SO, final word on tune detection??

[Entaille]

it's not fear, more of a warning of what could happen. people should know whats on the table if they'd like to gamble.

personally, I don't think I can resist. I'll probably wait until 10k miles before going through with long tubes/tune.

[Milk 1027]

Originally Posted by Steve@TunedbyFrost

despite the constant fear the mods here like to put out related to tuning.

How about you actually read what we have to say before you get defensive next time. I know you are in a business. But we are not. I have no gripe in this other than wanting to make people aware of the possibilities.

[IndeedSS1]

Originally Posted by Milk 1027

How about you actually read what we have to say before you get defensive next time. I know you are in a business. But we are not. I have no gripe in this other than wanting to make people aware of the possibilities.

This is it in a nutshell.

[ParisTNDude]

I read this thread from beggining to end and don't know if my input is relavent or not, but...I simply wouldn't wait until a 5 year period or 100,000 miles has passed before I would do some of the things I've done to my Camaro. I don't think I've ever kept any of my cars that long. I can tell you I've had 14 Chevys in my lifetime and at least 5 were brand new. Not once in all of those cars including the used ones, have I had a catastrophic failure, and trust me, if one were prone to fail, my thrashing would have made it so. So, if my engine or transmission fails, and I'm confident it won't, I will use that as an excuse to upgrade!!! lol. Also, the new Mustang 5.0 is too fast to let them beat me because I'm paranoid about my warranty!

[Milk 1027]

Originally Posted by ParisTNDude

I read this thread from beggining to end and don't know if my input is relavent or not, but...I simply wouldn't wait until a 5 year period or 100,000 miles has passed before I would do some of the things I've done to my Camaro. I don't think I've ever kept any of my cars that long. I can tell you I've had 14 Chevys in my lifetime and at least 5 were brand new. Not once in all of those cars including the used ones, have I had a catastrophic failure, and trust me, if one were prone to fail, my thrashing would have made it so. So, if my engine or transmission fails, and I'm confident it won't, I will use that as an excuse to upgrade!!! lol. Also, the new Mustang 5.0 is too fast to let them beat me because I'm paranoid about my warranty!

GM cars are well built. And unless you do something completely radical, you should have nothign to worry about. But just remember that your dealer has all the power.

[ParisTNDude]

Originally Posted by mlee

To the OP and others considering a handheld for turning off AFM... don't buy Diablo. It will turn off AFM but won't tune your transmission which is the best half of a tune with the L99. They claim it's coming, but that claim started last February...

SCT is the way to go...

This is true. I bought a Diablo and when I went to get a tune, I was advised the tune wouldn't be that effective since the Diablo couldn't change transmission factors. I sold the Diablo on Ebay and bought the SCT and, WOW, what a difference the transmission changes made!

[ParisTNDude]

Originally Posted by hoffmk2003

Exactly, you know GM took a bailout right? We are lucky they are still around to make these cars. Don't tinker with what thousands of engineers designed and take it out of it's intended tolerance zone for reliability and longevity and expect them to foot the bill. It costs companies a lot of time and money to ensure the reliability of their product, anytime you change things especially in the fueling, spark etc......you are lowering the reliability of the engine/trans unless it was designed, analyzed and tested for those conditions.....

Be honest and if you can't afford to replace your engine, or you don't know how to rebuild one then I suggest you leave it alone. Thats being really conservative, but no one (Diablo, SCT etc) are going to honor GMs warrenty or sign up saying GM will honor the warrently with their tunes because of this.

Ford does a great job of partnering with, Shelby, Roush and others and working with them to develop aftermarket solutions which retain all or part of the factory warrenty. I am not aware of anything like this with GM. for instance you can buy a magnacharger kit from Ford and install it and retain you warrenty, thats awsome.

GM should take a lesson from that if they haven't already. Their GMPP catalog is overpriced and doesn't deliver performance you are paying for which leads to us seeking our own solutions and voiding the warrenty.

Ken

You're partially right about the Ford Warranty, but it only applies to Ford Racing parts and then, only if a Ford dealership installs them. I wanted to install a SC on my 2008 Bullitt and the local Ford guys couldn't even do the install, so I bought a Camaro instead! lol

[MiSTER]

Just a thought but... Another option to altering the ECU would be to have a piggyback interface made and run an aftermarket ECU to intercept fuel/timing/etc and leave the factory ECU unaltered to run everything else. This was common practice before with the Fast Track Performance harness and is being done now to other CAN BUS cars, primarily the import and European cars. I don't see why it can't be done with the Camaro. The piggyback harness and aftermarket ECU can easily be removed and the factory ECU would not show that it has been flashed.

[CamaroSpike23]

Originally Posted by IndeedSS1

If I had the skills, the right tools, a lift, enough disposable income, and my car wasn't my daily driver a tune would be a no-brainer.

If only one of these places that sell tuners and their tunes would step up and say, if you a problem and the warranty is voided because a flash was detected we will pay the cost or even do a 50/50 parts and labor, I'd take that risk. Of course doing that for me would be safe, relatively speaking, since my car will never go to the track and I'm really careful with my toys. Dealership labor rates are $135 and hour in my area, last I checked. Naturally, I'd go somewhere else local to have any non warranty work done.... I'm not dropping hints... or am I?

this.

