A little tuner action: AA vs Stock vs Powerchip

[BPMSport]

Hi Omar,

Let's keep this relationship professional. I don't recall speaking with you in the past directly. If you would like to discuss over PM, I'm happy to do so.

I will have the full writeup on this finished today or tomorrow. It will include the methods used, the sequence, and an analysis of the results.

Please do not take this as a public attack against AA as this is not the intent. We solely wanted to illustrate our findings.

I think that Jeremy and I would be congratulated instead of "reeled in" for identifying and fixing the problem on powertrips car. And just for reference, we did atleast 10 dyno pulls on his car. The graphs listed on the chart were the respective highest of each tune.

Regards,
Mike

Originally Posted by Active Autowerke

Mike,

Long time no talk... Good to see you found a home at Powerchip.

I can honestly say I didn't expect anything else from you for a first post a sponsor...

Assuming your data is correct..... were each of these runs documented the best runs for AA,stock, and Powerchip...? Did the dyno operator do each run the same, etc, etc.???

To publicly attack AA (even though indirectly) on a forum and imply that we are selling software that loses power over stock is ridiculous and shows a poor taste (lack) in judgment.

We have sold hundreds of these upgrades with several members (respected) posting honest reviews.. many of them with dyno charts showing noticeable improvements over stock...

Congrats to Powerchip for joining the E9X m3 community but please try not to use Active Autowerke to promote your product. Hopefully the Powerchip Management will reel you in Mike....

We will have more data from our in-house dyno next week to support this..

Hope everyone has a good weekend

All the best.

[gthirtyfizle]

Its funny how tuners must always constantly interefere/compete with each other. Dont get me wrong, this is the reason y some companies succeed and y some dont. U must always improve. But no reason to jump into someone elses thread just cause they were able to make more power.

[ching]

PowerTrip, thanks for doing this. It's rare to be able to see mods compared side-by-side in an objective format.

Mike, looking forward to seeing your write-up.

[King Tut]

Does anyone else find it interesting that the stock run number is after the Powerchip tuned run number? The poster said that he dynoed with the AA tune, then stock, then the Powerchip tune. It looks to me like he dynoed the AA tune, then did a TON of dyno tuning pulls and had a Powerchip tune, then he quickly flashed back to stock while the car still had the new learned power in the ecu causing the higher stock numbers than the AA tune. That seems a very unfair way of doing things. I would like to see files 1 through 8 and files 27 through 30.

[powertrip]

I'll let Mike chime in on this, but I don't think that's the way that it works when flashing to a completely different map. All of the "learned timing" should be erased when the DME flashes to a completely different map. Regardless of that, this post is to show the benefits of a custom tune over an OTS map (not to slander AA ). I think Powerchip did the job by providing 40whp peak...end of story.

Originally Posted by King Tut

Does anyone else find it interesting that the stock run number is after the Powerchip tuned run number? The poster said that he dynoed with the AA tune, then stock, then the Powerchip tune. It looks to me like he dynoed the AA tune, then did a TON of dyno tuning pulls and had a Powerchip tune, then he quickly flashed back to stock while the car still had the new learned power in the ecu causing the higher stock numbers than the AA tune. That seems a very unfair way of doing things. I would like to see files 1 through 8 and files 27 through 30.

[MrHarris]

Very impressive numbers with the temperature in CA. Today has been the hottest all summer, literally.

[BPMSport]

Originally Posted by King Tut

Does anyone else find it interesting that the stock run number is after the Powerchip tuned run number? The poster said that he dynoed with the AA tune, then stock, then the Powerchip tune. It looks to me like he dynoed the AA tune, then did a TON of dyno tuning pulls and had a Powerchip tune, then he quickly flashed back to stock while the car still had the new learned power in the ecu causing the higher stock numbers than the AA tune. That seems a very unfair way of doing things. I would like to see files 1 through 8 and files 27 through 30.

Adaptations are cleared with every flash. The "new learned power" is not retained at all. We did stock pulls in the beginning, and also did a stock pulls after the last powerchip file. Remember that the stock file that we put in is off of the base files that we have. Only AA has the readout of the true stock program that originally came with the car. Our base files however should be roughly the same in horsepower and in programming as his original file. If AA wishes to send us the stock file, we're happy to re-dyno it again.

I don't have any time today to resize the images and videos and post the writeup. I will however, get to it in the next couple of days. The tuning stuff is my hobby, I give it high priority but I have to take care of my clients in the IT world first because they pay me the big bucks. Sorry for the delay.

[KINGLEH]

Hey powertrip... How long did you have the AA tune for?

[powertrip]

Originally Posted by KINGLEH

Hey powertrip... How long did you have the AA tune for?

I want to say I ran it for approx 6000 miles, so maybe 6 months. It was a smooth tune when I was pretty much stock, but felt "congested" once I upgraded my cats.

[AMPowerJ]

Very nice!

