S4 STAGE 3 Options (Software comparisons)

[Big Boost]

I already have my K04's and I'm ready for the Stage 3 software. I understand every company has their own proprietary tune and must keep some software development secrets, but why can't I find ANY comparisons of any companies besides AWE/GIAC and APR? What's up with EPL or Marc's tune? I know that VAST and JHM have their own tunes, but how does it compare with the others listed? I am looking for the following: AWHP #, A/F ratio/ logs/ what psi the tune is rated for/ Expansion for dumps and meth/ a comparison among them all. Another thing is I will need a remote tune until I can log data and let them tune it later.

Does this exist? I am ready to do this right now. No flames, and yes I've searched for specifically these areas with no luck. A word of the wise to the tuners, if you keep EVERYTHING secret you could end up losing potential customers. Others I've talked to feel the same way. My wish is that AZ could have a Tuner Comparison forum where there will only be hard facts with no BS. This might be a pipe dream, but it's long overdue.

[HotSauce]

I'm running AWE's OTS GIAC file. My car also has dumps. The car hasn't been dyno'd recently (thus now AWHP/AF numbers), but runs in the ballpark of 23PSI. It is also slightly faster than a VERY strong running (known) EPL car. The car has been very reliable, and it's a very fun tune. The dumps work quite well with the tune.

I have zero complaints.

[Das General]

There are tons of logs on either AZ or AW. A lot of the logs vary, as the tunes react differently to each car, with different setups.

[audiwop]

I have VAST and love it. They are great to deal with and will give you updated revisions if you send them your loggs.

[AielloS4]

Running Marcs tune here..setup is very strong, if not faster then some stage 3 cars I had some runs with. Of course, everyone will have their comments and talk shit about it but def take a look at that setup.

[Das General]

I've never heard anyone talk bad about Marcs tune.

[fixn2xlr8]

Go with the software offered by the tuner closest to where you live. nothing is worse than having a problem and having to deal with a tuner long distance.

[will175]

I went with marc but still no reviews till I get my car back. But never heard bad things about his tune yet. And I believe I bought it back when not too many people were running his fueling set up. Plus he has helped me out with a lot of different things even though I am on the other side of the US.

[The_Jerbel]

VAST offers everything you're looking for. Email me and I can give you more details.

[GunSupplier]

Unless you need a custom tune.

Really?

[Only1Z]

I have an ASP custom tune. It's VERY nice and tailored to MY car. That's what you should do. And mine was just freshly done. :-)

[jays01s4]

Unless you need a custom tune.

ORLY?

I've had several revisions to my VAST custom tune and am very happy with the results. Mike's level of customer service and attention to detail is second to none!

[Das General]

I have an ASP custom tune. It's VERY nice and tailored to MY car. That's what you should do. And mine was just freshly done. :-)

Ask Pinoy how he feels. He had an ASP stage 3 setup. It ran low 13's. Then he switched over to a VAST setup and ran an 11.7

[lrg8683]

i'd probably go with vast if you don't want to deal with any immature nonsense you might get else where..

[Das General]

i'd probably go with vast if you don't want to deal with any immature nonsense you might get else where..

How is your tune?

[lrg8683]

How is your tune?

the tune is fine.. i ran a best FATS of 3.6 the other night.. i posted the mostly full logs.. i left out the repetitive crap.

[Sleeeper X]

SSP tuned over here, I've put quite a bit of mileage on my car since the stage3 build and no problems, plus i get to run 11.6 on pump with a basefile I cant wait to see what she'll do next time with the retune. Muwahahahaha.

[Silver streak]

AWE and no problem what so ever... love it.

[Das General]

SSP tuned over here, I've put quite a bit of mileage on my car since the stage3 build and no problems, plus i get to run 11.6 on pump with a basefile I cant wait to see what she'll do next time with the retune. Muwahahahaha.

I heard you are hanging out in corn fields these days...!

[audiwop]

Unless you need a custom tune.

Not to beat a dead horse to death, but VAST basically is a custom tune. Just send them your loggs and they will keep fine tuning untill Mike feel he has gotten the most out of it... Plus, you know they will be there a year from now.

[2001S4NY]

I heard you are hanging out in corn fields these days...!

Damn who isn't hanging in a corn field these days

[Big Boost]

the tune is fine.. i ran a best FATS of 3.6 the other night.. i posted the mostly full logs.. i left out the repetitive crap.

