sanson06

I have a 2011 Mustang and I'm ready to tune it. I've seen the prices for buying a brand new tuner, $350 - $450. A friend of mine has a SCT X3 and he's willing to let me borrow it, so long as I pay to unlock/unmarried it, which is $150. I've seen a bunch of videos showing how to use the tuner and all of them use the "Custom Tune" option. Some videos mention that using the "Strategy Tune" is used only for "canned tunes" and I believe that the X3 does not come with preloaded tunes(please correct me if I'm wrong).
So my question is, if I take my friend's offer and pay to unlock the tuner, will I be able to program my car without a "custom tune"? Or do I have to buy, say a package of custom tunes from like AM ($150)?

Thanks in advance.

BTW, my friend's car is a 2005 Mustang V6.

Ltngdrvr

X3 may or may not have strategy tunes on it.

If it doesn't then you would have to get new tunes.

It would also need updating of it's firmware, SCT may do that when they unlock it.

Your friend can't unlock it? And he is "loaning" it to you? Hope he knows that he won't be able to tune his car with it anymore once you set it up for your car. They only work on one car at a time.

sanson06

Thanks for your quick response. I'll need to ask him if he knows about that, cause he's actually just loaning it to tune my car; once I tune it I'll provably give it back. But if it only works on one car, I'm guessing he would have to unlock it once again to make it work on his right?

Ltngdrvr

Yes, and once you use it on your car you won't be able to return it to the stock tune if your buddy has it unlocked again to tune his car. Unlocking it yourself involves returning the stock tune to the car, thus clearing the tuner to be used on another car.

I'd say that this is not something for you to do, you should just buy a new tuner from A/M and it will come loaded with tunes as well as have free tunes for life should you need new tunes.

The deal with your buddy is just going to screw things up for both of you.

sanson06

Yeah, thats what I was thinking. Thanks for response it was very helpful.

det97

Wouldn't it be easier and more costly to get the one from American Muscle and just use the forum code? I know mine has some canned tunes on it, but the ones from Bama are kinda awesomer.

Bucko

Not only that, but there are only so many times (5 I think) that you can marry/unmarry a tuner to other cars. The VIN for each car is stored. Once this limit hits, the tuner has to be fully reset by the manufacturer.

FromZto5

I'm curious with all this locking unlocking and marrying the SCT. My Maggie kit came with a preloaded Maggie and I've uploaded the tune once... Never had to touch it again. Does that mean my SCT is now "married" and "locked" to my car? It does have my stock program stored in there right?

Ltngdrvr

Yes, the tuner is now locked, will only work on your car until you reload the stock tune.

And when you loaded the magnaflow tune onto the pcm, it first stored the stock tune.

FromZto5

Magnuson... But yes, I see now. Thanks for explaining. I could "store" another tune if I get dyno tuned?

Black&Blue

With all this married/unmarried, locking/unlocking nonsense that SCT shackles their customers with, it makes you wonder how long it'll be before someone comes up with an OBD/USB or OSB/Bluetooth interface that'll allow flashing your ECM with a Windows laptop or Android tablet.

If they (SCT) keep it up, it's only a matter of time.

Ltngdrvr

It's not just SCT, diablosport tuners are exactly the same way.

It's how they make a profit selling the tuners as cheap as they do.

If they sold tuners that would tune as many cars as you wanted to tune they would cost four or five times as much.

Bucko

Locking/unlocking, marrying/unmarrying refers to the same process. You connect a tuner to your OBDII port, it reads and stores your VIN, you load one of the stored tunes, it's now "locked" (or married) to that specific vehicle. That's now one "marrage".

Lets say you connect the tuner again, and return the stock tune to the vehicle. It's now "unlocked (unmarried). The owner can now sell it to someone else.

That new user connects it to their car, downloads a stored tune. It's now "married" (locked) to this new car via the VIN it read off from that vehicle. They connect the tuner and reset back to the stock tune. Again, its unmarried (unlocked), and can be sold again. Two different VINS; this counts as 2 out of the 5 (for example) a given tuner is allowed to be married/locked, unmarried/unlocked to.

When purchasing a used tuner, there would be two things to ask the seller: is the tuner "unlocked/unmarried", and how many different vehicles has this tuner been connected to? Both of these answers can be seen on the tuner screen through various menu displays. Insist on a snapshot of these screens to verify the used tuner can be used on another car. If it has been used on 4 cars, and the tuner is set to only allow 5 VIN connections, I'd say the price should be lower, as you could not resell it when you are done with it (say you sell your car and reset it to stock tune) unless it was completely reset by the manufacturer. Usually this fee is $150.00. The same fee is usually charged if a previous owner did not unlock/unmarry it from their vehicle, regardless if it was the first, second, whatever VIN connection.