I have a JLT CAI w/Bamachips 93 tune. I started having a problem of my car hesitating when I pressed the throttle from a dead stop. I sent a E-mail to Doug and he replied that it might be a issue with the sensor or throttle body. I even posted a thread and everyone thought it might be a dirty throttle body. So yesterday I took my car into D'Agostino Racing here and they diagnosed it as a problem with the tune. The tech that worked on my car used to work for diablo sports and he spent almost 2 hours working on a new tune. He did everything but put it on the dyno and now my car flies. I just have to press the throttle and I have to watch I don't leave rubber *L* Since I now have 20" wheels he suggested I switch to a 373:1 or 410:1 rear end and then I would really feel the difference. Which one should I go with?

I think Doug at Bamachips is an awesome guy and I even met him in Myrtle Beach in July but I wish he would have taken the time to investigate my problem more since he claimed that it wasn't a tune problem.

 

Glad to here it worked out for you. If the guy was Scott who used to work for Diablo , he really knows his stuff. I got the first set of CMDP that Steeda released and the canned Diablo tune for them would throw me into forced limited power mode. I called Diablo and they had me bring it in so they could use it to work out a tune. Scott spent the whole day on it , did a ton of dyno pulls , and afterwards as you say

 

Yeah Scott Beer is doing all the custom tuning for D'agostino now

Glad it worked out so well for you - I have only seen/heard great things about them

20 inch wheels?... Go 4.10

 

Yup, it was Scott. He was great, kept test driving my stang to ensure it was tuned right. He said the only way to make it better was to dyno it but said wait until I change the rear end. He informed me I sould be getting about 290 hp to the rear wheels now. I guess my next mod will be the 410's

 

For sure 4.10s with 20s....... Also no disrespect to Doug, but you can't go wrong with a custom tune- I would expect it to be better than a mail-order. You can get a great mail order tune with spot-on air/fuel, etc. but for all out performance, a custom tune is a must. Congrats!

 

wow, I havent chose who to get my canned tune from yet, but this is the second negative thread for bamachips so now I just have to decided between tillman and brenspeed

 

Well, I wouldn't discount Bamachips altogether on account of this thread.

You want to base your decision on TWO threads vs a million praising Bama?!

Now, I can't speak into smokenpony's situation, just glad it worked out for him.

Nick

 

Bama may do good work, but so do many other tuners out there, brenspeed and tillman as I said. so when trying to make a decision one must take into account a little of everything.

My #1 requirement is customer service, when doug got an email from smokey he should have been a little more willing to help him figure out the cause of the issue and make sure it wasnt the tune he made for him.


So when making a decision in a market where there are several options available to me, and you have 2 complaints vs 0 then yeah thats more then enough for me.

I may not have discounted bama completely if at any time in either of the threads did I hear that an effort was made to help fix the problem, but there wasnt in both cases the customers found it neccessary to go somewhere else for their tune

 

Well one thing's for sure- when it comes to customer service, you'll find ZERO complaints about Brenspeed. Quick, friendly, accurate service.

 

Okay, hold on a second here... reality check:

First, did this problem appear the instant you loaded the tune, or was it after running the tune for a while, or was it present prior to the tune installation? Second, did you do anything about the suggestions? Clean the sensor and throttle body? If so, did you reload the tune and clear the KAM (disconnect the battery and reconnect after 5 mins)? If so, did you communicate this to Doug?

DRI has a great reputation, and I have no doubt about their abilities. I still ask, did you communicate with Doug about the issues you're having? If it was a tune problem, I would expect it to appear the instant you uploaded the tune, or perhaps within the first 100 miles or so, as the adaptive portion of the computer settles in. Additionally, if the only communication you had with Doug was to comment on the hesitation, and you never wrote him back, then from his eyes I could see this as "problem resolved."

That statement right there is instructive... If the only change you've made to the car was the CAI, then the only tune changes that should have to be made are for the transfer function of the MAF and a timing adjustment for the fuel quality. Any other little tweeks are the province of the individual tuner, but they're pretty much cookie-cutter for a given application. Take the base file, upload the trans or throttle mapping, alter the MAF transfer function, alter the timing, and go. A quality tuner should be able to knock out a basic tune like that in about 10 minutes. The fact that DRI took nearly two hours tells me that there's more going on here than is apparent on the surface. A mail-order tune from Doug (or anybody else, for that matter) HAS to assume a baseline of some sort for the vehicle. Any deviation from that baseline will result in sub-optimal performance and must be corrected for. If you were to datalog, and send them to Doug, he would probably have made adjustments to the tune file to better suit your specific vehicle. In essence, that's what DRI did. Assuming that a baseline vehicle is "normal," then any changes that need to be made to a successful baseline tune indicate an "abnormal" vehicle condition. Taking two hours to tune up a CAI installation would indicate some serious abnormalities to me...


I'm a little confused by this... the final drive gear ratio should be selected to complement the net torque curve of the engine, as modified by the transmission gearing. This is why, with the mod V-8 motors, the general rule is 3.73 for auto trans cars, and 4.10 for sticks. Wheel diameter doesn't have any factor, unless you've drastically altered the tire diameter (and thus revs per mile). If you went from a 28" tall stock tire, to a 30" tall tire (which I don't think would fit), then a taller ratio like a 4.10 or a 4.30 would be appropriate, as you are dropping your final drive due to the tire size. If you kept a roughly stock height, though, the same 3.73/4.10 logic would apply.

