HP Tuners 2.25 BETA Release (2011+ Mustang supported + others)

[yngrshr]

This blows my mind. You guys are taking the "well if you don't want me to know your tuning secrets, you must be a HACK TUNER" thing too far. You think that just because you spent $250-500 on a canned tune, you should know all the tricks that these guys have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars figuring out??? You really expect them to be fine with that????? That's silly! It's like saying "I paid for this magic show, sow you need to explain how you did all your tricks..... and if you refuse, it MUST BE because you're a horrible magician and you don't want people to know" That's ignorant.

I am not slamming the HP-tuners idea. I think it is a GREAT product and I will probably purchase it at some point. My argument is that I don't blame REAL tuners one bit for trying to protect their investments and future business. I know these are simple and silly examples, but the theory applies. It's like saying "I purchased this big mac, so you need to give me a list of ingredients and directions on how to make them... but you can trust me, I wont tell anyone wink wink".

Maybe you are actually trustworthy(less than 10% of the general public) and wouldn't say anything yngrshr.. but all it takes is one not trustworthy person to ruin everything. And your suggestion for keeping this in check is "Don't worry REAL tuners, if people copy your tunes we will blast them on forums publicly... that'll teach them" is asinine. 95% of these copy cat tuners will never post that they are copying on the forum, they'll just do it.

So when I buy this HP-tuners program, I would like the instructions on how to write this program myself, ok.... thanks. You can trust me, I won't tell anyone how

No one is blaming anyone.

We are just saying that it's completely different on the GM side of the aisle. Stuff isn't locked down and tuners that copy things are put on blast and basically driven out of the community. There have been tuners who have locked their tunes and refused to unlock them out of fear of losing a customer. We're not even talking about letting the customer read the tune. Talking about letting the customer not even return the car to stock. Not even a dealer can unlock a locked ECM on a GM car.

So, thankfully, most GM guys don't lock their tunes. There's always been a relatively big backlash in it in the community and it's much more open, as far as I am concerned. I'd like to see the Ford community get there too with HPTuners being available for these cars, now. Openness is a good thing. It's something to strive for instead of having everything on the lock down.

And yeah. I do think that I need to know the ingredients in a Big Mac. Are you seriously saying you'll just eat whatever the **** without knowing what's inside it? Really? I guess that's how some of this shit that's sold for "food" gets purchased. People that just don't care. If I am going to pay for something, I'd like to have an idea of what is inside it if possible.

I will say one thing. I think it's probably more acceptable to lock a tune down on a big motor build or something legitimately proprietary. The problem is most tunes out there are incredibly similar on your average bolt-ons or blower build. There are some minor differences that make the tune "unique," but most guys out there aren't special snowflakes doing shit drastically different. Canned tunes are only a ****ing base, anyway. Any scrub can copy and paste a canned tune. The skilled tuners will know how to adjust that canned tune to run better on the specific car it is being put on. Every car is different and some will run crappy with a canned tune that was designed on a similar car with similar mods (shit, or a stock car).

I tend to agree with this post on the HPTuners board:

"I've only locked a handful of PCM's mostly because of spending so much time dedicated to nailing down a tune on a big motor big boost deal when I don't want anyone jacking with it. Other than that, it's stupid to lock PCM's. Anyone is capable of tuning the vehicle in the same manner. Even if someone "steals" your tune, it's nothing more special than anyone else can do. Not to break anyone's heart. Ingenuity goes a long way with tuning, you can't just copy tunes and expect to keep a customer base when there are tuners that truly know what they're doing and you don't.

Being copied is flattering to most. It's funny to watch other "tooners" try to swindle a customer into taking their vehicle to their shop, then see them royally screw things up and bring it back to me to tune it the right way."

 

[03Sssnake]

No one is blaming anyone.

We are just saying that it's completely different on the GM side of the aisle. Stuff isn't locked down and tuners that copy things are put on blast and basically driven out of the community. There have been tuners who have locked their tunes and refused to unlock them out of fear of losing a customer. We're not even talking about letting the customer read the tune. Talking about letting the customer not even return the car to stock. Not even a dealer can unlock a locked ECM on a GM car.

