EMP TUNING, moving the discussion out of the shadows
- Thread starter V8bait
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The back end flash maps are posted as free references for those running a JB4. Beyond that whatever people want to do with them is their business. We're not the N54 tuning police. There are plenty of decent flash only maps floating around if someone is looking to copy one for flash only so I'm a little baffled as to why someone would use the JB4 BEF maps as starting points in the first place. It seems like "they didn't know the difference" is being presented as the reason, which would be concerning, if a tuner selling their services didn't know the difference. Could also just be a big misunderstanding so I'll leave it to the relevant parties to hash out the facts of the situation.
The reason he wont respond or insult is because his followers will do all that for him.
Good info, thanks for posting! The fact that he started with the jb4 maps means he has absolutely no idea how the dme works and shouldn't touch any kind of tuning software. What a moron!!!
Glad I tune my own stuff and don't need to rely on others for this kind of work.
FYI, this type of shady tuning isn't isolated to the BMW world, sadly this happens on pretty much every platform.
Glad I tune my own stuff and don't need to rely on others for this kind of work.
FYI, this type of shady tuning isn't isolated to the BMW world, sadly this happens on pretty much every platform.
I agree AJ, you're probably not a con artist or a thief. But you lied to me and took advantage of the information I provided you to test on customer cars without any understanding of what you were doing.
How do you take an SPX E40 map, add tmap scaling, increase the load, make a few minor changes to timing and fueling, and with confidence give it to a customer with hybrid turbos with a boost target now at 30 psi and not care? In your defence I'm sure you had no clue it would target 30 psi. Same with the first MMP turbo customer you tried to do the same thing with. Lucky for both customers they stopped running your maps before the blew their turbos or worse their engine.
I'm tired of the lies. That's worse than a con artist or a thief. At least they will admit they screwed you over when they get caught.
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I don't think I would point any blame or fault at Terry on this. From my understanding, he has no involvement in this and has no obligation to even comment on anything that happened. As he stated, these are free maps and people can do what they want with them. It's just unfortunate that someone used them as a way to profit from someone else's hard work.
These were different maps, they are not the ones from Michael Roney. But it's the same story. I have a couple others but they were older, these were current entering October of 2017, based on June 2017 bms maps. Whether or not he's updated his maps doesn't concern me. Copy/paste from flash only maps doesn't concern me (even if it's unprofessional).
What concerns me, and may have been lost in the lengthy post, is how he was using a blatantly wrong map on multiple peoples cars and charging them. A tuner first and foremost has to understand basics and this shows he either did not know them, or did not care about the customers. As Terry said there are many flash only maps had he researched, which he did not. So in many instances, he took a jb4 map ill suited for flash only, sprinkled some changes, and sold it to multiple people as a custom tune. If he knew how bad this was like a good tuner on any platform would have known, it means he didn't care about the consequences. If he didn't know how bad this was, then he was not ready to be tuning to begin with on this platform or others, and should never have been asking for money until he knew what he was doing.
I'm glad he is offering free re-tunes to old costumers, that is the right thing to do at a minimum. This was made public because this sort of thing should never happen to begin with, and when it does it should be made public.
Edit- 2017 not 2016
What concerns me, and may have been lost in the lengthy post, is how he was using a blatantly wrong map on multiple peoples cars and charging them. A tuner first and foremost has to understand basics and this shows he either did not know them, or did not care about the customers. As Terry said there are many flash only maps had he researched, which he did not. So in many instances, he took a jb4 map ill suited for flash only, sprinkled some changes, and sold it to multiple people as a custom tune. If he knew how bad this was like a good tuner on any platform would have known, it means he didn't care about the consequences. If he didn't know how bad this was, then he was not ready to be tuning to begin with on this platform or others, and should never have been asking for money until he knew what he was doing.
I'm glad he is offering free re-tunes to old costumers, that is the right thing to do at a minimum. This was made public because this sort of thing should never happen to begin with, and when it does it should be made public.
Edit- 2017 not 2016
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I think a lot of self-taught and/or amateur tuners start with a JB4 BEF. I did. Maybe they never run it on a car, I didn't, but I did look at what was changed compared to my stock bin, and compared to a PPK bin, and read Justin's tuning guide a dozen times or more, and the Cobb guide, and every forum post, and asked questions of anyone who would listen. And after 3 or 4 months of experimenting and getting help and advice from most of the pros in the community I still know that I only know enough to be dangerous and couldn't imagine tuning someone else's pride and joy for free, much less actually charge for it.
I'm curious on your take on the tune posted. The throttle safety table I screen shot is supposed to be for a jb4 car, the OEM table is much different. Since you're pretty familiar but still novice, I want to know if you can tell from looking at the table (maybe comparing to stock) what it would do set like that when boost reached target?
