I recently bought Adrenalin's old XCal1 and bought a email order 91 octane race tune from BamaChips. Other than a little mixup at first (tune was sent in the .ll3 format instead of .xtr, which Doug @ Bamachips resent to me in the right format about an hour after I emailed him ) ,loading the tune into the car went really smoothly.

I really like the way it feels now, much livelier and with much snappier acceleration, and it feels more aggressive and torquier than the mild-mannered feel the car had before. And this is in all RPM ranges.

It feels like the ignition advance curve has been tweaked, like we did with springs and centrifugal advance weights in the distributor back when cars actually had distributors. It also feels like the initial timing has been advanced as well. I love it.

It's funny how I was really not planning on making any modifications to the engine of this car because it's my daily driver, but I got a good deal on a CAI and then the Xcal1 and tune all within about a month. I guess I can't fight fate...

 

I just did mine finally in the past 48 hours, too. Here's what I noticed:

Not a real perceptible power difference under 3000 RPMs, other than smoother, less "tacky" throttle response. But between 3000 RPMs and 3500 RPMs the car just comes alive; it's a whole different vehicle than before - the power suddenly surges akin to what I've experienced with turbos.

I went with a Steeda CAI, SCT III XCalibrator and a 91 octane custom tune programmed by Steeda Canada.

 

I notice that it takes about 40% less pedal with race tune to get the same amount of throttle response as the stock tune , so I've had to adjust myself to this. I like it

I got to thinking about tunes and it would nice to have a "wife" tune and a "teenage kids" tunes, with power and throttle response limited to 4 banger levels, similar to having a "valet" mode. It'd be the opposite of a "race" tune.

Then if the wife or teenage kids drive the car, (I'm lucky my son isn't old enough to ask for the keys yet) a guy could load the low performance tune. That would keep some people out of trouble...