I felt the need to post a new thread on this topic based on the good experience I recently had with Ted Jannetty at JRE.
I have had three JRE tunes in my car in the past using the SCT 3400 series tuner. The first was the initial tune with a Vararam intake and the other two came as I added LT headers and 3.91 gears.
I got a cam installed about a year ago and the car was tuned with EFI Live at that point. I couldn't do the cam install myself and it would need to be tuned immediately afterward, so I opted for the nearest shop with a good rep that could do it all.
The car was more powerful and faster after the cam but it was harder to drive. I wrote that off to the differences between a cammed car and a stock one and I altered my driving style to compensate. I was happy with the car at that point.
About three weeks ago I replaced my stock clutch with an aftermarket assembly that was much lighter, the difference was 22.35 pounds on the scale.
Once I started driving around town, I discovered the car didn't like that light flywheel very much and would need to be retuned. The idle had changed and the rpm's would flare up and down when the car was moving in neutral or with the clutch pushed in. I would have gone insane trying to deal with it every day.
I talked to Ted since I still had my old SCT tuner (a 3416v model) and he told me I could just remarry it to my ECU even though I had an EFI Live tune in there currently. I did that and sent the current cam tune to him as the stock one and he went to work on it.
He found seven issues with that tune and fixed them all. He then sent me a new tune and requested datalogs so he could tweak it. After four sets of datalogs and updated tunes, he has this new tune nailed. Not only did he correct for the lightweight flywheel but the car runs better than it ever did before.
That light clutch assembly will definitely affect your car if you add it and it is difficult to tune for. Ted really worked on this one and I doubt he could have gotten it any better if I had been at his shop in person. I can't say enough good things about the job he does and how willing he is to work with you to perfect your car. If it is within his power to make it work, he will do so. As long as you can send in good datalogs he can make the changes that you want.
So my experience is not to be leery of remote tuning via e-mail. There are tuners out there who can get it right for your particular combination of parts. My cam is not one that JRE sells and I don't know if the specs on it are even close to any of his cams, yet he had no problems with it.
