it sorted, as GTSBoy said, there was a corroded connection and wire that needed to be replaced. I ended up taking out the light assembly, giving everything a good clean and re-soldered the old joints, and it came out good.
    • Wow, thanks for your help guys 🙏. I really appreciate it. Thanks @Rezz, if i fail finding any new or used, full or partial set of original Stage carpets i will come back to you for sure 😉 Explenation is right there, i just missed it 🤦‍♂️. Thanks for pointing out. @soviet_merlin in the meantime, I received a reply from nengun, and i quote: "Thanks for your message and interest in Nengun. KG4900 is for the full set of floor mats, while KG4911 is only the Driver's Floor Mat. FR, RH means Front Right Hand Side. All the Full Set options are now discontinued. However, the Driver's Floor Mat options are still available according to the latest information available to us. We do not know what the differences would be, but if you only want the one mat, we can certainly see what we can find out for you". Interesting. It seems they still have some "new old stock" that Duncan mentioned 🤔. I wonder if they can provide any photos......And i also just realized that amayama have G4900 sets. I'm tempted too. 
    • Any update on this one? did you manage to get it fixed?    i'm having the same issue with my r34 and i believe its to do with the smart entry (keyless) control module but cant be sure without forking out to get a replacement  
    • So this being my first contribution to the SAU forums, I'd like to present and show how I had to solve probably one of the most annoying fixes on any car I've owned: replacing a speedometer (or "speedo") sensor on my newly acquired Series 1 Stagea 260RS Autech Version. I'm simply documenting how I went about to fix this issue, and as I understand it is relatively rare to happen to this generation of cars, it is a gigantic PITA so I hope this helps serve as reference to anyone else who may encounter this issue. NOTE: Although I say this is meant for the 260RS, because the gearbox/drivetrain is shared with the R33 GTR with the 5-speed manual, the application should be exactly the same. Background So after driving my new-to-me Stagea for about 1500km, one night while driving home the speedometer and odometer suddenly stopped working. No clunking noise, no indication something was broken, the speedometer would just stop reading anything and the odometer stopped going up. This is a huge worry for me, because my car is relatively low mileage (only 45k km when purchased) so although I plan to own the car for a long time, a mismatched odometer reading would be hugely detrimental to resale should the day come to sell the car. Thankfully this only occurred a mile or two from home so it wasn't extremely significant. Also, the OCD part of me would be extremely irked if the numbers that showed on my dash doesn't match the actual ageing of the car. Diagnosing I had been in communication with the well renown GTR shop in the USA, U.P.garage up near University Point in Washington state. After some back and forth they said it could be one of two things: 1) The speedometer sensor that goes into the transfer case is broken 2) The actual cluster has a component that went kaput. They said this is common in older Nissan gauge clusters and that would indicate a rebuild is necessary. As I tried to figure out if it was problem #1, I resolved problem #2 by sending my cluster over to Relentless Motorsports in Dallas, TX, whom is local to me and does cluster and ECU rebuilds. He is a one man operation who meticulously replaces every chip, resistor, capacitor, and electronic component on the PCB's on a wide variety of classic and modern cars. His specialty is Lexus and Toyota, but he came highly recommended by Erik of U.P.garage since he does the rebuilds for them on GTR clusters.  For those that don't know, on R32 and R33 GTR gearboxes, the speedometer sensor is mounted in the transfer case and is purely an analog mini "generator" (opposite of an alternator essentially). Based on the speed the sensor spins it generates an AC sine wave voltage up to 5V, and sends that via two wires up to the cluster which then interprets it via the speedometer dial. The signal does NOT go to the ECU first, the wiring goes to the cluster first then the ECU after (or so I'm told).  