After reading about EJ's bad experience with Altered Atmmosphere's failed attempt to tune his VAFC, Reedz and I are at a loss about where to go to have this work done. We have the VAFC units and cables, but that sure seems like a waste of money if there isn't a good tuner to get them set right.

Can anybody recommend another shop in the region? Does anyone else have a good experience to share. We were hoping to get the tuning done on Monday, but that seems unrealistic now, given that AA doesn't seem turstworthy do do the job.

Or can we just take settings in the library for similar altitude and conditions?

 

Rick, PM or email VTECnology on this. He has a VAFC in his S2000 and I believe he tuned it himself. You could easily trade custom consile convers or something for his efforts!

 

Hey Rick -- I noticed that you live in Timonium MD. I actually fly into Baltimore International every week and make my way up to York PA, and I think I close to, if not right by, Timonium!

 

How about Extreme Motorsports (www.extrememotorsports.com) located in Jessup, MD? They are mainly a DSM shop but have experience with installing and tuning AFCs. I do not believe that they have tuned a F20C engine nor do I have any personal experience with them working on my car. However since there hasn't been too many suggestions made I thought I throw this out to you. There number is 301.776.2903 and you would want to speak with Rob McKeller.

 

This is a great opportunity for the other shops in the area to step up and quickly capture some customers and revenue. There are very few, if any, tuners in the area that are probably capable of tuning the VAFC/F20c. This suprises me for two reasons. First, there is SUCH as large import car running group in NOVA/DC/MD area. All those Civics have to be tuned somewhere!! Second, there are enough S2000s in the area that I would have thought that the learning curve would have flattened out by now.

But - herein lies the problem. In order to properly set the car up (we do want to do this right, don't we?), the VAFC has to be tuned on a dyno so proper air/fuel ratios can be measured and properly dialed in. I will not simply enter in other "proven" VAFC settings on my car and hope for the best. I think that is a recipe for trouble.

So - we have a few options:
1) Find a tuner with a dyno that has a real clue (doubtful). Anyone in the Baltimore area?
2) Find a tuner with a dyno that has somewhat of a clue that will help us adjust "proven" settings. I think AA is out as far as I am concerned. They're dangerous because they think they know what they are doing regarding our engine. That means that those of us getting our VAFCs tuned has to study up on what the parameters on the air/fuel, VTEC engagement, and unmatch % should be. I am almost there except on the air/fuel side.
3) Is there anyway we can convinve Jim Coleman to get a dyno?!!

I know there are lots of us here who have already invested the time/$ to get the VAFC. Let's put our heads together and come up with a solution soon.

 

i talked with the Evolution Autosports folk after Hiro's abortive AA experience (was there with him to check things out) and they gave me a number for Curry's Auto Service in Sterling. Just got off the phone with them, they told me they have the equipment to dyno/tune the our cars with VAFC installed, and have done some in the past, so i made an appointment with them for next friday. will let you all know the results and impressions of how they compare with what AA did last week.

i was sure to tell them that i drive on the street, somewhat aggressive at times, but no street racing, and take it to a couple road track events each year, so was looking at mid-high increases without sacrificing streetability at highway speeds. i think that was the disconnect at AA, after doing everything they claimed they only focus on the 1/4 mile runs, so they tune for peak performance as low in the rev range as possible.

Keith

 

Sounds great - I look forward to hearing about your results. What time will you be there, perhaps I will drop by. Gregg has had Curry do some work on his car (I think) but I can't recall his impression of them. Has anyone else tried Curry's before either for dyno or tuning?

 

my appointment is for 11:00, said they do a baseline, make general changes, 2d run, specific changes, 3d/final run. cost is 84.95 and takes about 1 hour. a little different than AA doing A/F change for each 500 rpm increment followed by a pull. not sure which is more effective. on the bright side, we can take my numbers and compare against your numbers and see how far off AA really was. except for their low (to us!!) vtec engagement points and lack of knowledge/concern about mismatch, Hi-Lo, entire LVT settings, failure to comprehend what we were saying about every other S2k dyno test/settings we have seen, they did get better numbers after tuning than the stock (minus top 1k rpm) baseline....

address is 1510 Moran Rd, Sterling Va (Ashburn Store)

 

I 've always had good experiences at Curry's. They did the alignment on my car after I got my wheels. They used to work on my Bimmer also.

They specailize in BMW and Porsche tuning, they have some real nice cars there and have been around for a while.

 

Let's keep our finges crossed - I don't know if three runs is enough to properly get the settings down. While I think AA's approach was fundamentally flawed, I did like the fact that they were testing air/fuel in 500rpm increments. Minimal adjustments may have effects across the whole curve, so three runs may not be enough. Depending on Keith's experience with them, I may just bring in some of the "proven" settings for cars similar to mine (no FI setup) and use that as a starting point. BTW - the VAFC setting library is here:

https://www.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.php?...&threadid=51969

Let's hope for the best - maybe three runs is all that it takes for a tuner with proper knowledge. Their pricing is certainly a lot better too. I will get my printouts from the dyno up on the board as quickly as possible so we can reverse engineer some of what went on with AA.