This is a very interesting scenario to say the least. This country is great because anyone can hang a shingle and charge for their services. It's also dangerous because anyone can hang a shingle and charge for their service, regardless of if they are qualified to. Some industries have independent certifications, and while working in the IT industry has made me apprehensive of certs in general because it can lead to a ton of paper tigers, with tuning, hell, anyone with a laptop is a "tuner". I think it might be interesting to see if the aftermarket would be receptive to an independent tuning certification. I think it's unlikely because there are differing tuning methodologies even among those that can be considered "good."
With all due respect from all of the tuners here and in this thread - the only thing you all have is your experience and customer support. A couple of VERY well known LS tuners here in town love to just do open loop tunes. Sure the car runs great at the track and makes numbers on the dyno, but mileage and driveability suck. People flock to them in droves though because a. they don't know any better, b. references, and c. they make big numbers.
Having done basic efi tuning on older platforms, I do think there are a number of things in the BMW DME that can have an impact I'm not prepared for, so I left my tuning needs to a professional. The maps from my tuner are locked, which I understand, but wish I could view just to have a better understanding of the DME and what effect each change has. That's the IT curiosity in me. However, I also prefer to drive my car rather than tune it, so I'm content to have it tuned and Ronco it - "set it, and forget it."
With all due respect from all of the tuners here and in this thread - the only thing you all have is your experience and customer support. A couple of VERY well known LS tuners here in town love to just do open loop tunes. Sure the car runs great at the track and makes numbers on the dyno, but mileage and driveability suck. People flock to them in droves though because a. they don't know any better, b. references, and c. they make big numbers.
Having done basic efi tuning on older platforms, I do think there are a number of things in the BMW DME that can have an impact I'm not prepared for, so I left my tuning needs to a professional. The maps from my tuner are locked, which I understand, but wish I could view just to have a better understanding of the DME and what effect each change has. That's the IT curiosity in me. However, I also prefer to drive my car rather than tune it, so I'm content to have it tuned and Ronco it - "set it, and forget it."
This table is how much the throttle is closed in response to overboost, right? Mine is stock because I try to keep load target slightly above load actual and want the throttle to close if I overboost like crazy for some reason, WG sticks or whatever. I would guess that filling the table with 1s would disable the throttle closure on overboost but I don't really understand the units in this table. X is delta between target and boost and Z is a multiplier for throttle angle? I'm just guessing.
I guess that is one of the points you are making though. If you don't know why a value is changed then you should leave it stock. These DMEs are super forgiving, I wouldn't have gotten this far trying to tune a turbo kit on an E36/E46, but that doesn't mean you can just change things without understanding what they are.
There are independent tuning schools out there that offer “certifications”. Hpacademy and EFI university come to mind. (I don’t know any tuners with certs from these places or anyone that has taken the courses)
Seems that finding a good tuner for my 135i may be harder than finding a good tuner for my GTR. Feels like as the price tag of the car goes up, so does the cost of the tune, but the bad tuners seem to be weeded out very quickly.
Seems that finding a good tuner for my 135i may be harder than finding a good tuner for my GTR. Feels like as the price tag of the car goes up, so does the cost of the tune, but the bad tuners seem to be weeded out very quickly.
Pretty much, you're right about everything there except on z axis a value of 1 is like 100% closed throttle, and a value of 0 is disabled, in the factory table you see the values rise with increasing boost over target. Flash only with this table it means if boost hits target like it should you'll get throttle closures, and this can cause throttle codes. You should give yourself more credit you have a pretty good understanding.
Isn't T1 performance one of the better tuners (tony) for the GTR platform? He's pretty damn smart when it comes to tuning.
Well except for getting it completely backwards 
Thanks. Your tuning guide really did help me out tremendously.
Thanks. Your tuning guide really did help me out tremendously.
Yes, T1 is a great shop, as well as AMS, ETS, Switzer, etc. That’s the great part about the GTR. Lots of shops have spent lots of money building and racing cars that are proven to make a lot of power. The downside is that they are always busy so remote tuning can take longer, they want you to buy their parts to go along with their tunes, etc. When my powertrain warranty is up my car will go to one of those shops for a build. (A built trans for my GTR cost as much as my entire 135i, I’m going to leave that car to the professionals) I’d considered going FBO but decided to leave it alone until my powertain warranty expires.
The 135i is a toy for me to keep myself busy with, trying to do mostly everything myself . Hopefully larger shops will get into N54 tuning, may help advance the platform faster. The motor certainly seems to have potential.
The 135i is a toy for me to keep myself busy with, trying to do mostly everything myself . Hopefully larger shops will get into N54 tuning, may help advance the platform faster. The motor certainly seems to have potential.
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I wouldn't want to know how much money Tony has in his GTR, or GIDI, or ETS etc. They are truly an amazing car
I met the owner of ETS this year at World Cup Finals. Very knowledgeable and friendly. Answered any tuning questions about Motec that we asked. He brought down his evo (was hoping for the GTR was there, but no show). I'm with you, id like to see a few large established shops get into the n54 tuning. Being professional is a big key for me.
I guess we should get back on topic.
