Tuning costs
 

im looking to get my car tuned in 2 weeks and iv never done this before. its a turbo h22 fully built (sleeved,full internals etc,etc) with a full race turbo kit on it. Im looking to make about 500whp. How much does tuning usually go for? whos a good tuner? can they put 2 step on it and make my cel flash as a shift light?

tuning would probably be 500+ from a good tuner.. the 2 step would be extra.. dunno how much they'd charge for that.. I went to paul from neetronics for my tune and was happy with what he did..

Most shops will charge you $700 and upwards.

Teknotik splitfire neetronics, etc.

Personally I would pm zeeman and rent out a dyno for several hours

Ditto, I went with Neetronics as well and am happy with my tune. 3 years strong @ 11 lbs on a stock d block has to say something about the quality of the tune. I've also heard lots of good things about Zeemans tuning abilities. At the end of the day it's up to you who you want to go with as everyones opinions are biased on this subject. If I had the cash I'd go with Neetronics and if I were on a budget I'd go with Zeeman(not to take anything away from the dude). Souldn't this be posted in the Forced induction section?

you shouldn't have to pay extra for the 2-step....if ur tuner is trying to charge you extra for a 2-step and CEL shiftlight they're ripping you off. It doesn't cost anything to add that function, its a simple click of a button and that feature is applied to the program.

I would avoid neetronics, they blew my buddies motor up twice.

Yes, they blew it up on the dyno twice

oh wow id be pissed if they blew my motor. Now say they do blow your motor on the dyno, whos fault is it to repair it? thanks zeeman for the insight on the 2 step etc,etc.

What condition was your buddies motors in? There usually a reason that things like that happen. Did your buddy want to put down 300hp on a old beat up motor? Too many variables here. Pauls tuned some of the fastest cars in Canada including the ETD racing CRX(fastest all motor) so it's safe to say that if "profesional" racing teams want his service he MUST be good. I've made a couple of visits to the shop and have seen some of the cars he tunes> Top dollar supercharged NSX , Skylines, high HP STI's only to name a few. Motors blowing up on the dyno happen ALL of the time no matter what shop you go to. Maybe your buddy needs to find a better motor supplier.

Actually, the motor was fully built.. and could handle up to 28 psi, and blowing a motor up twice on 2 separate occasions while only tuning to 17 psi is unacceptable.

I've seen what neetronics can do, no doubt the man has some talent. But would I risk going there knowing he has blown my buddies motor, and wouldn't do a damn thing about it?

When hell freezes over, sure.


Personally I'll be making the drive down to PA to get tuned @ Evans Tuning.

zeeman built my motor, internals and all, and tuned.

zeeman ftmfw!!!!

speaking of, zeeman im half way through my build are you going to be around perhaps the end of the week or maybe begining of next week. Depending on how long my build takes me i'd like you to do what you do with the ecu's

If I had the cash I 'd also be knocking on Jeff Evans door. Any man that can tune a bone stock d16z6 to put down 400 ponies is a f'n genious.

I don't know of any tuning shops that would replace a motor if mechanical failure occured on the dyno. Just doesn't work that way.If I had the cash I 'd also be knocking on Jeff Evans door. Any man that can tune a bone stock d16z6 to put down 400 ponies is a f'n genious.

its called c16.
Its not hard to make any engine put down crazy numbers once, or a few times on the dyno, but i highly doubt they daily drive their stock d16z6 around with 400whp.
C16 is way too expensive to daily drive with....lol
Jeff Evans tunes with Neptune, which IMO is better/more stable than crome, i've got a Neptune RTP setup for my car (haven't finished tuning it yet though). Once i do finish tuning it, i'll be doing an on-dyno comparison between Crome and Neptune using pretty much the same AFR and timing values to see if either one offers any benefits.
IMO crome is a little more user-friendly, but Neptune has more features and all of its features actually work and work properly, and i can't say that about crome. Crome is known to have its bugs, but its nothing that will stop you from getting a solid tune and a reliable, safe, powerful car. But thats sort of what i would expect when one product costs $450 US (for the Neptune RTP and software) where the other product is free (or $150 for CromePro, but only the tuner needs to pay for software, not everyone who gets their car tuned with crome, they only pay for the cost of the tune).
Now Jeff Evans is an authorized Neptune dealer, so he can burn the finished Neptune program to a chip and install it into your ecu (like with crome). Joe schmoe off the street would have to buy the Neptune RTP and either tune it theirselves or pay someone to tune it, and with the Neptune RTP board its only good for one car....the car that has the ecu with the Neptune RTP board installed.
Anyways, i'm getting off topic.
The important thing is to research your tuner, talk to people who've had their cars tuned by your potential tuner and see if they were happy with the results. And use the software/EMS your tuner is good with, don't ask him to learn how to tune a specific EMS with your car, you won't be happy with the results. Hell i know i'd refuse to tune someones car with an EMS i don't know.
But if i had to pay someone to tune my car, it'd be Jeff Evans....only problem is thats he's in pennsylvania.

I'm not going to start arguing if neetronics is good or not, he blew my buddies motor up twice, so I will never go there, or refer anyone there. So thats the end of that.


Evans Tuning is actually pretty reasonable in terms of pricing, especially with the Canadian $ doing so well. The only thing that isn't going to be fun, is driving to PA with an un-tuned car running like complete ass, PA is a 10 hour drive.. give or take?


Edit: Anyone wanna pitch in and fly Evan down from PA? haha

get a good basemap before making the trip,or a quick highway/street tune to make sure the AFR's are reasonable before making the trip and wasting tonnes of gas.

I agree Evans tuning fee is very reasonable, the only problem would be, not being able to adjust anything yourself if necessary and having to drive another 10 hours back to go see him again. I'm constantly impressed with the dyno sheets he posts on his site and neptune is a great program, so i'm sure cars that have been tuned by him run like they should....lol.

What zeeman said

when the time comes zeeman for me to make a little roadtrip, I'll be looking you up to give me a minor tune to make sure i dont blow anything up on the way down.


I havn't really researched neptune much, but how do the features it comes with stack up to Hondata/AEM?

When zeeman tuned my car, he showed me how to setup the CEL shiftlight and it was only couple of buttons to add the function.

Hey Zee, do you still do street tune? I remember when we did a street tune on my turbo d, we were doing 140 km/hr on 3rd gear pull on a 80 km/hr max road and thats STREET RACING cuz its over 50km/hr.

I don't know what ur talking about :noidea: :hide:
I was busy watching the laptop tuning the car :typing: