UT_farhan

Hey guys, need some ECU tuning advice. I have an 08 997.1TT, which is still under the CPO warranty until July 2015. I'm planning to put a Europipe Stage 1 on the car, which I know wont affect the CPO. Where I'm a bit torn is in the ECU tune. I'd really like to do it to fully maximize the car and the exhaust, but I'm worried about voiding the warranty. Where I need some advice is around which of the following tunes to look at, or should I play it safe and just wait till closer to my warranty expiration before I do anything.

A local tuning shop in Dallas is recommending FVD as the tune. I've read good things about them, and it looks like they routinely run 30% off sales, so the price is great, and its something I can basically do on my own.

My Porsche dealership is recommending a company called Sportec, which I havent been able to find too many reviews on. They're also saying because of the reliability of Sportec, and the fact they're doing the tune, my warranty will still remain intact. Of course, its a much higher price than FVD, and the fact that its dealership prices.

I would really appreciate any thoughts here, or if anyone has deal with either company. I'm local to Dallas, so if anyone has an exhaust + ECU tune and wants to talk, feel free to reach out to me.

speed21

If it were me I would not get roped into any tune until you have your EP1 on. You have chosen well so far. Experience the difference that EP1 makes first and then decide whether you even really want a tune. I know there are fans on these boards but frankly from what I've heard from a couple of users who have had it, and got rid of it, I wouldn't touch an FVD tune personally….at any money.

nuclearfishin

Honestly I'd be more worried about what a cheap tune would do to your car vs how a quality tune affects your warranty. I added a tune first, then exhaust. I went with GIAC for the tune and couldn't be happier. Part of the reason I chose GIAC is because it came with a programmer that allows me to switch between stock, performance, and race gas tune in a matter of seconds. After I got the tune, it was really easy to switch between modes on the track and get real quantitative data on how well it was working. Last month I just added Fabspeed exhaust with an x-pipe. I haven't been to the track yet to check numbers, but I will say the difference in power gain between stock exhaust and Fabspeed feels about the same as the increase when I switch from stock tune to race gas, which is to say it feels pretty impressive. You're doing the right thing choosing Europipe, I'd recommend biting the bullet and getting whatever tune pairs up well with that exhaust.

RDF16

How do you switch between tunes? I have a GIAC tune but did not
know there was a way to switch.

For the starter of this thread, if you touch the DME most dealers and
PCNA will void your CPO. There are a few mod friendly dealers out
there but Strong Porsche in SLC is not one of them, I don't even
think they would CPO with ANY aftermarket parts and if you brought
a car to them with wheels or exhaust they will whine like a stuck pig
and go crying to PCNA.

nuclearfishin

A few more words on choosing a tune... I learned that some tuners actually change the programming in the ecu (or the ecu itself) while others just write a piggy back program. A piggy back ecu takes signals from your sensors and modifies them to trick your ecu into reading a different value. For example, the piggy back may take readings from your MAF sensor and alter the value so the ecu sees it as being too high or low, and then adjusts other parts of the map accordingly. I preferred going with a tune where the ecu sees the actual values coming from the sensors and adjusts according to that. I don't have enough info to definitively say one is better than the other, but as a systems engineer I appreciate simplicity, and to me the piggy back seems like it would be just a little harder to achieve overall efficiency of the system. Of course this may be total BS, but I like the way my car runs. Good luck!

nuclearfishin

Check out the flashloader on their website: http://www.giacusa.com/products/switchers.php

Boeing 717

How much is that I don't see a price on website. Will it flash back to stock so that Porsche can't tell It was modded?

bill8411

My question exactly!

UT_farhan

Thanks for the quick responses guys. I understand the European tunes are a little less aggressive than US tuners, which I'm ok with. I'd rather play it a bit safer and save the money of a blown engine and sacrifice 20-30 hp. This is a daily driver for me, and maybe 2-3 times at the track a year.

Can you please elaborate? Why not, and who would you recommend?

