Topic: GXPinKC gets a tune

[DeepBlueGXP]

Ron,
What tune do you have?

[GXPsy Rose]

Ron,
What tune do you have?

Martin's...at least that what was stated on bb

[GXPinKC]

Ron,
What tune do you have?

Joe, I have always said some day that I would get a Lyndon Wester's Tune and I have always supported Lyndon on this and the old GXP Owners Forum.  However, after getting the Race Backbone and Probeam from Dave at DDMWorks and having both installed by Dave at the National Meet in Denver, on the spur of the moment I decided to have a Tune done.  I have always supported Lyndon Wester through my posts and threads on this as well as two other forums and in fact had said that I would get a tune from him someday.  Well, Carol and I of course attend every National Meet and also the Regional Meet in Kentucky.  

I saw that GM Roadster, Martin was at the Meet and doing Tunes.  In fact we met him in the parking lot the day before the Meet, and after hearing his remarks, my wife turned to me and said, "Ron, you have always wanted a tune and we are here now, why don't you just go ahead and get it".  Well, Joe that's all it took.  It was really a spur of the moment decision, and I felt somewhat guilty afterwards, and I looked at my wife and she smiled back and I agreed to do it.  Mine was an early build and there were problems with the batch of Roadsters that were built at the time mine was produced, and I believe it had something to do with the LNF.  Well, these vehicles should have been recalled by GM and brought up to snuff so that they performed like the ones that were built later.  So, I found out that my vehicle was one of the ones that was in that group and not producing the Horsepower that it should, and GM eventually discovered the problem and did a fix on future builds but did not recall the others that were underpowered, nor did they issue a recall.  After finding out that I had been duped by GM and had an underpowered Roadster that had not been brought up to spec as should have been done, I was extremely pissed!!!  The Tune offered by Martin would not only give me a quicker vehicle but now learning that I had been running with a GXP that was not as quick and fast as the ones produced later and since my GXP was underpowered from the start and I did not know it, and now I find out about it from a Tuner, I felt cheated!  I was told that after the Tune I would have 340 Torque, 300 HP (at the Engine), and 260 HP (at the Wheel).  

Well, Carol and I talked and she said go ahead.  That was it.  I am totally stunned by the results.  When, running the Peak to Peak the next day right behind Melanie's NA Solstice, I was flabbergasted by the results.  After leaving the Meet and going to Boulder, Colorado to visit my nephew Greg and his wife Valerie, and son Ryan, I let Greg drive it with Ryan in the passenger seat.  Well, Greg was blown away by the power of "Miss Red Eagle".

I am loving every minute now and driving this Roadster is a blast.  If I had waited to order my Pontiac Solstice GXP later, I would not have had a lower powered vehicle to drive for two and a half years and been cheated in performance for all that time, because GM did not take care of business, and recall it to fix to spec.  In essence I was really mad.  I do feel that possibly they may not have been aware of this mistake in production, however I cannot be sure of that.  Who knows, maybe they were aware of it.  I got the Tune!!!

Best thing I ever did!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lil goat]

Good luck with your GM Toaster tune, and thanks for supporting a con artist. Nothing quite like the sound of knock from to much timing.

[GregGXP]

Yeah, have to say that I am a bit confused. I thought you were pretty vocal in some of your posts about the Toaster tune Ron. 

[snaponbob]

Uh oh !!!!!!!!

[Ben L]

I'm sure it goes without saying, folks, but let's keep it civil.  OK, carry on.

[KWhale]

Before anyone says what they think of the Toaster Tuin, please keep in mind that GXPinKC is one of the nicest people we have on this forum.  If you must tell him about the error of his ways, please do it kindly, and reread his reasons for going the way he did before hitting "Post".

KC I wish you nothing but enjoyment of your new mods.  These cars really are amazing when you get a tune in them.  I am pretty shocked that you didn't get a Westers tune done, but I can understand that if you don't have HP Tuners, it's pretty hard to apply Westers to your own car.  The fact that you had the Toaster people right there to apply the tune was probably a big factor as well.  Hopefully they gave you a good tune, and you will run happily along until you or your car are just too old to drive anymore

[lil goat]

A fool and his money are soon parted, I am not one of the nicest people you will ever meet. I have a low tolerance for fools, especially when they are rude to our supporting vendors who I worked very hard to bring here. I have said my piece I will shut up now.