I also happen to think Doug is an awesome guy, as he has been helping me with a GIANT mess, not of his making, and to only minor profit on his end... I guess the question I really have to ask is: exactly how much investigation do you think would be appropriate, and in what form? Troubleshooting is a matter of running down the possibilities until only the cause is left... He indicated it might be a dirty MAF or throttle body. I seriously doubt that you got back in touch, said that you cleaned it but still had the same issues, and he just threw up his hands and gave up. He just doesn't have that reputation. At some point, though, the expectations for a mail order tune have to be realistic. If you have some bizarre part on the car, that he's never seen and has no files for, then you will need REPEATED datalogging to get the tune correct. At that point, it may be more efficient, from a time perspective, to have the car dyno-tuned locally, where the dyno tuner (DRI in your case) has hands-on access to the car, and can pull the info that they need right then and there.

Out of curiosity, what exactly did DRI wind up correcting for in the tune that took so long? The JLT intake is a standard piece, with drop-in scalars to the tuning software, just like the C&L, and a bunch of others.

If this sounds accusitory, it's not intended to be, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of the issue, and it bugs me that Doug's name is getting a little splattered here, when I honestly don't think it's really justified.

 

First let me say this thread was not intended to trash Doug or his work. I believe his tunes are top noch and would recommend his product to anyone . You sound very knowledgable about the mechanics of a car and I respect you for that. I, on the other hand, am not mechanically inclined. I have to depend on techs to work on my car or at least steer me through some simple things that could be accomplished without having to tear my car apart. I also live in a condo, so do most of my friends so I don't have the luxury of having a place to work on my car.

When this problem developed the tunes were installed for a while. I tried switching brands of gas first to see if that was a problem. When it wasn't that is when i e-mailed d Doug. Again not to trash Doug but it would have been nice to be able to call him and discuss my problem on the phone but he removed his phone number from his webpage on his contact page. Any way since everyone gave me suggestions on what the problem may be, I took my car in to have it diagnosed and clean the throttle body if needed. That's when I was told it was a tune problem and instead of leaving and e-mailing Doug and waiting for his answers I had the shop retune my car.

So you see some of us depend on techs for our cars and shops to fix em. I can't sit here and answer all your questions but I hope this could make you understand my situation better.

 

All to the good! I'm glad that you're tune is working the way you want it to, but I would still be interested in finding out what DRI wound up doing to correct the issues you had...

I completely understand your situation, and totally support your taking the car into a local tech given the forgoing! Personaly, however, unless there were sour grapes between you and Doug (and it doesn't sound like it), then I would have left him out of the issue alltogether. As you can see from MustangRetribution's comments that he's considering taking Doug off the list of people to tune his car. A thousand praises, and two negatives is the reason he cited...

 

Yeah, your probably right but I was just trying to give some history and maybe I went a little to far. Just a little frustrated I guess *L* I intend on going back to the shop at some point and I'll ask what changes he had to do. hopefully I'll understrand what he tells me *LOL*

 

I think your over reacting a bit there dave, Mentioning where he got his tune from that was part of his issue is hardly overstepping any bounds.


My issue is the lack of customer service in both cases.That and the Ive seen several instances were doug was difficuilt to get ahold of on some other forums. So forgive me if I find this a black mark against bamachips

There was absolutely zero trash talk in this thread, I saw only facts. So yes I will not be choosing bama for my tune, its hardly the end of the world, Im fairly certain doug want be going out of business because of it.


So relax a little bit, you seem to really like doug and all and thats cool, but dont jump all over ppl when they have an issue with one of his tunes, these are things I, as a potential customer want to know.

 

I still have this EXACT SAME problem with Dougs tune, is your car an automatic?
I did not have the issue until I installed CMDP and Dougs tune.. it is so bad that my car could not spin the tires even from a Power brake, it lost all low end (2800 rpm and below) power. I have Data Logged till my face turned blue and still no resolve, I advanced the timing as far as I can and the car is driveable. Can you find out what DRI did to fix it, Please .. I have been going through this for months now.

This is again my Argument with EVO and Doug, Lack of Customer support, I loved using EVO Tunes they were pretty good and I know doug is a Stand up guy and great tuner and I think his tune could be killer if it worked right, but getting a hold of them is like pulling teeth.

 

For months? You sound very patient. I would have given up already long time ago. Maybe you should give another vendor a try. For example if you have an SCT XCAL2, Brenspeed should be able to hook you up with a tune for $75.

 

I can understand one's frustration with not getting an expected response. Without seeing the actual email sent to and received from Doug, nobody can judge the quality of Customer Service at this point. I wonder though, did Doug really understand the email or the request?

I decided to purchase my tuner and tune from Doug last week because he was the only vendor that took the time to respond to my questions with a quality thought. Plus, nobody else could tell me why I should buy from them.

Interestingly, he gave me his phone # (I simply asked for it). Everyone that I had talked to reports only positive experiences from Doug's tunes and his support.

I'm usually leary of purchasing from a small shop but, I figured that if I have trouble with the tuner and I can't get a good response from Doug, I can work with SCT. Or, if I have trouble with the tune, I have several options: I can go back to stock, use one of the other tunes, adjust it myself (God forbid!), go to a dyno shop to get a custom tune, or buy a tune from another vendor like Brenspeed, etc.

I wanted Doug's experience from thousands of cars in my tune. Then I want service. If I get poor service... at least I get his tune

 

Hey Rich

When are you going with the gears? I am curious to hear about how your install goes and the price as I am contemplating gears somehwere down the road

DAVE

 

I had some pinging with Doug's tunes and he took care of it. I had to be patient, but he eventually got back to me and fixed the problem. It took a few days for Brenspeed to update a tune when I had a problem, so the response time was about the same in my case.

Also there's just so much these guys can do by email without seeing your car. Their tunes are more agressive than stock, and with engine production tolerances, some cars might react differently and cause some pinging. They can do some adjustments but if your car is far off from average, a custom tune might be required.