PRT Performance
 

So I had my SOS supercharged S2k tuned at PRT Performance by Steve Kan a couple weeks ago.

I dropped it off monday night, had some prior work related obligations so I wasn't able to be at the tune day with him on tuesday. My tune day was tuesday (obviously) but after tuesday rolled over, I had established a ride to the shop after work etc etc, he told me he "didnt have time to get to it today." :suspect: :confused: :banghead: :brokehrt:

Anyways, best not piss off the guy who is gonna be breathing life into your newly boosted daily driver. So I told him it was no big deal, gave no grief etc, even though I was super bummed since I had expected to be driving my car that night.

Wednesday rolls around, and he texts me at 3pm saying he's just now putting the car on the dyno :thumbdn: :thumbdn: So he's texting me throughout and says the car isn't making the boost it should be. Its a 3.4" pulley, I told him it should be making between 13-15 psi. He said it was only making 10psi. I asked him if the belt was slipping, he said "its tight." We all know how objective that is when it comes to supercharger belts. I asked him a few other things, wondering about boost leaks, etc. Then I finally ask him how high he was revving it to. Turns out he was revving it to 7500 only. Smh. This is when I knew this was gonna be a major headache.

So then we battle more issues, the timing he feels comfortable throwing at it is about 7-8 degrees shy of what the consensus is on these forums about where the timing should be based on the boost levels I'm seeing. I finally got him to spin it to 8000, which then we saw 11psi. Then after arguing with him over whether or not it was safe to rev my F22 to 8500, he finally gave in, and it saw 12psi boost. Timing at 12psi should be between 18-20* and he had it at 11 degrees, with the ECU pulling timing to 9 degrees due to the knock sensor picking up noise. So I ask him to verify that the engine is ACTUALLY knocking and the software isn't just being overly sensitive and giving ghost knock. He reassures me that the knock sensor is always VERY accurate. I asked him to use knock muffs to listen for pinging. He tells me he doesn't have knock muffs. :zip: :cry: :argh:

My next question is how does a respectable tuner reliably tune all sorts of different cars and consider himself a professional without even doing something as basic as listening for true knock while tuning an engine? Maybe I'm just being high maintenance, but $650 for a few hours time is pretty damn steep and I expect top notch quality.

Anyways, at this point, the car is making about 50-70whp less than what I was expecting. I get over it, and go to pick up the car. I'm excited to at least drive a "fast" s2k for the first time, he says he can't do anything else with it. So I go to pick up the car.

I pay the guy, don't chit chat at all because I'm passively disappointed, hop in my car, try to forget my woes and hit the start button. Then I get even more pissed.

The car barely starts up, AFRs go lean instantly while it shutters and struggles to idle for a minute, then the AFRs slowly come back to normal. I ignore it, and start driving home. Thats when I notice that the fuel cells on the low speed table are WAY too lean, every time I made any type of semi-drastic throttle change, the car dips crazy lean, like into the 17s and then the closed loop system adjusts it appropriately. This made the car buck like a damn kangaroo. Going from too lean to make power to getting shot back into healthy AFR range, the car had no power and then a ton of power, you do this in between a shift, and you go from no power, to power, to no power to power again, at that point your foot is bouncing off the throttle pedal, just exacerbating the problem. I looked like a 14 year old who just stole daddys race car and had no f**king clue how to drive a stick.
Then driving on the way home, I realize that the car is just sluggish in general, feels lazy. Then I discover that he put the high limit of vtec at 4500 rpms, aka at ANY throttle level, over 4500 rpms, I'm in vtec. Super fun and efficient while I'm cruising at higher speeds on the freeway.. /sarcasm. Speaking of driving on the freeway.. The timing was SO conservative that the car had to move up to about 10in/hg of load HIGHER than normal just to maintain speed at freeway speeds. This meant my 3" single exhaust was droning me into a headache (think putting your car into 6th gear with a loud exhaust, going up a hill and mashing the throttle).

I got home and was FURIOUS. What a damn waste of my time, my money and a huge disappointment overall. Totally ruined that giddy excitement of getting your toy back that you've been slowly piecing together for boost and then that huge sense of accomplishment after you've finally realizing that goal. 100% killed.

Anyways, luckily, I have experience with tuning on AEM, Kpro and Flashpro, as I tuned my cars when they were N/A. I've picked the brains of some of the best tuners on this site and feel relatively adequate, so I decided instead of bothering with driving my car an hour away, dealing with frustration and ignorance of my tuner, I was going to just fix all the crap myself.

I took 1.5 hours out of my time the next night after I got my car back and fixed 90% of my frustrations, the idle was good, the fuel tables were perfect, highway cruising and throttle response / tip in were on point and responsive, car got 25mpg on the freeway and I started working on full throttle tables. Fast forward one week and I've now got the tune about 97% done. The drivability of the car is flawless, low speed timing and fueling is perfect, fueling on the high speed tables are perfect, the only thing I havent tuned is the high speed ignition, because I'm borrowing some knock muffs to listen for knock while I street tune it next week, amazing concept right? Maybe people who do this professionally should look into something like that.. :mad: The ONLY problem I havent been able to alleviate is the hot start. After he got his greasy paws on my map, hot starts barely sputter to life, sometimes die and always lean WAY out before slowly richening back up after about 30 seconds. I scowered the flashpro software and can't find any fixes for this.. I know it's in there somewhere, but I can't find any afterstart enrichment tables or anything.
Also, my low boost problem was (surprise!) belt slip! Easiest diagnosis for low boost on a supercharger ever. I checked the tension, tightened it, drove a bit, tightened it again and now I'm making 14 psi at 8500. Which is about where I should be. I've got a really free flowing exhaust, so I was expecting lower than "typical" boost levels for my pulley.

