UPDATE:
Been awhile, lost a bit of interest in documenting all the work going in weekly and have been incredibly busy. This post will be a bit of a review, and hopefully will help other people if they ever choose to travel to get a car tuned, what to look out for, and my mistakes
So end of April we took the Mustang to Tecmotion in calgary to have the MS2PNP tuned, he was made aware the car was in the state where I had just installed the MS2PNP no tuning was done. We loaded up the car and drove the 900km trip. My tow rig overheated most of the way which was odd as it never has done this in the past but we made it.
The following day the car was put on the dyno and the owner of tecmotion pointed to shop that could help me out fixing my truck. We found soon after going there that the radiator was completely plugged with oily dirt. I pulled the rad with that shops help removing the fan and pressure washed the radiator before putting it all back together.
Meanwhile the mustang was or at least it appeared to be having the cold start, and idle being setup. Soon after completing the truck I ran back over to find my next issue of the day, my LC2 wideband wouldnt match his dyno wideband gauge. And the car appeared to like his wideband for the numbers. With this he decided to not use my LC2 at all, and tuned it for open-loop. He assured me that it wouldn't cause any drive-ablility issues and the main thing is my tables will be perfect!
This led to the next issue, the car wouldn't run long before overheating now. I'm thinking "great! how the hell did this happen". I'd tracked this car in 45 degree heat running lap after lap with no issues. It's got a 16" electric fan, and a large capacity northern radiator. Both in good working order. he blamed it on my electric fan not pulling enough air, it was pulling plenty of air but after sitting there stumped for a few minutes I asked if he had a mechanical fan, he looked and offered to pull his fan off one of his cars and bolt it on to mine. Good now the car wouldnt overheat anymore.
For about the next 2 hours he tuned the tables on the dyno doing several pulls, it was sweet hearing the car after all the work thats gone into it the past 2 years, driving 900km here, and all the issues we've had. Things were going good!
Once that was done we pulled it off the dyno and I took it for a run up and down the street. It felt great! however as I pulled into the parking lot the car would sorta lurch forward while driving without any throttle input. I mentioned this to the tuner and he jumped in and made a few changes, and the issue got better. he said there will probably be small adjustments I will have to make once home. I drove it around the block again and it felt good, I was happy. parked it, pulled his fan off, and paid him.
Now when I went out to load the car back on the trailer it had sat awhile, it started and wanted to die surging slightly. I kept it running with the throttle before it did die, I re-fired it and loaded it on the trailer... First stupid move I should've brought it to his attention, the girlie even mentioned it on the drive home and told her thats "something i'll have to adjust at home"... Second stupid move right there.
We drove the 900km home and fired it up to unload it and it surged uncontrollably, Like it wouldnt even stay running without my foot on the gas. I decided I'd take it to work the following day to get it up to operating temp and we will be good.
Well I drove it to work, surging badly at every light and that parking lot lurge it would do it would do at about 60km/h and speed up to about 80km/h and once it was warm, it was only worse. I messaged the tuner asking what do I do to fix this, he called me spent about 15 mins on the phone, I could tell he was maybe a bit irritated or frustrated but he guided me through adjusting a few of the idle pwm settings and the idle gain. After about two hours of trying things that he had said to do I got it to idle decent.
The next morning I drove it to work and datalogged it, now it would surge and die and wouldn't want to start up again. The surge was unbelieveable from 500rpm to 2000rpm. I quite promptly messaged him "this made it worse, wont stay running anymore" where he read it but never responded.
This is about the time I posted asking about how to fix idle on Facebook and Stangnet. I got ahold of BlackfoxEFI who asked for the tune and a datalog of the car after I replace the broken wideband. I replaced it with an AEM 30-5130 and sent him the new datalog. The car would idle off the scale lean. At this point he replied that the tune was nearly identical to the DIYTune base tune, the injection table was not changed with the exception to 4* advance at WOT, and only the 90 and 100% load lines on the VE table were changed. that the injector dead time wasnt set right either (tuner knew the injectors i had).
I believe it was that day where Steve @BlackfoxEFI sent me a new tune, and told me to get a program called Anydesk and I was introduced to Remote tuning. It took him about 2.5 hours to get the car starting and idling well. There was several other oddities to the Tecmotion tune that had to be worked out, like the fact it was set to have A/C which actually made a big deal with how the car would idle. In the changes to make it idle though the work done on the dyno making those WOT numbers was now wasted and we would have to rebuild the tables properly.
A few days later I called Tecmotion and said what has been going on, he was very confrontational accusing me of robbing him. All i wanted was what it was going to cost for me to get my bloody car running and driving. Which through Steve was half what Tecmotion charged. He requested the datalogs which when I took a look at them both the LC2 and AEM widebands were reading very similar numbers.
Next day I got a long email stating that I should've never brought him an incomplete car, blamed it on the LC2, on the overheating, that he went above and beyond to get me tuned and happy and on my merry way. But at the end of the email he said that he would "Without prejudice give me a 1/3 refund". I bite my tongue and took it because I dont think I could've fought to get anymore.
Lessons learned:
1) if you notice something, let the tuner know
2) if your girlfriend/wife notices something, let the tuner know
3) Dont leave the tuner until the tuning is absolutely done!
4) Try to find a local tuner, and honestly if you have a guru for your ECU and car type on a forum. Remote tuning is pretty awesome as well. I was super nervous going into this but I should've done this from day-1
Since then I've been sending datalogs and getting revisions from Steve and I've got to say the work this guy does it unbelieveable! Each time the car was getting better and better, the odd thing would cause some idle weirdness but we'd get on anydesk again and within a few minor changes he had the car mint again. The coolest part is its almost like a class, I get to watch what he is doing, I am a part of this. I've learned a lot and hopefully maybe I wont have to get someone to tune the car for me next time. About two weeks ago I was finally given the go ahead to start running the car up to redline, and we took it racing last weekend and the car was great. Hopefully we will be done tuning soon here.
Anyways sorry if this was a bit of a flame-fest and doesnt have any awesome videos and photos but I've seriously thought good and long about writing some sort of review about this experience. Tecmotion did offer to take a part off his own car to get the car dyno'd and tuned, although again Im skeptical on the requirement for this because I can idle and drive the car with no fan at ALL now and it doesnt get over 200. And he did get someone to help me out with the tow truck as well. Anyways I'm posting this here and only here as something someone can read the whole story and not be limited to a short 100 word google review that doesnt paint a full picture.
Hopefully soon will have another post about the work post tune on the car, and racing :)
-Thanks all