So, thankfully, most GM guys don't lock their tunes. There's always been a relatively big backlash in it in the community and it's much more open, as far as I am concerned. I'd like to see the Ford community get there too with HPTuners being available for these cars, now. Openness is a good thing. It's something to strive for instead of having everything on the lock down.

And yeah. I do think that I need to know the ingredients in a Big Mac. Are you seriously saying you'll just eat whatever the **** without knowing what's inside it? Really? I guess that's how some of this shit that's sold for "food" gets purchased. People that just don't care. If I am going to pay for something, I'd like to have an idea of what is inside it if possible.

:beer: on point!

 

[03Steve]

Didn't Chrysler and Mike Wesley go to court over this very subject? Who owns the calibration on your vehicle? I'm not a lawyer, but I believe it was an intellectual property rights case.

 

[sleek98]

The last one I had to sell. (Needed a larger DD for the growing family). The $$$ from that car ($27k) was rolled into the purchase of my EcoBoost F150, which was over $50k.
The EcoBoost was chosen to learn the new systems in preparation for the 2.3L EcoBoost mustang.

The next one I would like to keep.

Interesting, I always wondered if you kept them to keep playing with it or sold it off.

 

[JUIC3D]

I can't see flex fuel being that big of a deal in a performance vehicle save for emergency situations. I looked over the owners manual in the F150s and its not like you can just put in whatever gas you want and the computer adjusts instantaneously. They tell you to put the gas in for at least a few full tanks so the computer can adjust. As Shaun mentioned, the car learns over a few cycles and adjusts accordingly. See ford's website for the owner's manual.

I thought it would be something a little bit cooler like the in-line ethanol content analyzer that the tune could be setup to adjust based on the % ethanol. That is not quite the case.

Seems like if you want E85, you just put in the appropriate fuel system and tune for it. If you need to put pump gas in, you just load in a pump gas tune.

Idk, just my $.02

 

[Eric@HPTuners]

I can't see flex fuel being that big of a deal in a performance vehicle save for emergency situations. I looked over the owners manual in the F150s and its not like you can just put in whatever gas you want and the computer adjusts instantaneously. They tell you to put the gas in for at least a few full tanks so the computer can adjust. As Shaun mentioned, the car learns over a few cycles and adjusts accordingly. See ford's website for the owner's manual.

I thought it would be something a little bit cooler like the in-line ethanol content analyzer that the tune could be setup to adjust based on the % ethanol. That is not quite the case.

Seems like if you want E85, you just put in the appropriate fuel system and tune for it. If you need to put pump gas in, you just load in a pump gas tune.

Idk, just my $.02

Yeah, I don't care for the way it is done either. A sensor makes more sense, but the bean counters at Ford probably didn't like the associated costs. Ford likes to model everything and infer things, instead of taking a measurement.

 

[Monster5.0]

Flax fuel capability is high on my list. I would want that functionality first and foremost. Im sure the car can be made to make more power when it starts adjusting for E85.

 

[JUIC3D]

Flax fuel capability is high on my list. I would want that functionality first and foremost. Im sure the car can be made to make more power when it starts adjusting for E85.

What extra power could be made in addition to what the car would make when properly tuned for E85? If you wanted the car to "adjust" for E85, you could just run an adder for knock sensor and keep adding X amount of timing until the car knocks, the same way the car is tuned from the factory..

 

[Shaun@AED]

Glad we talked today Eric.

 

[JUIC3D]

^ nice. 2 smart minds coming together=big things

 

[Deespeed99]

I just want flex fuel. I hate planning trips based on E85 stations lol.

 

[Eric@HPTuners]

Glad we talked today Eric.

Yes sir. Glad we worked it all out.

 

[Eric@HPTuners]

I just want flex fuel. I hate planning trips based on E85 stations lol.

Now, that I have gone back and found it, I will get it added.

 

[yngrshr]

^ nice. 2 smart minds coming together=big things

This!!!