What company's tune is this? Also, I couldn't find any other comparisons among VAST, EPL, SSP, ASP, JHM, Marc's, GIAC or anyone else I may have left out. VAST seems to be leading the charge here, with Marc's tune coming in a close second with regards to all of the PM's I've received. No one really has any hard dyno or A/F ratio #'s to share either. I guess if you can provide FATS times too. This is a great start, now let's get it narrowed down.

Thanks for all of your MATURE replies. Let's keep this clean!!

[AudiSportB5S4]

hey OP... take a look here, i know its just a video but I have the dyno sheet as well. link to vid and link to my thread... Everyone said "oh only 350WHP" but let me tell you, that's not a dyno to get your hopes on. I also dynoed a day when it was 82 degrees @ 9 AM and 83% humidity. Something like that. Tony @ EPL was like ah what a garbage day to dyno. ANY stage 3 tune is strong, if you want #1 customer service VAST is the way :)

http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=229612

dyno vid - MUSTANG
http://videos.streetfire.net/video/V...yno_177206.htm

in car vids of my car.... which will soon be faster since mike is working on a new file :-p
http://videos.streetfire.net/video/V...ids_173000.htm

enjoy your decision !

[Sleeeper X]

I heard you are hanging out in corn fields these days...!

What can I say, the nearest hotel was 50 miles away and the farmers daughter wasn't going to take no for an answer.

[S4_NE]

EPL , IMO is great. I love the tune on my car I have lots of TQ all the way threw the rpm's.

[rharris]

Big Boost,

When determine what tuner you're going with(hope it's VAST :-)) maybe we can do a group purchase to get better pricing.

[Dr. Jekyll]

Plenty of logs on Audiworld of EPL and ASP tunes. Just search around a little.

Of course I highly recommend EPL, but then again I'm biased :-) Low 3 second FATs and consistenly putting down over 400 whp (on 93 oct.) on EPL's Mustang dyno.

Here's a log (not mine) after quickly searching for ya. http://forums.audiworld.com/s4/msgs/2815957.phtml

ASP, EPL, VAST and GIAC are all great. I'm sure you'd be happy with anyone of them. No one has (i don't know why) posted logs of "Marc's tune".

Your best bet is to go with whatever tune your local shop supports. That way you can more easily deal with any issues that may arise.

[ubermidget]

ive had a vast tune, EPL, and marcs.....i liked all of them for different reasons. my fats ranged from 3.1 to 3.3 so they all were fast for pjk04's.

now that im doing full rs6's im back with vast, i just love working with them.

[AudiSportB5S4]

+1 for EPL. I'm not tuned by them, but Tony and the guys up there are great. Dave I've met, he's strapped my car down twice on their dyno :). Tony really knows his shit.

[AudiSportB5S4]

ive had a vast tune, EPL, and marcs.....i liked all of them for different reasons. my fats ranged from 3.1 to 3.3 so they all were fast for pjk04's.

now that im doing full rs6's im back with vast, i just love working with them.

does this mean im logging for you soon

i have ECUx, VCDS, whatever you want bro haha

[rouellettea4]

Plenty of logs on Audiworld of EPL and ASP tunes. Just search around a little.

Of course I highly recommend EPL, but then again I'm biased :-) Low 3 second FATs and consistenly putting down over 400 whp (on 93 oct.) on EPL's Mustang dyno.

Here's a log (not mine) after quickly searching for ya. http://forums.audiworld.com/s4/msgs/2815957.phtml

ASP, EPL, VAST and GIAC are all great. I'm sure you'd be happy with anyone of them. No one has (i don't know why) posted logs of "Marc's tune".

Your best bet is to go with whatever tune your local shop supports. That way you can more easily deal with any issues that may arise.

Logs of Marcs tune: http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=235976
Posted by lrg last week.

I hear a lot of people swinging from EPL's nuts(not a hit at you jekyll), and I know you want to talk well about your tuning shop online with hopes of them hooking you up further but I've seen some less than acceptable behavior on their part. Tony originally tuned a local (central MA) S4 to me to have the rear 02 delete and for his hardware. The car came back, had severe misfires at idle and was throwing codes for rear o2s. Like a good customer, he brings it back and tony tells him that the car is misfiring because of this and that sensor and to replace them, even though no codes were being thrown for those sensors, I checked/logged.

The sensors are all replaced and the misfire remains, not even to mention the secondary o2s yet. He drops it off again and gives more money and it is realized the idle misfire was because of stiffer mounts throwing off knock sensor that was not dumbed down during the custom tune. Several hundred dollars is dropped yet again to revise the codes for the secondary o2s, well needless to say nothing has been fixed and the codes came back right when the car was gotten home.