[Ca$hOnly]

What upgrades other than the software do you have?

[powertrip]

Originally Posted by Ca$hOnly

What upgrades other than the software do you have?

X-pipe & HFC's/Axle-back exhaust/Pulley/Drop-in filter .

[Jonmartin]

I like how AA got all defensive because a custom tune was proven to be superior to their Off the shelf flash what exactly did they think should happen? Is that a joke? Good job to my man Jeremy showing off his skills.

[powertrip]

Originally Posted by PencilGeek

Whose crosspipe do you have? You didn't list it in your signature, so I didn't add it to the DynoDB.

Encore Innovation.

[powertrip]

Originally Posted by Jonmartin

I like how AA got all defensive because a custom tune was proven to be superior to their Off the shelf flash what exactly did they think should happen? Is that a joke? Good job to my man Jeremy showing off his skills.

Yep, Jeremy can tune the wheels off anything with 4 wheels (and some things without ).

[Jonmartin]

Originally Posted by PencilGeek

I'm going to jump in here simply to correct the record as I know it. Before I dyno'd and reviewed the AA ECU tune, I asked a lot of question. There are some in this thread who have implied (or stated as fact) that AA does not engage is custom tunes. That assumption (or statement) is completely false. At any customer's request, AA will start with their "shelf tune" and customize it for the customer's situation. That's exactly what they did for me. I told them which modifications I had on the car, and which modification I was going to get next, and they gave me a tune that was custom tailored to those requirements. I would say those results spoke for themselves: 28hp, and 22 ft/lbs torque gained. For me, those results were stunning, and the car drove so much more responsive.

I have no interest in taking sides here because both companies provide very fine products. My only interest in posting, was to correct the misinformation I saw. I thoroughly enjoyed my AA ECU tune while I had it; but as many of you know, the stroker motor comes with its own ECU tune and the AA software is no longer in my ECU.

BTW, I fixed the dyno records to reflect your Encore X-Pipe.

Theres no such thing as a custom tune unless they physically touched and tuned your car in person a mail tune doesnt count, BTW I thought Jeremy also tuned your car What ever happend to that?

[Eugene-TAIWAN]

I think a comparison run is needed!!!

Get 2 cars and compare them then post it. That would make it nice and easy.

[powertrip]

Negative ghost rider, you'll never catch me street racing. However, any of you guys in OC are more than welcome to come over for a ride .

Originally Posted by Eugene-TAIWAN

I think a comparison run is needed!!!

Get 2 cars and compare them then post it. That would make it nice and easy.

[BPMSport]

Originally Posted by PencilGeek

I think your assumptions of what work is performed during this so-called "custom tune" isn't entirely correct. Yes you get custom AFR -- but that's about as much actual custom work that you get. The rest is almost entirely boiler-plate and doesn't require your car to be on a dyno.

• Opening throttle bodies earlier and all the way: check.
• Modifying spark curve: check.
• Change the RPM limiter: check.
• Cat delete: check.
• Launch control: check.
• 91 octane tune: check.
• Air filter: check.

If we really want to get technical about it, your custom tune is really only "custom" on the day you get it. After that, it might as well be a shelf tune. On any other day, the air density is different; density altitude is different, dew point is different; fuel may contain slightly different oxigenation; tempuratures are certainly different. All of these things affect the dyno results and the AFR of your motor. Your custom tune may have been custom on the day you got it, but it's not so custom a week later.

Even with that said, I'd still recommend a custom dyno-tuned ECU by AA or PowerChip if one can afford it.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here Robert. The custom tune is a worlds difference from a quick screen tune. These variables that you speak of are irregardless of the optimizations made to the mapping. It's not as easy as you make it out to be with your check list. It seems as if you are saying that we are tuning solely based on the temperatures/barometric pressure/ and altitude, and that in a different environment, the tune would not suit the car. If the car makes more power at X RPM under Y load with a custom tune, it will certainly make less at those points with an "off the shelf" tune under any conditions. I wouldn't call any of our tunes off the shelf, per se, as they are all dyno tested. We do not make blanket optimizations to the files that go in customers ECU's. In powertrips car we made a number of changes that require a dyno to fine tune to extract all of the hp possible. We can call in forensics here but lets not get ahead of our selves.

[MAZNG]

subscribed

[J08M3]

Originally Posted by Eugene-TAIWAN

I think a comparison run is needed!!!

Get 2 cars and compare them then post it. That would make it nice and easy.

+1

Dynos all over the place on this forum.... So many cars tuned perfect to run on the dyno. I prefer real world reviews since my car spends it's time on the street not the dyno drivability and feel of the car is what's important to me.

It would be great to somehow put a blind comparison test together. Two cars with the same mods, car A has one tune, car B has the other.... Would love to see if the driver can even tell the difference.

***Not endorsing street racing.

[Eugene-TAIWAN]

Now were talkin