145: How to Avoid Wasting Thousands on the Dyno

I think a lot of where I've excelled at the piston engine tuning is because I start my, the

first car I tuned was a rotary.

Everything's easy when you've come from the Rotary world.

So, like, I came from the world where if you make it knock, you might as well just buy

them a new engine, you know what I mean, like...

Welcome to the HPA Tune In podcast, I'm Andre, your host and in this episode we're joined

by Sean Christensen from Tune by Sean.

Now Sean specialises in a fairly unique type of tuning which is remote tuning.

And so much as he doesn't have the car in front of him, the car could be on the

other side of the US or for that matter, the other side of the world, it doesn't

matter.

He's remoting in, he's accessing the data and then he's making tuning changes

without sometimes even ever seeing the car and I think a lot of people would

assume that it's going to be difficult if not impossible to get great results by

doing this.

Sean's developed his techniques over a fairly long career and he's very particular

with the way he goes about this, particularly to the point where he will

make sure that the car's driving, and since you're doing everything properly

on the road before it ever goes near a dyno, then there'll be the dyno

tuning session and then following this, another road or track tuning session

just to clean up and make sure everything that was happening on the dyno

track, one of the advantages of doing this is that you basically iron out all

of the bugs and this makes or at least should make the dyno session go much

smoother and particularly when dyno sessions are quite expensive, if you

can avoid having to come back to the dyno later because something wasn't

quite right, it's really going to save you a lot of time and hence a lot of

money.

We find out from Sean how he got his start and how he learned both

mechanical and tuning skills and how he actually started tuning on his

own car which was an FD RX7, definitely a tricky engine to learn how to tune on.

Before we jump into our chat, for those who are new to the TuneIn podcast,

High Performance Academy is an online training school, we specialise in teaching

people how to build performance engines, how to tune EFI, how to construct

wiring harnesses, we also cover topics on fabrication, 3D modelling and CAD,

race driver education and data logging just to name a few.

You can find all of our courses at hpacademy.com forward slash courses.

All of these courses are delivered in high definition video modules that you

can watch from anywhere in the world provided you've got an internet

connection, this means you can learn from the comfort of your own place

and you can learn at your own pace.

All of our courses also come with a 60 day no questions asked,

money back guarantee so if you purchase them for any reason at all,

decide it wasn't quite what you expected, no problem, let us know,

we'll give you a full refund.

And for podcast listeners, you can also use the coupon code podcast75,

that will get you $75 off the purchase of your very first HPA course.

We'll put the coupon code in the show notes to make it nice and easy for you to find.

Lastly, if you like free stuff, then I've got a great deal for you.

We are constantly partnering with some of the biggest names in the

aftermarket performance industry to give away some great prizes.

You can always find our latest prize at hpacademy.com forward slash give away.

It might be an aftermarket ECU or dash, it could be some engine components

or engine building tools or just about anything in between.

They are great prizes and we will ship them free of charge to your door

if you're the winner.

There's no tricks here, no purchase required to get your name into the draw.

Alright enough with our introduction, let's get into our interview now.

Alright, welcome to the podcast, Sean.

Thanks for joining us today.

And as always, let's start by finding out a little bit about your background

and specifically how you developed a passion for cars.

Yes, so my family itself has had some cars.

My dad and his brother and sister, my grandfather would had built them cars

back in the late 70s and 80s, literally for their own high school cars.

Now you'd say, oh, my father taught me a bunch of stuff,

but not really, not so much at all.

It like skipped him and then came to me.

And so I always have been fascinated with taking things apart.

I think that's what I enjoy more than putting them back together.

I'd say that's kind of a comment, right?

As I don't know, sort of being general here, younger guys like pulling things apart

but they're getting them back together, that's the tricky part.

Not often that that happens.

Well, at least not often they go back together and work like they should anyway.

And so I had always had a fascination with doing that type of stuff,

whether it be Legos or RC cars.

I never actually had an RC car that was working longer than the first day or two

before I took it apart.

Then plastic welded it into different things

and then it became this monstrosity that really kind of worked but didn't work.

And that's kind of my early childhood

and I never had any access to other than riding in my father's F100 truck

that my grandfather had built for him.

And so I was always obviously interested in it

but we never worked on it or did any of that type of stuff.

And so fast forward through life, I was actually more into video games

and I finally got a job that I could make enough money to buy a car.

And so my first car was actually a Scion TC

and it was just a daily driver and that I had to take the work every day

but I saw it as something I could put exhaust on, put an intake on.