Thanks for the advice. It seems like more and more companies are offering the ODBII tune that allows you to go back and forth from stock to the performance tune via a handheld device. My concern is that multiple dealerships have told that even if you flash back to stock when you have an issue, the dealership can always tell if you had previously tuned the car or not. Depending on how much they want to screw you, they can deny the warranty claims. I'm still under CPO for 1.5 year, so that would really suck!

nuclearfishin

I'm not sure of the price for just the flashloader, it came with the tune which I had done by Wright Motorsport. The tune itself was not cheap (around $3k), but it was a huge performance boost and not out of line compared to the cost of other mods which would take a full second off 1/4 mile time.

It will easily flash back to stock tune, however I'm not sure what a dealer may or may not be able to identify with their equipment. I suspect if a dealer wanted to they could identify any tune unless the ecu was actually switched back to stock, untouched hardware. Also, CPO warranty work doesn't come out of the dealers hide so I wonder how often they balk at work that isn't legitimately caused by a tune? Of course I don't have a cpo so it's easy for me to speculate with somebody else's warranty on the line.

Chris@Fabspeed

I don't know if there is anyone with more experience tuning 996/997/997.2 Turbo's than Todd at Evolution Motorsports - it's who we use simply because of the great results and great service we get from him.

BUT it is very hard to turn down a tune option from a Porsche dealership that will maintain your warranty.

Psup4s

I was at my P dealer yesterday and asked my sales guy how "mod friendly" the dealer was when it comes to CPO 997s. He's response was exhaust is ok but as far as tune goes, big NO NO

UT_farhan

Thanks for that. It seems dealerships vary quite a bit in what they say. I would say ultimately its in the dealerships best interest to do the CPO work because it's nothing out of their pocket; they get reimbursed by Porsche directly. But it's going to depend on how friendly they are.

Someone else gave me some advice to put the exhaust on now and get the EVU tune when the car is out of warranty. But tough to wait 1.5 years for that! Who knows if I'll even have the car that long!

Kevin

UT, there is little chance that Porsche North America will warranty an engine or drivetrain failure with a tuned ECU. Even if they recommend Sportec. Let's say that you have a variocam module failure, Or a timing chain failure that stuffed your valvetrain. The regional Porsche rep would get involved on this warranty and would deny the claim when the ECU data is presented to them. It would be your Dealership that would had to cough up the repair. If they say that they stand besides there powertrain/tuning warranty have them put it in writing.

PM Boeing 717 (Jerry) he will tell you about his small dealer claim with his GIAC tuning.

The proper way to address this is.. When you tune your ECU, you have work with your tuner and bare any powertrain failures that come down the pipeline. To minimize this risk, I'd strongly recommend getting a aftermarket warranty such as Easycare or Fidelity (no sale pitch for them, I have just seen how they have covered warranty claims over the years).

speed21

Not on the open forum. Let's put it this way, if I had a bad experience, I would just eat the tune and move on as many on these boards do. Every time I've seen anyone speak out negatively on a (such and such) tune they get chopped down….not worth it.

You live in the states so you have a number of excellent choices at your fingertips for this car. If I were there i'd do a custom Giac, EPL, Protomotive or even an APR, your tuned car should still cope well during your odd track days (fuel quality pending). That said I would pop some .2ttrs coolers on to help things along if track or sustained sporty driving is an intention. Heat is a big killer and, the more boost timing and fuel will generate a higher heat load on components….you can't escape that. It's all about minimising risks and having the engine happy enough to survive whatever you want to throw at it. I don't buy the story about "weaker" "safer" tunes. I mean what exactly is "safe"/safer? A tune is either up to whatever you want to throw at it or it isn't.

The stock tune settings from Porsche will generally allow you to run the car under track conditions for reasonably sustained periods without damaging the engine or prematurely wearing the internals in the process. The more power you seek to extract, higher wear cycles come into play but if your plan is to just hold the car briefly then all of the above may not matter. Who cares what mess you leave. But higher performance without reliability and durability is useless and no one likes putting their hand back into their pocket when unexpected things pop up. Other thing is if your car is manual you will have a clutch to contend with…