ECU Tuning

Hi y'all, I did a quick search but couldn't find answers to my questions. Who here has done an ECU tune to their cars and what feedback do they have? I am not expecting any huge gains but a few ponies would be welcome if the price is right Options I have found so far: ECU Tuning Group - I believe they claim 23hp but not convinced by the company claims - $645 OE Tuning - they claim ~20hp, have an X51 offering - $395 Authority - they claim ~19hp, not convinced - $1,195 Softronic - well know tuner, they claim 20hp but no X51 offering - $895 EVOMSit - well known tuner, they claim 13hp on stock engine - $1,000 Upsolute - fairly known tuner, they claim 25hp (!) - not sure about pricing but probably $500-$700 Any other option or feedback on the above mentioned options?

I researched the same thing and the general consensus is @20HP at a cost of $800 + or - a few hundred. Thats actually not so good for the $$ but its what we're stuck with for a NA M96.

that's why the OE tuning option seems not too bad. waiting for alpine to chime in on this as I am sure he looked into it as well

the 800 is better spent elsewhere to get the performance gains, an then everytime you change something on the car a new tune is suggested. I would wait until you do something major before spending that money on a tune.

They are all more or less the same in terms of power, just different marketing. Where they differ is after service and how ragged they tune their maps. Some run maps with more margin of error while others run it toward the edge. Some offer 93oct specific maps. Some have the option to lower the cat efficiency threshold value. Some offer the option to bypass the factory alarm starter interrupt. Some will offer free retuning if you put it on the wideband and the fuel ratios are off. I personally like the DIY obd load(like softronics) due to convenience/time of not having to remove your ecu and send it in. Remember the factory ecu will eventually make minor adjustments on its own up to a point. So given this, an ecu would benefit more to those that have extensive bolt ons or head/cam work.

I had the EVOMS ECU flash done last year. I considered it for several years before finally doing it. Overall, I'm pleased with it. It's certainly not a dramatic improvement, but it is noticeable. This is especially true in the low end of of the torque band. My "butt dyno" tells me that the car pulls harder than it did before, and the throttle response feels better. I like the EVOMS flash because my understanding is that it's not a true custom flash, but it is a flash designed specifically for the na 996 (as opposed to a "generic" flash). I do think that there are better places to spend money on a totally stock car, at least initially. I'd definitely get Fister sport mufflers first, as an example.

Short of doing cats, headers, and major engine work (higher compression, more displacement, cams), a tune should give you the biggest increase in power on an otherwise stock car (relative to an intake, mufflers, pullies, a drop-in air filter, etc.). Peak power gains aside, with the drive-by-wire cars (2001+), there is a lot of control with a tune to change how the car drives. We do a lot of work with the pedal maps to boost responsiveness at low RPM and at partial throttle, for example. IMO, it's a bigger improvement to the car than the peak power gains, as you'll 'use' that feature more often driving on the street. Mufflers with the rest of the stock exhaust in place aren't going to give very significant power gains, and I would recommend doing them mostly for the sound. Sound is a great reason to do exhaust on these cars, but if you're looking for quick power gains those are not where you should be looking...the car will sound like it gains more power than it actually does. We're regularly $900 for the 3.4 cars and $1000 for the 3.6s. We're 20% off of those prices until the 31st, and I can get you a deal on an intake if you're interested in the same timeframe. We have x51 tunes as well, the gains are roughly the same as the non-x51 cars.

If your in Texas, it pointless not to use Chris Delgado for anything tuning wise. If your not sure who that is, pm me.

[QUOTE=EVOMS;11006258 Peak power gains aside, with the drive-by-wire cars (2001+), there is a lot of control with a tune to change how the car drives. We do a lot of work with the pedal maps to boost responsiveness at low RPM and at partial throttle, for example. .[/QUOTE] Exactly. Another thing I forgot to mention is some maps will have revised pedal mapping too to give you a "sprint booster" type effect and responsiveness. That can be another bonus with a tuned ecu, power aside.

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not that I know the guy personally, but I thought he moved to NY to work for a tuner there? But I agree i would definitely prefer a custom tune so I can have the guy work on the tq curve. @ EVOMS: Agreed, don't care too much about peak power, more about the delivery. can your tune be customized? specifically turning off the SAI **for offroad use only** @ all: other company I forgot to mention is unitronic, $949. I have no experience with them at all but they have a dealer local to me which would help

Nope, he started D3 performance in Houston with two other guys on the North side... But you know him.. hes travels all over..No doubt about it, he knows what hes dong no matter what the car is... Might want to check as they just opened it as well, i know they hes running some specials on tuning.

EVOMS!! no question,noticeable improvements across the lower and mid torque bands,of course ive also done headers,cats mufflers,pulley,plenum,and evoms air box,yes the slippery slope of upgrades,all it takes is cash!,but no doubt the performance has improved,its kind of limited what can be done with the N/A 3.6 engine,but once you have the fever.............good luck!

