SGSash

Guys, forgive me.

Normally I wouldn't post but I feel my side of the story must be made known here.

First of all, it seems the gains Brian and I made were about the same. Plus or minus the 1-2% variation that a chassis dyno will normally have (MUCH more considering VVEL, an automatic transmission and more)

For you Paul, to say that the car pulls harder and stronger, I don't doubt being true. It's 0 degrees now, rather than 10 degrees when we did your tune. That works out to about 10whp! Your butt dyno is surely feeling that.

I want to note that while we don't deal with COBB very much, we still yielded the same gains, and produced the same power at the end.

Now I don't mean to bash Brian or APH, I love those guys, but if you look at the dyno graphs from Brian you'll notice they show the engine revving to 7300rpm and the torque being 20lb-ft less than my graph. You'll also notice the horsepower is at it's peak at the end of the pull, whereas in my graph the horsepower noses over.

This is because the Gear ratio was setup incorrectly on Brian's dyno. Paul, you may remember at the start of your session I spent approximately 30 minutes loading the car up and doing small pulls and checking the data logs with the Dyno to calibrate the gear ratio. Infact - I did 6 pulls before I had it spot on. The actual gear ratio I found was 3.836. In this dyno you've posted, the gear ratio is set to 4.1995. On this tune you got - again no offense to Brian or the guys at APH, the engine was actually only revving to approximately 6600 rpm.

All this means is that if the gear ratio was setup correctly, the power figures would have been displayed differently. The dynapack reads horespower, and calculates torque, which is why the horsepower is relatively the same, but the torque is low (the dyno thought you were spinning the engine much faster). In reality, if the pull kept going to the peak rpm, you would have made even more power on that dyno! Which is about right, since it seems that APH's dyno reads a bit higher than ours from what i've been told.

I'm sorry that you found your experience at SG a negative one. I feel we did everything correctly and gave you no reason to be unhappy. We produced power gains - although not as large as I had hoped, or had typically seen, there were gains none the less. As I said to you in person, and will say online (now that you've turned this into a public issue), I sent you nothing more than an expectation of what I normally see, not a guarantee. It seems Brian did not guarantee anything either. My exact words as quoted from my email were:

"That power sounds outrageously high! Most AT 3.7’s dyno around 270~ on our dyno, so don’t be disappointed if that includes your car! I expect we should still be able to find 10-12 whp in tuning though.

Thanks Paul,"

And in your tune, we found approximately 8-9whp outside of peak, and 4-5whp at peak. Now peak power is not where you spend most of your time - 4500rpm - 6000rpm is. We found horsepower here. If we refunded money when we didn't mean our average, that would mean we would have to charge more when we exceeded our expectation. That wouldn't be fair either, would it?

I also mentioned to you that your car came in running quite well, already running at 12.5:1 AFRs, not nearly as rich as most Nissans come in. You mentioned that tuning these engines was significantly different, which I denied - mentioning that only fuel and ignition could be changed with the cobb. Ignition is done just the same as all VQs, not in degrees of advance, but in time before peak cylinder pressure. These are concepts both Brian and I understand very well, and whether he's tuned 4 or 30 cars, I'm sure we'll agree about almost all of tuning methods. There is no black magic to tuning, as it seems you have been led to believe there is. I'm sorry.

As I said before, I'm sorry your car did not make more power, and I'm sorry you felt the need to go out of you way to re-establish what I told you, by making essentially the exact same power you left SG with.

I'm most sorry however, that your own lack of understanding caused you to slander the name I work so hard to make great. That you went and got your car tuned somewhere else, thinking they were better than us, when at first glance of the dyno sheet I can spot a problem. None of us are perfect. Look at me - I forgot your battery cover! The point is, you need to trust your tuner. If my name and the things I have achieved (like having the highest horsepower stock displacement NA 350z in North America) is not enough for you to trust, then I would have rathered not have your business in the first place.

And Reality, I thought I had earned more of your respect than to see you doubting me so quickly, and convincing our customers to leave us. I have more respect for APH customers than to convince them to leave Ed and his team. I understand how hard they work for their customers, and would rather find my own new customers. I do envy how loyal you are to APH though...