I can't even tell you how impressed I was with this customer's patience, especially since he has been trying to contact Tony to help figure this out and is not getting response via email or phone. I can tell you I had money in hand to go to EPL for a custom setup because I heard good things but after seeing how they dealt with this other customer, absolutely f*ing not, they just keep reeling you back in to spend more money and do not hold themselves accountable for actually fixing the problem. I'm not ready to throw the name out there because when you have an expensive custom tune like that, you are had by the balls of the shop that wrote that tune, and if you piss them off, odds are they will ignore you further down the road.

I went with a tune by Marc because I was impressed with his service and how he's dealt with me in the past, and the car runs solid, and not to mention the price is tough to beat. Marc gets a lot of heat for this and that, but the one man show seems to have a whole lot of happy customers.

[Dr. Jekyll]

95% of the time misfire issues are hardware. Trust me, I went through the same thing. After getting the right plugs, with the right gap and finding all the minor vac leaks, my car idles like a champ and I no longer throw CEL's (been over a year). I'm sure tony could have tuned out the misfires, but he may have been tuning out a hardware issue (which is absolutely the wrong thing to do). So he recommends that basic things be replaced with new, known working hardware. Pretty standard thing to do.

That said, I don't know anything about your friend's experience. So i'm not trying to say who was right and who was wrong. Everyone has their good an bad experiences with tuners and you're obviously entitled to your opinion. Tony and Dave have been nothing but amazing to me and have gone out of their way to help me out on many occassions. *shrug* I'm just sharing my experience and opinion of EPL :-)

[ubermidget]

does this mean im logging for you soon

i have ECUx, VCDS, whatever you want bro haha

haha yeah if you want...im shootin home friday from school to wrench on the car all weekend....its a long shot but hopefully she gets running, just waiting on my exhaust guy to weld on the rs6 flanges and delete my muffler on the twin 1....ill keep you posted, cause im sure ill have to send some logs over to mike to fine tune this bitch

[jays01s4]

What company's tune is this? Also, I couldn't find any other comparisons among VAST, EPL, SSP, ASP, JHM, Marc's, GIAC or anyone else I may have left out. VAST seems to be leading the charge here, with Marc's tune coming in a close second with regards to all of the PM's I've received. No one really has any hard dyno or A/F ratio #'s to share either. I guess if you can provide FATS times too. This is a great start, now let's get it narrowed down.

Thanks for all of your MATURE replies. Let's keep this clean!!

I don't have the logs with me here at work, but my VAST car runs consistent 3.6s in 80F weather, AFR stays right around 11.8 at WOT, boost is ~23 spike tapering to ~21. CF's never go higher than 7, 8 degrees of timing at peak tq and 17 degrees up top. All of this is on 93 octane too.

FWIW - another testament to VAST customer service...I also have a track file that runs 18psi across the board. It's flawless and safe to track all day!!

[AudiSportB5S4]

haha yeah if you want...im shootin home friday from school to wrench on the car all weekend....its a long shot but hopefully she gets running, just waiting on my exhaust guy to weld on the rs6 flanges and delete my muffler on the twin 1....ill keep you posted, cause im sure ill have to send some logs over to mike to fine tune this bitch

sounds good man just hit me up if you need anything.

[AudiSportB5S4]

I don't have the logs with me here at work, but my VAST car runs consistent 3.6s in 80F weather, AFR stays right around 11.8 at WOT, boost is ~23 spike tapering to ~21. CF's never go higher than 7, 8 degrees of timing at peak tq and 17 degrees up top. All of this is on 93 octane too.

sounds just like my file same performance (3.5x-3.6x) FATS in warm weather. The other night I went out and it was 60 out, god dam ECUx wasnt working, did the pull anyways it was so beasty. i was like nooooo haha. oh well.

[S4_NE]

+1 for EPL. I'm not tuned by them, but Tony and the guys up there are great. Dave I've met, he's strapped my car down twice on their dyno :). Tony really knows his shit.

2nd that Tony is a smart and great guy to work with, my car runs real nice on ther fuel kit/tune

[WMi_S4]

Dude, u'd be crazy not to go w/ vast, considering they are the closest CUSTOM tuning shop to you, like an 8 hour drive or less, and their customer service is hands down the best anywhere, Prince and Mike are the shit, period. If not VAST, CPT works very close w/ Mark @ ASP, but I'm just biased towards VAST

[Evilevo]

Im selling my AWE Fueling kit if you want it.

[rouellettea4]

I've worked and talked with a lot of the businesses offering STGIII setups in our market, I decided to go with Marc's and have been happy, if it wasn't going to be him then I'd say Vast is the way to go.