Props to everyone who read my whole post, sorry it was so long. I clearly had pent up feelings about this interaction. :wine:

TL;DR
Steve Kan at PRT Performance claims he knows how to tune Hondas, but he mostly works on Rotary FD's, and truly has no idea what he's doing with a vtec engine, also he doesn't spend the time to truly refine the drivability of the tune. 100% waste of money and time, would not recommend for us S2k guys, 0/5 stars, 1/5 yelp review, please seek elsewhere.

damn that sucks man. you did right about not pissing the tuner off with the missed day and not making a fuss because you are at their mercy to be honest... but after the crap you received, i would have had to be "that guy" with the tuner. $650 is a decent chunk of change to get nothing but headaches in return... im glad you were able to fix most issues including the boost discrepancy.

I had a great experience with my tuner in Miami at the time (Kenny @TurboGixxerTuning) and he explained it perfectly... you have (2) kinds of tuners. Ones who go for all out WHP and ones who get you the whp + drive-ability.

Good luck man. :thumbup:

I'm sorry to read this! I was looking forward to seeing the progress on your build! I plan if/when to drive to sos to have them tune my s. I had an n/a tune a few years ago from tony at t1, but like mentioned he no longer does it. With your latest experience, it seems like there are no more s2k ("good" and reliable) tuners in the dfw area!

Did you attempt a resolution with him after returning home? I honestly, think I would have busted a u turn and took it right back before more stuff pops up later and they try to deny responsibility.

Im can totally relate to your frustrations. I had Ballade tun my car when my SC was first installed. They did all the installation and tuning. They misdiagnosed that my brand new fuel pump was failing which meant that they tuned the car with a fuel pump that couldn't maintain fuel pressure. The car ran ridiculously rich because the injectors were just going wide open to make up for the failing fuel pump. Alex assured me everything was fine and a wideband pinned as 10.0 was normal. Long story shirt, I accepted the 500 dollar loss + 500 for a new tune at autowave and never looked back. Almost 2.5 years later and everything has been fine./

BTW, my car does the exact same thing on warm starts with my AEM V2. For me, the car will idle in the mid 15s AFR and then work its way down to stoich. Mid 15s isnt that bad so I never worried about it. Here is a thread that discusses it for AEM V2, maybe Flahspro has a similar fix.

https://www.s2ki.com/s2000/topic/701...on-hot-starts/

Ive been exactly where you were left with a shit tune in the past, however in my case my motor only lasted 2 weeks and about 200 miles before it was destroyed from fuel wash and likely some detonation because I found later that no provisions for timing retard were made. The tuner/owner at Carbconnection in Kirkland Washington kept my money and washed his hands clean of me taking no responsibility for his lack of knowledge with the car/platform and AEM FIC ECU he sold/tuned with. He claimed that the 10psi I insisted on running with my comptech supercharger was too much boost for my F20. That should have been a red flag right there, but this was part of a time when I had never worked with a "professional" tuner before, nor did I have much of any experience at the time tuning the S2k. Well that changed abruptly after that terrible experience.

I'm glad that with a little help from s2ki and your own ability, you were able to focus your efforts on taking care of your situation before some potential damage would have occurred. :thumbup:

And the fact that this supposed reputable tuner charged you $650 for essentially a very partial tune, that shouldn't even been driven on, is extremely disappointing and shows a real lack of integrity on his part. If it were me, i would probably show back up on his doorstep now, show him what you did to correct his bs and ask for at least half of my money back and then give him a good finger shake and schooling on how he is running his business. Its guys like that who give tuners a bad name, and will ultimately run the industry dry with an increase of DIY guys like myself.

I would go back and ask for at least a partial refund. I don't know that I have ever had great success when getting a "tune" from a "tuner". Unless they have your car for a long time and spend time tuning it on the street or load tuning it on the dyno for many hours, the tune will never be as good as you can make it yourself by putting in the time on the street logging and adjusting, logging and adjusting. The only difficult part of tuning is the ignition timing and the best way to tune that is still on the dyno in a safe environment.

I appreciate the support. I like the idea of showing up with my current tune and showing him my tune vs his and how half assed it was. But then again, the whole point of everything is to just get my car running great, and Id rather just tune my car than go cause a stink.

If you do that, they will place the blame on you! Even though, obviously, you know what you are doing and they did not.

This seems like such a headache to have dealt with. Your S2000 could have been in serious trouble if you didn't know how to deal with the problem, glad you were able to make it work!

YES!!!! Kenny is the man! just remote tuned my car and its amazing! KENNY FTMFW!




Sorry to hear about your experience.