And after a few of the projects, I was like,

huh, I can barely get this thing back together in time to get to work

and now if I break it or do something wrong,

I'm completely just out of a car to drive to work every day.

So you're learning that project cars and daily drivers don't often go hand in hand?

Yes, correct. I learned that from her.

It's sort of a limitation when your project has to start Friday after work

and be complete by Sunday night so you can drive to work again on Monday morning.

Exactly. And so I learned very quick that I probably shouldn't be doing a full turbo kit

and then I will say the other real trigger of me going to the next path

that I'll explain is I saw how much the turbo kit back, you know,

this would have been in 2010 or 2009 somewhere in there

and the turbo kit was like $7,000.

Well, the car after having it for a year or two was only worth that much money

and I was like, well, this doesn't make any sense at all.

It's a bit hard to justify.

It was at the time for the amount I made that just, it didn't make any sense.

And so...

However, I would say when has that ever stopped people from modifying cars?

The financial common sense is not generally the main driver

behind why we do the things that we do.

This is true and I know it very well

but I just saw it as like, you know, front-wheel drive car.

You know, it already had issues with the clutch and the transmission

which obviously was probably mainly for me learning how to do...

It was my first stick shift.

So, you know, all of these things together, I just felt like, all right,

well, I should just have a car that gets me from point A to point B

and then I'm going to spend who knows how much money

on whatever I can afford on the next project.

And I looked at, at the time, Mark 4 Supras were $1920K.

You can pick up a six-speed, you know, that's like...

Simpler times.

That's how much they were at the time

and I could pick up a 300ZX for, you know, $12,000

or any of the numerous amount of cars that people pay way too much money for.

Nowadays, they were pretty affordable when I was looking.

And at the end of the day, my budget was $9,000

and I actually picked up a FDR7, a red one,

touring with leather interior for $9,000.

That is, that is an insane deal.

Those cars these days, I mean, I don't know what you'd be paying for them

in the US, but I mean, here a tidy FDR7

in standard condition would probably be sort of

around about $80,000 New Zealand dollars,

maybe if you could find one.

They're pretty rare on the ground even at that price point.

Right.

And so, it didn't even get to test drive it.

It was actually technically not drivable

only because the gentleman was an older guy

and over the winter, he had, it had cracked the radiator

and he went to go check on it and slipped and fell

and actually broke his arm.

And so he couldn't fix it.

And I just took his, you know, I didn't really,

as crazy as the sound,

I didn't care if the car didn't run at the time

when I was buying it.

I just wanted to have it to work on it.

And so, thankfully though,

this is not the advice that I would give my future customers

at all about is I just fixed what I thought was what he told

me was wrong with it and started driving it.

And it had a power FC and I actually, all I had to do

is change out the radiator, which he gave me.

And then I also, he had a front mount, not front mount,

but the FMIC intercooler,

which is a slightly better upgrade from the factory one.

And I just did what I could and my means were PVC piping

for intercooler piping and just,

it got me through the entire summer.

I got to have so much fun with my friends

and it was, it actually worked fantastic for all summer long.

I think it's probably fair to say that

that's the deal of the century

and that's almost never how cheap used rotary deals go.

I'm interested though, getting into this,

were you sort of determined that you wanted a rotary engine

because they come let's say with some general reliability headaches,

they're not exactly known for being the most reliable vehicles

on the planet, so did you know what you were getting yourself in for?

Was the rotary on the top of your wish list

or is this just the first project that sort of ticked

all the boxes that you tripped over?

I'm gonna have to say ignorance is bliss

because I had no clue what I bought

and neither did my friends

and I honestly was just looking at cars

and I had originally, like I said,

I looked at a Mark IV Supras,

I thought maybe I could maybe scrounge up enough money to get that

but it's what came into my hands first

and I may be a little bit more of an impulse person

and that perspective and I just, I bought it

and it didn't matter what it was,

it didn't matter if it could have had anything in it

and I would have bought it at the time

and it just looked cool and I wanted it.

So there was no analytical decisions,

there was no looking back at it,

like is this was something that I should do?

This was just, yep, that looks cool, I'm gonna buy it.

You're very fortunate that it's worked out.

Alright, it's come with a Power FC

which already has a bit of a leg up in terms of tuneability.

Obviously with those FDRX7s with the sequential turbo,

twin turbo setup, you're quite limited in terms of ECU

or aftermarket ECU support until you decide to ditch the twins

and go with a single.

Power FC is probably one of the few options there.