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We should be able to accomodate that, shoot me an email at [email removed] and I'll follow up with you with more information. Sam

following up on this - not pulled the trigger on anything yet as I am still researching local options. Would love an EVOMS tune but just happen to be one of the most expensive options (you get what you pay for I guess) Adding to the list: ECU Tuning Group - I believe they claim 23hp but not convinced by the company claims - $645 OE Tuning - they claim ~20hp, have an X51 offering - $395 Authority - they claim ~19hp, not convinced - $1,195 Softronic - well know tuner, they claim 20hp but no X51 offering - $895 EVOMSit - well known tuner, they claim 13hp on stock engine - $1,000 Upsolute - fairly known tuner, they claim 25hp (!) - not sure about pricing but probably $500-$700 Pedro's garage - kind of off the map, their tune is $499 FVD - well known tuner, their tune is $995

Upsolute has been around quite a while now with other cars so they are legit. FWIW, I wouldn't be surprised if most of them use the same tune more or less. The ones that have the remote install availability is a nice option if you ever want to return it back to stock or need to modify the map later down the line.

Yep... I am trying to learn about ECU tuning and especially how do "catalog" tunes work - some of the guys listed are "legit" meaning that they probably actually tuned a Porsche on a dyno but a lot of the cheaper tuners will sell you a tune for any car on the road. I am thinking they play with the K-constant or similar so that all maps get modified at once by a certain %. But I have no data to prove this. In the end I do not really care... all I want is to load the ROW tune on my car but no one around here will do it!

If you can get the file for the tune, I can walk you through how to do it.

If you want some specific benefits you really should have it tuned on a dyno. Many tuners work with different operators around the country via wireless connections and can tune your car on the fly. This is beneficial if the tuner you like is in Bosnia or Phoenix....

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This is the best but the most expensive and I would say it's worth it on a highly customized NA or FI motor. But for normal bolt ons that most of us will do, the rewards start diminishing pretty fast. I would normally watch out for the "catalog" tunes you talk about but in regards to the 996, there's only a handful a good ones that were made and these are the ones that are recycling around the various companies. It's not like a Honda where there are several bad catalog tunes out there made by anyone, primarily because the electronics are more sophisticated and only a handful can get their hands on them. Couldn't you just get a ROW BIN file and load it via PIWIS?

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Very interested in dyno sheets for x51 engines as they already have most of the options from factory (intake, larger plenum, head work, headers, cam, etc). Eveyone talke x more HP but in reality that is usually at the expense of torque or by moving that peak power even higher up the rpm band.

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I don't even need to "get" the file as my understanding is that all the maps are in PIWIS. All I need is access to PIWIS, and none of the indies around here want to hear about it. By the way for an assessment of the Porsche indies in DFW: - there's a german specialist in Plano (off of K ave), I don't think they have seen a Porsche in years - had no idea about what I was asking for - Louden motorcars seem to be very competent, but didn't want to deal with emissions - I was not convinced by Zim's, the guy was quite rude and acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. - the guys at Mayo performance are great but didn't want to deal with emissions I guess I need to go pay a visit to RAC or Autoscope.

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Going to headers and getting rid of the cats and mufflers (which tanks backpressure) is really the only thing we see that commonly kills low end power. Often times gains to be had with a tune and intake are even across the board, due to how Porsche tunes the stock cars for federal emissions and fuel quality standards (conservative timing so nothing blows up on poor gas). Once you start playing with the throttle body, plenum, or headers, you get into things that are harmonically tuned for a given engine that can move the powerband or gain/lose power depending on RPM. The parts worth buying are engineered and tested to give minimal losses if any, even if they only give you an improvement in certain parts of the powerband. An optimized tune can go a long ways towards helping this. Below is a dyno of a 2004 C4S with our intake, then our tune. See the big dip in power that the stock package has, that is somewhat amplified when installing the intake. With the tune, the dip is smoothed out. That mark aside, the car picks up 10-20ft-lb of torque at the wheels throughout the entire powerband. Here's another chart from a Cayman S that shows similar features, this one with our intake and then our tune. No losses anywhere here as well. This one is applicable to the current discussion. The black baseline is a Cayman S with a catback system. The blue is with an intake, IPD plenum, and GT3 throttle body installed, which is similar to what you see on a 996. The red is the same hardware with our tune. This chart starts at 3000rpm, with the untuned setup down about 5 ft-lb. The tune gets you nearly back to stock. The charts with the induction mods and tune get rid of the nasty dip in torque that the baseline displays from 3400-3800rpm, and the tune gets another 8-10whp starting at about 4600rpm. There may be some losses below 3000rpm, but aside from cruising around town, the 5ft-lb that might be lost below that are more than made up for with the 20ft-lb+ increase that develops over 3500. I'll dig through some of our older files and see if we have an x51 dyno. But broadly speaking, the charts given above do a good job of showing the trends we typically see with hardware and software modifications on this family of naturally aspirated engines.

I have to say, kudos to EVOMS for posting actual useful data!