 

[2012]

I really like how this whole conversation went

 

[CPRsm]

And yeah. I do think that I need to know the ingredients in a Big Mac. Are you seriously saying you'll just eat whatever the **** without knowing what's inside it? Really? I guess that's how some of this shit that's sold for "food" gets purchased. People that just don't care. If I am going to pay for something, I'd like to have an idea of what is inside it if possible.

Odd analogy, but I can work with it. Tuners don't care if you want to see the meat, cheese and lettuce on a burger. But walk into a Burger King and demand to know what makes up their secret sauce and see what happens. All you need to know there is it goes on the burger, is FDA approved, and tastes good. All you need to know about the tune is it does what you paid for. In the case of tunes you don't get to see just the main ingredients, and the secret sauce is still secret. You will never know coca cola or pepsi's secret ingredient either. Tuner doesn't care if you see a maf curve or timing tables, or anything else basic. It the undefined tables which they figured out, that does "X" to help their tunes. Now your average customer can see the whole tune and know nothing is special about what they see. But when said customer sucks out a tune and is having trouble, they won't ask the person that wrote the tune for help. So the tune goes to the competitor, who just found out what they were missing to make "so and so's" car run perfect. Buy all the burgers you want, the secret recipe will never be yours!!! Lol

 

[mebcop]

Odd analogy, but I can work with it. Tuners don't care if you want to see the meat, cheese and lettuce on a burger. But walk into a Burger King and demand to know what makes up their secret sauce and see what happens. All you need to know there is it goes on the burger, is FDA approved, and tastes good. All you need to know about the tune is it does what you paid for. In the case of tunes you don't get to see just the main ingredients, and the secret sauce is still secret. You will never know coca cola or pepsi's secret ingredient either. Tuner doesn't care if you see a maf curve or timing tables, or anything else basic. It the undefined tables which they figured out, that does "X" to help their tunes. Now your average customer can see the whole tune and know nothing is special about what they see. But when said customer sucks out a tune and is having trouble, they won't ask the person that wrote the tune for help. So the tune goes to the competitor, who just found out what they were missing to make "so and so's" car run perfect. Buy all the burgers you want, the secret recipe will never be yours!!! Lol

:beer: On point

lol

To say that all tunes are the same, so they shouldn't mind people being able to see all the details of them, is just not true... I've run a few different tunes on my car, and some start/cruise/idle totally different. If they were all the same, wouldn't they run the same?

 

[yngrshr]

Odd analogy, but I can work with it. Tuners don't care if you want to see the meat, cheese and lettuce on a burger. But walk into a Burger King and demand to know what makes up their secret sauce and see what happens. All you need to know there is it goes on the burger, is FDA approved, and tastes good. All you need to know about the tune is it does what you paid for. In the case of tunes you don't get to see just the main ingredients, and the secret sauce is still secret. You will never know coca cola or pepsi's secret ingredient either. Tuner doesn't care if you see a maf curve or timing tables, or anything else basic. It the undefined tables which they figured out, that does "X" to help their tunes. Now your average customer can see the whole tune and know nothing is special about what they see. But when said customer sucks out a tune and is having trouble, they won't ask the person that wrote the tune for help. So the tune goes to the competitor, who just found out what they were missing to make "so and so's" car run perfect. Buy all the burgers you want, the secret recipe will never be yours!!! Lol

Their secret sauce is Russian dressing and a few additives.

Russian dressing is their base tune. Stealing Russian dressing and using it on other burgers is a solid idea since it generally works. But just because it works doesn't mean it's going to be the perfect sauce for every burger. You need to add more salt, add more vinegar, etc. Every tuner thinks that they are a special snowflake but the reality is that most tunes are fairly similar. There is only so much you can do that is truly different on a tune than the other top guys are doing.

Even if someone is going to steal a tune, if he's a horrible tuner, the car he copy pastes it onto isn't going to run ideal unless he actually knows what he's doing since not every car is the same. We ran a canned tune on my G8 just to see how it would be when my old tuner was testing it out. Ran great on another stock G8 and ran pretty bad on mine. Since he is one of the best in the business, he adjusted it. The guys that steal shit won't be able to do that. And that's why "litigating" this stuff in the public forum is better for everyone than locking stuff down so no one can see it. Also, every guy I know who "fixed" someone elses tune generally just got rid of the entire old tune since it was normally trash.