Is this sort of a segue into you starting to learn how to tune

and it sounds like at this point in your sort of adventures

with cars you've been entirely self-taught?

That's correct, yes, completely self-taught in that regards.

Obviously I have, until recently I've always been a question asker,

I'm not afraid to ask questions,

I don't care if I look stupid,

it's just to me even if I ask a question

that is someone would deem dumb or stupid

or any of those type of things,

I simply just use those responses

and ideally I get let's say 5, 10 of them

and usually out of those you kind of have to decide

what's face value,

what's actually someone giving you the correct advice

and that's kind of a lot of what as we talk through today

I think you're going to realize that's how I continue to still do things

just in different ways.

And so with that being said,

I didn't really play with the Power FC as much

other than I had the commander

and I knew that if I adjusted my idle

I had to recalibrate the TPS.

You know, when I say recalibrate the TPS

I don't mean doing it in the software.

I mean, literally moving the TPS with a multimeter

until it's actually where it's supposed to be

so that the idle doesn't hunt and things like that

which at the end of the day

I find that path

allowed me to get a lot more of the basics of things

be familiar with the basic things

than just trying to go right towards the meat and potatoes

if that makes any sense.

Yep, yep, it does.

I actually think that that particular setup

lasted about a full summer.

So I got I think I bought it in the spring

and I did all these stuff and I drove it all summer long

and I think it would have been probably around October

or maybe slightly more into September,

you know late September, October

the rear charge pipe broke on the twin turbos

and I actually pretty much put the car away for the winter

because I was like, I don't know how to fix this.

My friends didn't know how to fix this

and I didn't really super have very many resources

other than you know, going on the forums

and asking questions

and I kind of had a decision to make

and at the time my friends

they had mostly Honda Civics.

I think that's all they had.

Civics and Tigras, they were a Honda group

and it was a relatively small town

and they're all just like, you know

why don't you get a 1J or why don't you know

because they've seen 1J swapped R7s.

I started looking into that, seeing how much money

I would have to spend to do it

and obviously I was still working at a telephone company.

I started working at a telephone company when I was 19.

So I would have been around 22, 23 around this age

when I had this R7.

So at this point, did you actually know

what the issue with the engine

was, this broken charge pipe

or to the best of your knowledge

maybe the entire engine was just toast.

I knew the engine was good

but I just didn't know what was wrong

and that was like I said, completely ignorant.

I mean, not gonna beat around the bush.

I just didn't know what I was doing.

No, it just seems like a very extreme

sort of path to take

even contemplating an engine swap.

It's a hell of a lot of money

and a hell of a lot of work

that obviously in the case of a broken charge pipe

is absolutely not necessary.

But also, no disrespect, obviously you're young,

you're finding your way, you're learning the whole time.

So we don't come into this knowing everything.

Obviously no one does.

Right, and so I posted up the engine up for sale

on Craigslist

and I think I was asking at the time

like $2,800 for the entire engine

that twin turbo kit,

essentially everything related to the engine.

I had a couple calls, no real things

and then all of a sudden one day a guy calls me up

and he's like, I'm really interested in buying your motor.

I also have an RX7.

You know, it just seems like it's a good deal,

honestly too good of a deal,

but just why are you getting rid of it?

And I was like, well, this broke

and I honestly just don't have any resources.

You know, I don't have any learning resources

and I really want to just have a running car

and he's like, you can't sell it.

No, that's not a reason to sell it.

You can't sell it.

I mean, he's right.

I know.

And this individual I'll say his name is Ryan Yost

and actually we're still really good friends to this day

and I still call him my Craigslist friend.

And so what he had said is Elliott

from Turblown, Turbosource just moved into Minnesota

and he's a rotary guy and works on rotaries

and he seems like a good resource.

Maybe you should reach out to him

at that moment of reaching out to Elliott.

Elliott kind of went through everything with me

and he actually set me down this path

of doing a single turbo R7 rotary 13B

and he sold me all of the essentially I told him

I was like, he's like, Elliott,

I am going to work my ass off

but I can't afford to buy this full conversion kit

all at once.

I got to buy it in chunks, you know, turbo manifold

and the turbo and so on and so forth.

And he's like, you know what?

That's perfectly fine.

And he actually, I don't know what it was

or how we spoke, but he was like, you know,

if you just want to like keep the car here

and come and work on it at my shop from time to time,

I'll help you do that.

And so at that point in time, I started buying parts

and you know, it'd be like I bought a manifold from Elliott.

I bought a TDX 61, which is like a Garrett.