[DickW]

I totally agree with KWhale. Ron would not do anything to hurt anyone.
Lil goat I think you are taking this personally,That is not what you should do. This Forum is for people to state their views. Not for personal and unwarranted attacks. I know you are plainspoken but this time I think you went to far and an apology is in order.
My two cents

[Yamatr3]

I am so surprised you supported them

[Critterman]

I am speechless!

[Yamatr3]

I have to add, I did talk Crap about the guys at GM Toaster.  What they did was wrong and what they continue to do is worse.  But, when I had my car tuned, I stuck to my guns and didn't cave.  Randy and Dave at DDM tuned my car two weeks ago!

[Filipp]

Looks like the Engineer on the main board called Martin out over his so called "under performing 07 issues"

Here is his post

"Martin,

I talked with some of the powertrain guys this morning. There are no major changes to any of the basic engine operation software from 2007 model year through 2009. I am trying to get back to the calibrator/calibrators that did the majority of work on the LNF to get more specifics.

Every year and even in between years, there are tweaks and changes that happen, and the LNF is no exception. Changes to the outputs for functionality of the DIC, fixes to customer annoyances and driveability improvements, and we also had the change from vacuum pump to Optimized Hydraulic Braking and back again from 07 to 08 to 09, all of which require significant changes to the ECU program, but have no effect on overall torque or power. In addition, there was a new "box" for 08, essentially a hardware change, with a different operating frequency. This requires a different "table" per se, to work with the change in hardware/operating system, but the end power and torque curve is exactly the same.

Other than dyno runs, which have their own set of problems, how have you determined that the 07 cars are underperforming, exactly do you think are the "bad" calibration tables for 07 model year cars, and how much less power/torque does this hypothetically cost the 07 cars?

It looks like you are implying that the 07 LNF cars are only making 230 hp crank. Having driven many 07, 08, and 09 cars, I can tell you that I have not seen any cars that underperform without a clear reason why. For example, one car we gave to a magazine for evaluation got a pathetic 0-60 time (about 6 seconds) and a poor 1/4 mile (over 14.5 seconds), but come to find out they put 87 octane fuel in the car and ran it on a 89ºF day. Talk about instant spark retard.

We got the car back, and with the magazine, ran the fuel out, cleared the ECU, and refueled with premium. Like magic, it came right back to 5.4 seconds/13.9 seconds.

I have had people who claim their car is not making full power, and like the engineer I am, I always look for the reason for such a claim. If there is an issue, I really want to know about it and understand it fully, and sometimes the customers are the best barometer for determining that there is one in the first place.

After talking to many over the years, I find out they come to this conclusion because of a dyno run. Many of these people have never even hooked up a Vbox or gone to a drag strip, they just base it on that dyno pull, or worse yet tell me about their feelings from their "butt dyno". Dynamometers all have an "adjustment", which SAE has done their best to standardize. It works very well for N/A and Supercharged vehicles, but not so well for modern turbocharged engines.

So, if you know which tables are "in error", this will help me get closer to the answer of differences, if any, between 07 and 08+ LNF calibrations.

Steve."

[spicy3480]

I am a little shocked that you supported them also.  I am not going to knock you, because you are a real nice guy, but I am a little surprised by your decision.  Even when DDMWorks put the MACH I in my car, I made sure they didn't tune it because Lyndon has always tuned my car...and I know for a fact that Randy is a damn good tuner.  It's just a loyalty thing I guess.  Lyndon has been amazing to me.

[lil goat]

My comments are not entirely based on his getting the tune from Martin, but on inappropriate posting on 2 different threads for our new vendor Solstice-Sport. He owes them the apology. I will make none. He has ranted on and on about the backbone for weeks  , I am glad he finally got it a likes it.

[GXPinKC]

My comments are not entirely based on his getting the tune from Martin, but on inappropriate posting on 2 different threads for our new vendor Solstice-Sport. He owes them the apology. I will make none. He has ranted on and on about the backbone for weeks  , I am glad he finally got it a likes it.

You are so correct lil goat.  I just posted a sincere apology.  I am sorry for my inappropriate remarks.
Ron

[DeepBlueGXP]

Filipp, thanks for bringing the post over...