The other thing is, I also want to adjust my tune at the track. Quite often. What if I need to detune my car because I am running sub 11.5s and want to run a consistent 11.6 that day? Can't do it with a locked tune. What if I am running a taller DR and need to change the tire size? Can't do it with a locked tune. What if something is incredibly ****ed up on the tune that wasn't found out right away and I want to, say, add fuel on the fly? Can't do it on a locked tune. Having a locked tune means I need to wait around for the tuner to get to my problem when I need my problem fixed right away. Some tuners are great at getting back to you (Justin at VMP has been very quick with adjustments for my blower). Some guys are notoriously slow. I wouldn't want to take the chance that I can't edit something that needs to be fixed. And this has happened to me when we were trying to get my stall converter dialed in with my last car. It needed to be changed quite a bit on the fly and luckily we could get into the file to fix the issues and change what needed to be changed.

I understand the reasoning behind locking something. I get it. But having every tune unlocked hasn't stopped GM tuners from making money and selling tunes. It won't stop Ford guys from doing the same thing. There are a plethora of reasons that locked tunes are bad for the consumer. It's why they don't fly in the GM community and why I think that having HPTuners for Fords, finally, will finally end that trend here, too. You end up with guys that refuse to buy tunes from guys that lock them. At the end of the day, what's good for the consumer will win out. I have a feeling that as HPTuners grows, locked tunes will diminish greatly just like it has in the GM world.

:beer: On point

lol

To say that all tunes are the same, so they shouldn't mind people being able to see all the details of them, is just not true... I've run a few different tunes on my car, and some start/cruise/idle totally different. If they were all the same, wouldn't they run the same?

See, posts like this are part of the problem. The acceptance of locked tunes from some consumers ridiculous and the lack of acceptance is part of why the GM community HAS everything unlocked. There is simply no acceptance of locked tunes (like I wrote above, unless it's some insane proprietary motor build or something). I take it you are comfortable not knowing what goes on in your tune. That's not what I'd prefer. There's a reason that very few people agree with you. We want more transparency. Not less.

 

[mebcop]

I'm trying to be reasonable and put myself in the shoes of the tuners, who do this for a living. If tunes are so "similar", then why do you need a tune to start with anyway. Just tune your car. You make it sound like there aren't "tricks" that some tuners have figured out. That is EXACTLY why one tuner becomes more popular than another. And once you take that trick away, it's not going to matter who is doing the tuning, so you might as well just pay whoever will sell it to you cheapest.

I have a funny feeling your point of view would be drastically different if you were feeding your children with the money you make from having found the "tricks" to make your tune better than the other guys.

whatever... im out

 

[yngrshr]

I'm trying to be reasonable and put myself in the shoes of the tuners, who do this for a living. If tunes are so "similar", then why do you need a tune to start with anyway. Just tune your car. You make it sound like there aren't "tricks" that some tuners have figured out. That is EXACTLY why one tuner becomes more popular than another. And once you take that trick away, it's not going to matter who is doing the tuning, so you might as well just pay whoever will sell it to you cheapest.

I have a funny feeling your point of view would be drastically different if you were feeding your children with the money you make from having found the "tricks" to make your tune better than the other guys.

whatever... im out

I never said that there weren't any differences. I said that the differences aren't as dramatic as you'd think. I've seen two diametrically opposed tunes (in terms of how the car ran) and the tunes were remarkably similar. One ran like utter dog shit and the other ran amazingly well. Just a heads/cam car, too. Nothing too insane. And the shitty tune came from the shop that actually put the package together (and knew the specs inside and out).

At the end of the day, transparency is a good thing. I don't see why anyone would want less transparency or even be OK with it. It hasn't hurt GM tuners and it won't hurt the Ford guys.

FWIW, some guys even find copying to be a form of flattery. The public forum has done a better job at weeding out shit tuners and thieves than anything else.