Problems/Roadblocks I first removed the part from the car on the underside of the transfer case (drain your transfer case fluid/ATF first, guess who found out that the hard way?), and noted the transfer case fluid was EXTREMELY black, most likely never changed on my car. When attempting to turn the gears it felt extremely gritty, as if something was binding the shaft from rotating properly. I got absolutely no voltage reading out of the sensor no matter how fast I turned the shaft. After having to reflow the solder on my AFM sensors based on another SAU guide here, I attempted to disassemble the silicone seal on the back of the sensor to see what happened inside the sensor; turns out, it basically disintegrated itself. Wonderful. Not only had the electrical components destroyed themselves, the magnetic portion on what I thought was on the shaft also chipped and was broken. Solution So solution: find a spare part right? Wrong. Nissan has long discontinued the proper sensor part number 32702-21U19, and it is no longer obtainable either through Nissan NSA or Nissan Japan. I was SOL without proper speed or mileage readings unless I figured out a way to replace this sensor. After tons of Googling and searching on SAU, I found that there IS however a sensor that looks almost exactly like the R33/260RS one: a sensor meant for the R33/R34 GTT and GTS-T with the 5 speed manual. The part number was 25010-21U00, and the body, plug, and shaft all looked exactly the same. The gear was different at the end, but knowing the sensor's gear is held on with a circlip, I figured I could just order the part and swap the gears. Cue me ordering a new part from JustJap down in Kirrawee, NSW, then waiting almost 3 weeks for shipping and customs clearing. The part finally arrives and what did I find? The freaking shaft lengths don't match. $&%* I discussed with Erik how to proceed, and figuring that I basically destroyed the sensor trying to get the shaft out of the damaged sensor from my car. we deemed it too dangerous to try and attempt to swap shafts to the correct length. I had to find a local CNC machinist to help me cut and notch down the shaft. After tons of frantic calling on a Friday afternoon, I managed to get hold of someone and he said he'd be able to do it over half a week. I sent him photos and had him take measurements to match not only the correct length and notch fitment, but also a groove to machine out to hold the retentive circlip. And the end result? *chef's kiss* Perfect. Since I didn't have pliers with me when I picked up the items, I tested the old gear and circlip on. Perfect fit. After that it was simply swapping out the plug bracket to the new sensor, mount it on the transfer case, refill with ATF/Nissan Matic Fluid D, then test out function. Thankfully with the rebuilt cluster and the new sensor, both the speedometer and odometer and now working properly!   And there you have it. About 5-6 weeks of headaches wrapped up in a 15 minute photo essay. As I was told it is rare for sensors of this generation to die so dramatically, but you never know what could go wrong with a 25+ year old car. I HOPE that no one else has to go through this problem like I did, so with my take on a solution I hope it helps others who may encounter this issue in the future. For the TL;DR: 1) Sensor breaks. 2) Find a replacement GTT/GTS-T sensor. 3) Find a CNC machinist to have you cut it down to proper specs. 4) Reinstall then pray to the JDM gods.   Hope this guide/story helps anyone else encountering this problem!
    • So this being my first contribution to the SAU forums, I'd like to present and show how I had to solve probably one of the most annoying fixes on any car I've owned: replacing a speedometer (or "speedo") sensor on my newly acquired Series 1 Stagea 260RS Autech Version. I'm simply documenting how I went about to fix this issue, and as I understand it is relatively rare to happen to this generation of cars, it is a gigantic PITA so I hope this helps serve as reference to anyone else who may encounter this issue. NOTE: Although I say this is meant for the 260RS, because the gearbox/drivetrain is shared with the R33 GTR with the 5-speed manual, the application should be exactly the same. Background So after driving my new-to-me Stagea for about 1500km, one night while driving home the speedometer and odometer suddenly stopped working. No clunking noise, no indication something was broken, the speedometer would just stop reading anything and the odometer stopped going up. This is a huge worry for me, because my car is relatively low mileage (only 45k km when purchased) so although I plan to own the car for a long time, a mismatched odometer reading would be hugely detrimental to resale should the day come to sell the car. Thankfully this only occurred a mile or two from home so it wasn't extremely significant. Also, the OCD part of me would be extremely irked if the numbers that showed on my dash doesn't match the actual ageing of the car. Diagnosing I had been in communication with the well renown GTR shop in the USA, U.P.garage up near University Point in Washington state. After some back and forth