It's like a 58 millimeter turbo

with like a 61 millimeter hot side or something.

I don't remember exactly what it is, but.

Just to get a sense of this, we're still talking

this is around 2010, is that about right?

Yeah, yep, correct, yep.

And also I'd note here, we actually should get Elliott

on the podcast, we ended up talking to him many years ago

and we're running one of his turbo kits on our FDRX7

and yeah, the product he makes is absolutely top notch.

Can't say enough good things about that turbo kit.

Yeah, and not taking any credit away from Elliott,

but we, him and I together, we helped.

I mean, I essentially helped him develop some

of those parts through just a modulation of our ideas

and you know, I was there when we did the first cast manifold

and essentially created the, you know, different parts

of the kit and or refined it to go from, you know,

handmade lines to have a manufacturer locally make us

a batch of that type of stuff.

That was a lot of the things that I did.

But anyways, to go back to what I was saying is

the next engine management system Elliott actually set me

up with was actually HellTank.

I believe it was a Sport 1000.

I wired up the whole car myself just by reading diagrams

and I'd never done any of that before just asking Elliott,

how can I do this?

And I just did it.

I used my own resources on the internet

and now I could never get that first harness to work.

We could not get the car to start on the Sport 1000

and I kind of went, I don't know how long of a timeframe

it was.

It might have been like a half a summer or something a little

bit longer than you'd like, but not a crazy amount of time.

And at that point in time, Elliott was actually talking

with Adeptronic Andy Wyatt, who is the older was the owner

of Adeptronic engine management systems.

And Elliott's like, here, how about this?

I just got this select 440 ECU with a flying lead.

Why don't I just buy or trade you your HellTank Sport 1000

with the loom for this Adeptronic?

And then you work with Andy to wire up the car.

And so at that point in time, I had actually gotten that

and it was right around where I had about a week or two

of paid vacation with where I was working.

And I always have this memory because at the time

I was, I drank alcohol, I drank beer and I thought

it would be fun to buy a couple cases of beer and take the week

off and at my mom's house where the car was and sit in her

basement and build this wiring harness.

And I will never forget her going, are you okay?

Because you've got this beer and you're just sitting

in the basement.

Like I don't really know what you're doing.

And I'm like, mom, I'm perfectly fine.

I'm just having a good time building this harness.

And this is what I want to do.

Proving yet again that there is nothing that we can't

achieve with a bit of time in a case of beer.

Exactly, exactly.

And so I built that harness during my vacation

and I don't know if it was that week or it was at least

the very following week.

Me and my friends put the last touches on the car

and actually with some remote help from Andy,

I got the car started.

It never ran before.

That was the first time it ever ran

and was with Andy's help.

Do you know where the sort of problem was

with that first harness?

I mean, I'm guessing that the issue wasn't in the

Haltech Sport 1000.

I'm guessing it must have been a harness related issue.

So do you have an idea of what you did differently

or where the problems lay?

I actually really think it was more of a combination of both.

Even though Elliott had done a couple of Haltechs,

I don't think he actually had set them up at the time.

And I think that both of us were, you know,

novice enough that we just didn't really know

what we were doing.

And I think the support structure,

whether I just didn't know where to reach out

to support at the time, I'm sure there was support.

It just, it didn't click.

So I'm not sure that necessarily,

I'm sure there was some wiring problems, 100%.

But it could have just been a simple configuration error.

Maybe your trigger setup wasn't correct

for the 13B engine.

So hence it's never going to start up.

Correct, correct.

And so we never actually figured that out.

I never knew what happened with that harness,

never got any information on that.

It would have been nice to kind of know.

So that was like my first successful ECU install

was on my own car, my own harness.

And through doing that, you know, Elliott tuned the car

and I had some great success.

I had, I don't know if it was on the TDX kit,

but I had done a couple,

it was right around when PowerCruise came to the US here.

And I know you're familiar with PowerCruise.

It's an Australian based, originally based event.

Well, it came to America, it came to the track

that's local to me.

And I had kind of had the bug at that point in time.

So I was working 60, 80 hours a week to pay for this

RX7, I would call addiction.

And I'll just say my wage at the time was I think like 35,000.

I grossed for the year 60

because that's how much overtime I worked

in order to pay for that stuff.

And I didn't have a girlfriend, didn't have a family,

just a single guy that all he did was spend all his money

on his RX7 and a case of beer of a time or two.

And so through that time, Elliott had stumbled on the EFR

and he's like, Hey, Sean, I want you to try this EFR turbo.

