commercial tuning experience

i've been trying to run a side business tuning, as there is nobody else in my town doing it, it has been easy to find customers. here are some interesting things i've learned with my first batch of clients that you should remember when helping other people with their tunes:

- dynos are totally unnecessary if you are a good tuner and it's not a race car upper limit type tune.......but oh boy do they cut the time spent in half. three or four pulls can replace hours of road tuning. (unfortunately for me, the closest dyno is hours away)

- there is no such thing as a simple tune. 'i just need you to fix some codes' can end up being a massive job. so never quote before you have all the facts

- many people asking for tuning are just a charity case at the total mercy of some hotrod mechanic that went ahead and installed a bunch of crazy modifications, then went 'uhhh... oh... you need to have that tuned too, but we don't do that'

- even after pouring blood sweat and tears into their car, many builders want to separate themselves from the tuning process, and simply don't care about what you're doing as long as it runs well and makes power. if you try to explain even basic ignition timing to someone like that, they glare at you like you are a nerd

- tuning totally unfamiliar engine platforms is almost always done at a loss, even if on first glance it looks like other things you've tuned, and you need to think of it as paying for your education

- people get really upset when you tell them their car is way too broken to work with, or that you simply don't want to get involved because of all the cheap crap they've bolted to it

- the worst vehicles in the universe to tune: anything made by or related in any way to the Chrysler corporation. no joke. next time someone says hemi im hanging the phone up.

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Originally Posted by steveo

i've been trying to run a side business tuning, as there is nobody else in my town doing it, it has been easy to find customers. here are some interesting things i've learned with my first batch of clients that you should remember when helping other people with their tunes:

- dynos are totally unnecessary if you are a good tuner and it's not a race car upper limit type tune.......but oh boy do they cut the time spent in half. three or four pulls can replace hours of road tuning. (unfortunately for me, the closest dyno is hours away)

- there is no such thing as a simple tune. 'i just need you to fix some codes' can end up being a massive job. so never quote before you have all the facts

- many people asking for tuning are just a charity case at the total mercy of some hotrod mechanic that went ahead and installed a bunch of crazy modifications, then went 'uhhh... oh... you need to have that tuned too, but we don't do that'

- even after pouring blood sweat and tears into their car, many builders want to separate themselves from the tuning process, and simply don't care about what you're doing as long as it runs well and makes power. if you try to explain even basic ignition timing to someone like that, they glare at you like you are a nerd

- tuning totally unfamiliar engine platforms is almost always done at a loss, even if on first glance it looks like other things you've tuned, and you need to think of it as paying for your education

- people get really upset when you tell them their car is way too broken to work with, or that you simply don't want to get involved because of all the cheap crap they've bolted to it

- the worst vehicles in the universe to tune: anything made by or related in any way to the Chrysler corporation. no joke. next time someone says hemi im hanging the phone up.

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Lol, I have tuned 4.7L and 5.7L Mopars with NGC4s as well as the older JTecs on the 318, 360 and 488 and older 4.7L. Worst vehicle to me to tune is anything GM since they went to torque demand.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by steveo

i've been trying to run a side business tuning, as there is nobody else in my town doing it, it has been easy to find customers. here are some interesting things i've learned with my first batch of clients that you should remember when helping other people with their tunes:

- dynos are totally unnecessary if you are a good tuner and it's not a race car upper limit type tune.......but oh boy do they cut the time spent in half. three or four pulls can replace hours of road tuning. (unfortunately for me, the closest dyno is hours away)

- there is no such thing as a simple tune. 'i just need you to fix some codes' can end up being a massive job. so never quote before you have all the facts

- many people asking for tuning are just a charity case at the total mercy of some hotrod mechanic that went ahead and installed a bunch of crazy modifications, then went 'uhhh... oh... you need to have that tuned too, but we don't do that'

- even after pouring blood sweat and tears into their car, many builders want to separate themselves from the tuning process, and simply don't care about what you're doing as long as it runs well and makes power. if you try to explain even basic ignition timing to someone like that, they glare at you like you are a nerd

- tuning totally unfamiliar engine platforms is almost always done at a loss, even if on first glance it looks like other things you've tuned, and you need to think of it as paying for your education

- people get really upset when you tell them their car is way too broken to work with, or that you simply don't want to get involved because of all the cheap crap they've bolted to it

- the worst vehicles in the universe to tune: anything made by or related in any way to the Chrysler corporation. no joke. next time someone says hemi im hanging the phone up.

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Very accurate insights.:thumbsup:

Have you ventured into remote tuning with HP Tuners / RTD+?

Attachment 19898

nah i haven't. it looks cool. i might one day but right now my rules are i only tune in person especially for newer stuff im unfamiliar with

steveo, I agree with your insights.

While I was attending college I made money charging for tuning. I worked on some interesting projects and met some great people. But I also learned it's important to have the right expectations before going into a project.

Customer has some version of "Everything is new so can you start tuning right away?" Take the time to check basics... fuel pressure, charging voltage, battery condition, do filters appear new, etc. Just as it doesn't make sense to build a house on a crumbling foundation, it doesn't make sense to tune around bad components.

Accept that you may be taking steps backward. Folks will tell you what they want but don't be surprised if they decide they don't want it once they have it. It's still billable time.

The simplest changes often create unwanted side effects to deal with later. This is especially true if you change a variable that you are unfamiliar with.

Most folks don't understand or recognize the difference between a perfect tune and one that is good enough. Spending time improving the tune over multiple iterations after achieving "good enough" is a good way to lose time and $$.

What seemed to work best for me was charging for tuning time, rather than setting a cost for the tune. In some cases folks would work in stages as they had $$. Everyone does it differently though.