Originally Posted by hoffmk2003

you guys really think you are going to have a drivetrain failure from a tune? You really think the tune is going to provide that much power, or are you going to beat the piss out the car to "test" out your new tune......

You play you pay bottom line. You could just as easily break the output shaft doing a burnout or a hard launch at the track on a stock car as you could with a tune. Nitrous or FI I see your argument......but just a tune and bolt ons........I think you guys are pretty paranoid.

These cars are build well and are being pushed alot already by people and I am not hearing or reading many issues.

If you want to tune it tune it and be done with it.

Ken

Originally Posted by Shadow Camaro

seems like you could maybe buy an extra ecm and put the tune on that one and run with it. then plug your stock ecm back in whenever you go for warranty work. unless its true that the ecm keeps track of odometer reading in which case the numbers on your ecm wouldnt match the numbers on the odo.

It seems to me this issue would be resolved as soon as a company introduces a plug and play piggyback thats tunable.

the problem with an extra ecm is what the stock ecm stores outside of just the tune.

imagine you get a new ecm with a tune at say... 10,000 miles. then something breaks in the car at... say 15,000 miles. you swap the ecm back over and go to the dealer and get it repaired. stock ecm shows 10000 miles. then after everythings fixed, you swap back to the tuned ecm and say after another 5-10k miles something else goes wrong. so you swap back to the stock ecm and go back to the dealer.

stock ecm reads 10,037 miles. some dealerships wont question it, but others might.

Originally Posted by Dragoneye

I agree with everything you've said so far, Milk. And I'm definitely NOT a paranoia-driven person.

My little 'issue' with this whole debate is not the banter going back and forth about detectability -- GM designed the computer, they can detect if its been tampered with......It's not even the possibility of something going wrong with a tune (that's very unlikely since these well-known companies stake their name on their product -- they do their homework).

No, I have an issue with the underhanded effort being put into trying to trick and defraud the manufacturer into a warranty claim if you break something on your car after the tune/part/whatever has been installed.

Like it or not, you have modified your vehicle outside the intended parameters of the manufacturer's comfort zone. So in the words of a good friend, "be honest and take your medicine like a man".

altho, I'd like to add that my issue isnt solely with the members who want to play without paying. its the manufacturers that make these items and wont back their product up if something goes wrong. instead, they try and tell you that they have "invisible", or "undetectable" tunes that GM can't see. or that they can flash the tune without tripping the flash counter.


a tune is one of the cheapest mods out there that can someone can do to their car. in most cases its a requirement to supplement other mods. its also one of the most intensive mods you can do. and what I mean by that is that an intake and headers free up extra power but they in most cases, dont change things enough to possibly affect the inner workings of the powertrain. a tune however, does.

its similar to overclocking the processor on your computer to get better performance. it works great, but if something goes wrong, dont expect the company to fix what you screwed up. which brings me to my next thought...


how is it that if I buy a set of headers from "company X" and a month into having them, the welds crack loose. I call the company and they send me a replacement. or I buy a supercharger from "company Y", and am offered a 3year/36,000 mile warranty in case something goes wrong....


but if I buy a tuner and something goes wrong as a result, the tuner company will not offer one bit of help in rectifying the situation.


One of the main reasons I stopped buying handheld tuners was because of the fact that they do not back their product up. for the past 4 or 5 years or so, I have been doing my own tuning on my cars and those of friends and others. and while it is definately not for everyone, I'm not paying someone else to do something that I can do for much less.

and from doing my own tuning, I know first hand how one or two bad fuel trims or shift line pressures or whatever, can mess up an engine or transmission.

I know that aftermarket tuners have spent their time and money testing their product to make the most power possible and to do so safely. but mistakes do happen. I know that dealers will 99.9999999% of the time say that a tuner caused a problem with the car and will try to refuse the work without verifying what the actual cause was. but thats where the tuner needs to step in and back up their product against the dealers claim to help the customer.

in the end, if you swap the rear end out in the car then break it, dont expect GM to fix it for you. if you swap out the programming in the computer and something breaks, dont expect GM to fix it for you.



a tune should not be feared, but if you are on the edge trying to figure out if you should tune or not, just wait. or talk with your dealer about your options for future mods. or find a new/better dealer who is more "lenient" with modified vehicles.


it all comes down to the phrase "you gotta pay to play"

[Frost]

Originally Posted by CamaroSpike23

I know that aftermarket tuners have spent their time and money testing their product to make the most power possible and to do so safely. but mistakes do happen. I know that dealers will 99.9999999% of the time say that a tuner caused a problem with the car and will try to refuse the work without verifying what the actual cause was. ....

99.99999% of the time huh... Post TWO TIMES that this has happened. I'd bet you can't. Since it happens 99.99999% or whatever, the site must be FULL of folks with this issue.

From October-December I had FOUR customers with cars that were auto's that had DoD failures. The dealerships replaced the cams and lifters because they KNEW there were issues there. They ALL had aftermarket tunes. NONE OF THEM were denied warranty.