[DickW]

Will someone please tell me the diference between Westers tune and Martins other than Westers is a supporting vendor? Why do you call it a Toaster? I have bought an HP tuner now have to either buy or borrow a laptop. I am going to get a Westers tune so Goat don't yell at me. Now I will have betwee $900 and $1300 in this tune. Maybe Ron didn't want to spend that much. All I have heard about on this forum is Westers, So I figure all you idiots can't be wrong. ( I Hope) LOL

[elff]

I am curious about the 07 issue.
I could have sworn there were Dyno results from at least a couple of people that backed up the theory that the 07's put down less HP than the 08 and 09 models.
There was even a case with the GMPP LNF tune yielding significantly lower results on an 07 in a thread by Werks.
Did GM improve the tuning that much in 08?

On a similar thread, the original R56 Mini Coopers [Turbo version] had major lag and torque steer issues in 07.  In 2008 they revised the tune and the car comes from the factory significantly better now.   Boost is smooth, yet strong, and very little torque steer in our 09 R56. [Impossible to fully eliminate in FWD]
FYI - We are gonna buy some DDM goodies for it very soon.

[snaponbob]

Lyndon has said he has seen power output differences between 07 and 08. Asked "why?", he said he does not know why, but does have to write tunes a bit differently for the different years AND brands.

[Yamatr3]

Will someone please tell me the diference between Westers tune and Martins other than Westers is a supporting vendor? Why do you call it a Toaster? I have bought an HP tuner now have to either buy or borrow a laptop. I am going to get a Westers tune so Goat don't yell at me. Now I will have betwee $900 and $1300 in this tune. Maybe Ron didn't want to spend that much. All I have heard about on this forum is Westers, So I figure all you idiots can't be wrong. ( I Hope) LOL

If you read this thread, it will explain all your questions.

http://KappaPerformance.com/index.php?topic=1704.0

[Filipp]

I actually sent an email to Lyndon asking about it.

This is what my email said

"Sorry to bother you again Lyndon but another question. I saw a post on the forums saying " I'm guessing that you have an early production '07 GXP.... If so we found early on during our tune R&D that the early production '07's have some bad tables...in other words when we were dyno'ing not 1 but 3 of our test '07 GXP's it sounded like someone was dropping marbles on the valve cover....

Most people don;t hear this because of the amount sound absorbing material there is on & around the motor.

We also found that these motors made 20-25 Wheel HP less than the 08's at the time. So when we saw 220-225 at the wheels of the '08's we only saw 197-205 to the wheels on the 3 early '07's we used for testing."

Its found here http://www.solsticeforum.com/forum/f43/lnf-turbo-upgrade-issues-57238/index2.html

Is there any truth to the 07's producing less HP / Torque than the 08's out of the factory? Just curious since I have an 07 with the GMPP tune and ran a 9.2 at the 1/8 mile track which seems like the stock time and thought I woulda hit 8.8 or something."

Then he replied with

"Some people also do not know how to tune those cars properly.
No, if you check our dyno charts, you'll see similar numbers to the 2007 and 2008 cars in their stock form."

[MomsSol]

I'm glad you are enjoying your tune Ron!

This comment has me very curious and I am currently in contact with several friends at GM/Pontiac to discover the "truth" behind the statement.

Mine was an early build and there were problems with the batch of Roadsters that were built at the time mine was produced, and I believe it had something to do with the LNF.  Well, these vehicles should have been recalled by GM and brought up to snuff so that they performed like the ones that were built later.  So, I found out that my vehicle was one of the ones that was in that group and not producing the Horsepower that it should, and GM eventually discovered the problem and did a fix on future builds but did not recall the others that were underpowered, nor did they issue a recall.  After finding out that I had been duped by GM and had an underpowered Roadster that had not been brought up to spec as should have been done, I was extremely pissed!!!

So far the response has been "news to me, but I'll check with some others".

IMO *if* this truly is/was an issue then there would have been others that would have run across it as well.

[LatinVenom]

First there is no way Martin is going to answer the Engineer from GM, since his tuner would not know the differences in the tables.
A Dyno is a tuning tool and nothing more, and the numbers should not be use to compare tunes or cars for that matter.
People and at times tuners like to use Dyno numbers for bragging rights, this is so wrong folks.
We know 1st hand from Orlando what Martin's tuner can accomplish using a Dyno to tune a car.
The answer not much, the output was pretty much the same for most cars. Is just a canned tune that is it.
He then had the chance to prove himself with BLACKSKY car and tune, where he was able to stay on the Dyno longer and do extra pulls, well it did not help.
 BLACKSKY car was then tune later that night by people that know how to really use a Dyno and tune a car.
Do the people that get his tune feel the difference, YES, but is the car really tune properly, the answer is NO.