Hello All,

Personally I would like to move forward from this. I believe the first thread on this topic revealed a lot about our community and opportunities for us to make it better. I’ll attempt to summarize what I’ve learned and experienced, and you guys/gals can decide what you want to do next. I apologize for my long windedness. ☺

1. Openness – Forums like this are for open dialogs for people with common interest. In my OP I stated facts about what I’ve experienced and what other have observed at another event that I was not present but the result of that events is publish here http://www.psmini.org/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3815. Then I proceeded to ask others whom might have similar experience to chime in.
2. Support – After the initial barrage of negative feedback about my OP and attacks on me as a person. A lot of you took the time to read my OP without prejudice, and start to support my goal of finding more information about other “no tune” incidents. Your support not only helped me greatly but helped the betterment of entire MINI enthusiast community
3. Burden of proof – It is very unfortunate in this market segment, the burden of proof mostly falls upon the consumer/enthusiast. This happens with dealers and venders. With prior experience with MM I knew if I provide evidence MM was willing to work with me. And as I recalled from reading threads about the dyno results of Evotech/MM cars at Carb Connection, I don’t know any drastic action was taken by Evotech/MM to address the problem. Some of you might recall the Mazda RX8 280HP firestorm in which initial complains of less than advertised HP was castoff by Mazda as rotory haters, then more and more people chimed in with evidence of low HP, Mazda finally admitted their fault and quickly made amends with all purchasers of RX8 and lower the claimed HP to 255hp. I didn’t want to be just another customer that gets brushed away by vender with “you are the first person ever to have this problem, you must did something wrong…” A different approach was warrant to get result and attention. With this in mind I decided to ping you, my fellow MINI enthusiast for information. Because I and others present at the time of spotting the “no tune” knew something is very amiss with my Evotech Tune and this could very will be beyond me.
4. Accountability – It turns out my case is not the only one, to my knowledge at least another Evotech/MM customer showed up at Seattle tune to have his “no tune” spotted, again with plenty of witness to the procedure so no monkey business could take place. So this “no tune” might be a recurring problem. At this point none of us know where the problem occurred and which party or parties knowingly selling “snake oil”. The facts are MM sold some of these Evotech tunes, MM should be accountable.
5. Leadership - One of the very early posts I had on PSMINI, I openly admired MM/George for his pioneering spirit to jumpstart the MINI performance parts market. As I had briefly dabbled in the Honda performance part biz as my afterhours hobby, so I know 1st hand how challenging it is. For this, was one major reason I decided to go with MM Stage 3 package as my 1st major upgrade to my stock ’03 R53. Now this is a great opportunity for MM to once again step up and show its leadership by openly addressing this. There is no point in keeping this hush hush and behind the close door. And even less productive to shoot at the messenger/whistle blower.
6. Passion – If you are reading this or following this thread, you are passionate about MINI just as much as me. However when passion is tinted by bias, you get “hater” and “fanboy” then this defeats the purpose of why we got together at the first place… to share a common interest. We all could learn from this and grow our beloved community.
7. Amends – I’m what I call “Experiment Enthusiast” I constantly try new stuff out. To go from a Evotech “canned” tune to a custom tune was the plan. And since MM/Evotech has the policy of paid it once, tuned for life. If the custom tune didn’t work out, I could always add new head to my car and get a new Evotech tune for free. It is totally irrelevant to my right for compensation, that after we spoted the “no tune” Evotech tune and still proceed with custom tuning. Because I never gotten what I have paid for in the first place…I should be compensation for this “no tune” this is just a simple principle. If I ever see a penny from MM/Evotech, I’ll donate all of it to MADD. For me the money is water under the bridge. As for individuals that cast stones on my OP, I hold no grudge against the people that had questioned my method, motive and personal value. I could understand why you did, as I was the new kid on the block and I did something different to bring attention to a problem. Some of you have already PM’d me to extend your apology. I accepted your apology and looking forward to chat/meet with you on this and other topics.

I strongly encourage us to continue this discussion to help our entire community to see this thru. To this point, in the coming weeks I’ll organize an ECU check for all Evotech tune owners in Seattle area. I invite MM and other PSMINI or NAM members to be part of this. As this problem of buyers beware is plaguing our beloved passion.

Here is the original thread that started all: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...d.php?t=144685

 

Very nicely said Allen

 

+1

 

Good luck and hopefully you reach an acceptable solution.

 

 

+

 

We need MORE threads like this

 

Well said!

 

And we all need to take a lesson from Allen on how to handle the sometimes volatile emotions on the internet.

Very nice post Allen.

 

Good man.

 

If you have a method of downloading the ECU code and a copy of the original data, it is the work of a moment to spot whether the ECU programming has been significantly changed.

Just for curiousity, I once took the Tuner files I bought from MTH, and examined them with a text editor and a diff utility.

The changes betweeen OEM and tuned maps were pretty obvious - about 2K of changed values in what appeared to be data tables, presumably for the fuel and ignition maps.

I guess the message behind this is that it would be a really good idea to keep a copy of your original ECU code in some (preferrably re-loadable) form, if you are going to allow anyone to change the code.

 

if you tune them on the dyno like we do.... then all of this guessing if we did anything will soon be over. The comments are the same after each dyno event. Lots of s

 

My thought was not to prove that something was done, but to be able to reload it from a point-in-time backup.

Good practice learned from multitudes of legal and other disasters in the software industry says, always backup critical files before modifying them. This principal seems to be widely ignored by auto tuners...

 

Great post pure13 and I apologize for being critical of you in your other thread.

 

RMW always keeps a copy of the original file along with the final tune
I guess we are NOT the norm

 

Jan, i commend you for making sure Safetysean makes things right with Mini Madness and not just going for the tune when you and his car were right there where you could have done it. It was sad to see the look on Sean's face when you showed him that stock fuel map. I can see where that could get ugly on your part being the guy to give the bad news.

 

You are certainly "abnormal" I just hope your server doesn't blow up

 

thanks for pointing it out for the people who think I am out to cause trouble....

of course doing so will ruin my reputation for me being called the "little devil"

 

great thread! i couldnt agree more!

YOU DA MAN!!

 

IIRC, Jan's already had one laptop bite the dust due to his *ahem* hectic/self-less/whatever tuning schedule .

 

No worries, I was able to assist him in recovering all the data.

Since then RMW has taken proactive steps to back up data remotely to prevent any issues in the future.

 

Well done pure13.

 

I will answer this in detail when I get back from my mother in laws b-day

 

Should BoomerMCS's question be a thread of it's own?

Something to the effect of "What is Considered a Tune?"

Seems like a good idea to me, comments?

 

Cobb Tuning does this with their AccessECU. It pulls the stock file over onto the device for safekeeping before loading it's own base code. This allows a true 'revert to stock' map (including checksum) for when it's needed. They've developed this solution for Subaru, Nissan, Infiniti, Mazda, Mitsubishi and perhaps others (though not yet released). I've had a few chats with Christian Krahbul, their programmer and the BMW ECU is an entirely different beast.