they said it could be one of two things: 1) The speedometer sensor that goes into the transfer case is broken 2) The actual cluster has a component that went kaput. They said this is common in older Nissan gauge clusters and that would indicate a rebuild is necessary. As I tried to figure out if it was problem #1, I resolved problem #2 by sending my cluster over to Relentless Motorsports in Dallas, TX, whom is local to me and does cluster and ECU rebuilds. He is a one man operation who meticulously replaces every chip, resistor, capacitor, and electronic component on the PCB's on a wide variety of classic and modern cars. His specialty is Lexus and Toyota, but he came highly recommended by Erik of U.P.garage since he does the rebuilds for them on GTR clusters.  For those that don't know, on R32 and R33 GTR gearboxes, the speedometer sensor is mounted in the transfer case and is purely an analog mini "generator" (opposite of an alternator essentially). Based on the speed the sensor spins it generates an AC sine wave voltage up to 5V, and sends that via two wires up to the cluster which then interprets it via the speedometer dial. The signal does NOT go to the ECU first, the wiring goes to the cluster first then the ECU after (or so I'm told).  Problems/Roadblocks I first removed the part from the car on the underside of the transfer case (drain your transfer case fluid/ATF first, guess who found out that the hard way?), and noted the transfer case fluid was EXTREMELY black, most likely never changed on my car. When attempting to turn the gears it felt extremely gritty, as if shttps://imgur.com/6TQCG3xomething was binding the shaft from rotating properly. After having to reflow the solder on my AFM sensors based on another SAU guide here, I attempted to disassemble the silicone seal on the back of the sensor to see what happened inside the sensor; turns out, it basically disintegrated itself. Wonderful. Not only had the electrical components destroyed themselves, the magnetic portion on what I thought was on the shaft also chipped and was broken. Solution So solution: find a spare part right? Wrong. Nissan has long discontinued the proper sensor part number 32702-21U19, and it is no longer obtainable either through Nissan NSA or Nissan Japan. I was SOL without proper speed or mileage readings unless I figured out a way to replace this sensor. After tons of Googling and searching on SAU, I found that there IS however a sensor that looks almost exactly like the R33/260RS one: a sensor meant for the R33/R34 GTT and GTS-T with the 5 speed manual. The part number was 25010-21U00, and the body, plug, and shaft all looked exactly the same. The gear was different at the end, but knowing the sensor's gear is held on with a circlip, I figured I could just order the part and swap the gears. Cue me ordering a new part from JustJap down in Kirrawee, NSW, then waiting almost 3 weeks for shipping and customs clearing. The part finally arrives and what did I find? The freaking shaft lengths don't match. $&%* I discussed with Erik how to proceed, and figuring that I basically destroyed the sensor trying to get the shaft out of the damaged sensor from my car. we deemed it too dangerous to try and attempt to swap shafts to the correct length. I had to find a local CNC machinist to help me cut and notch down the shaft. After tons of frantic calling on a Friday afternoon, I managed to get hold of someone and he said he'd be able to do it over half a week. I sent him photos and had him take measurements to match not only the correct length and notch fitment, but also a groove to machine out to hold the retentive circlip. And the end result? *chef's kiss* Perfect. Since I didn't have pliers with me when I picked up the items, I tested the old gear and circlip on. Perfect fit. After that it was simply swapping out the plug bracket to the new sensor, mount it on the transfer case, refill with ATF/Nissan Matic Fluid D, then test out function. Thankfully with the rebuilt cluster and the new sensor, both the speedometer and odometer and now working properly!   And there you have it. About 5-6 weeks of headaches wrapped up in a 15 minute photo essay. As I was told it is rare for sensors of this generation to die so dramatically, but you never know what could go wrong with a 25+ year old car. I HOPE that no one else has to go through this problem like I did, so with my take on a solution I hope it helps others who may encounter this issue in the future. For the TL;DR: 1) Sensor breaks. 2) Find a replacement GTT/GTS-T sensor. 3) Find a CNC machinist to have you cut it down to proper specs. 4) Reinstall then pray to the JDM gods.   Hope this guide/story helps anyone else encountering this problem!
×
×
  • Create New...