I just finished up a idle, startup, warm up and drivability tune on an AEM EMS G42 2Jzgte. The customer has been complaining about the tune on the car and now I fully understand why. The car was tuned by another AEM certified shop and it looks like a kindergartener was playing connect the dots. There was no knowledge whatsoever of how the AEM tables work together to tune the car or any knowledge of what each table did. There was no startup enrichment, there was no warm up enrichment, there was a fuel map that was running 17 to 1 air fuel when cruising. It was just pitiful.
I can’t tell you how many times I see this kind of tuning from other shops and they call it finished. To be honest, a tune is never really finished, but these tunes are really not even started. Full throttle pulls are a part of tuning, but that is really the easy part and should be done after the rest of the tuning is complete. The idle, startup, warm up and drivability are the hard parts. These things take time to get correct and the more time that is spent on a tune the better it will be, that’s just a fact. Unfortunately, most people want to pay x amount of dollars (or a flat rate) for a tune and it just doesn’t work out well for customers who go to shops that charge like that. The shops want to rush cars out and get them done as quickly as possible. Some cars take 2 hours to tune, some take 10 to tune. The longer a tuner can spend on it and the more money that is invested in the tune, the better it will be.
Also, keep in mind that a full tune will require a full cool-down period (usually overnight) to allow for the complete map to be finished first and then the cold idle, startup tables, and warm up tables can be properly tuned. You can’t tune a warm up table completely if the car is already warm. You also cant tune for 30 degree weather if its not 30 degrees outside. Customers need to realize this and this is why it may take a few trips to a tuner and the car may have to be left overnight to get things perfect. If you get your car tuned on the hottest day of the year and then again on the coldest then you should be pretty good for the temperatures in between. Just remember, tuners are not miracle workers but I like to think that we are as close to that as you can get.