I don't know how it's going to work.

And like, he's like, I also got this, this

because it's internally waste gated.

I've got this new manifold I want you to try.

And it was his original,

I'm pretty sure I had the first one running

of his shorty manifold design in the welded version,

one of the first.

And we went to the dyno the first day

and he did the first pull

and it was like a half pull, 4,000 ish RPMs

and he looked up and he just his jaw dropped

because it made like 26 or 27 pounds of boost

at like 3,200, 3,500 RPMs

and he was like, I've never seen this ever before

and it was just like, that's where a lot of Elliott's success

was is that from that dyno graph of my car

and then I went to power crews that year

and literally walked 6,700 horsepower like a GTR

like it was like 600 horsepower GTR in my RX7

bus links on it

and multitude other cars that made more horsepower

than the FD, but obviously FD was light.

This thing spooled super fast

and I made a whole video on that

and that's through doing that video

and doing all the stuff that I did.

You know, I had forum posts.

I had a whole forum build on RX7 Club and everything

that essentially Elliott was like, hey,

do you want to work for me?

And I was like, yeah, that sounds awesome.

I was burnt out at the telephone company.

He asked me but then hire me for another year and a half.

I think there's something like that.

So what were you doing for Elliott at this point?

Is this mechanical?

Are you moving into tuning at this point?

Yeah, so when I started working for Elliott,

transitioning from the telephone company,

I was just essentially his shop guy

that does whatever he tells me to do.

I'm pretty sure my initial memories were

taking a motor that he had disassembled

and cleaning it with gasoline at the time.

Like I was just the shop dude

like doing the things that he asked me to do

and then obviously helping individuals

with their Adoptronic ECUs.

And I had, you know, at the beginning,

we just simply, Elliott did all the tuning

at the very beginning and then like kind of,

let's say two or three years afterwards,

I started like setting up the cars for Elliott,

getting them ready, getting them so they idle

and all this type of stuff,

just doing all the things that take the most time.

I ended up doing all of that stuff.

Elliott would always do the final tune.

We'd get the car prepped to make sure everything's ready

and then he'd go do the final tune.

Now, going through this process,

and this is the same process that I saw

that a lot of tuners did

because I had my friends take their cars

to different tuners, it wasn't just an Elliott thing

where you brought your car to the dyno,

you paid for the day

and if you got to the dyno

and your car didn't make it through the day,

you paid again.

Like you paid for the next day to rent it.

And seeing that happen over and over and over again

through my friends,

through our own customers at the time,

I was like, I don't like this model.

Like I didn't like it.

It didn't sit well with me.

And so as this time progressed,

I started doing a lot more tuning.

Elliott actually started doing some remote tuning

and what I found

or what I saw from a worker standpoint

is that there just wasn't enough time

for him to do his turbo kit stuff,

fabricating and do actually handhold individuals

from their remote tuning.

And so I actually...

Fierce, just a bit, put too much going on

to be able to do justice

to all of those parts of the business.

Yep. And so as time grew on,

I started doing more and more of the remote tuning

for Elliott and I really liked doing it

because in my opinion,

it was no different than what I did

for the telephone company.

Most of it was literally just getting the customer

to do the certain procedures

to get their internet to work

was the same like overall concept

as getting their car to run.

Obviously different bits,

but the structure of accomplishing that

was exactly the same.

If you're a fan of the podcast

and you're interested in topics like engine tuning,

automotive wiring, performance engine building,

3D modeling in CAD

or anything else in the high performance industry,

I have something that you might be interested in.

Introducing the High Performance Academy VIP Package.

This package of courses gives you lifetime access

to all of HPA's online training for one price.

These courses cover everything

from tuning and reflashing, petrol and diesel engines

through to motorsport wiring, engine building,

fabrication, design, car setup and plenty more.

Right now, you can get $500 off

the High Performance Academy's VIP Package

using the code podcast500 at checkout.

Becoming a VIP means you'll never pay for another course again.

You'll get instant access to all 40 plus courses

we currently offer plus every new course

we ever release in the future.

Want to define maps or tune with WinOLS?

Curious about Canbus devices?

Or how CAD can help make your dream build a reality?

These in-depth topics as well as many others

each have their own dedicated course

and they're going to help you master

whatever it is you want to learn.

And as a VIP member, you're not just getting the courses,

you'll also join HPA's online community

with lifetime access to our member forums

and member's webinar lessons.

Again, the code is podcast500 for that $500 discount.

Just head over to hpacademy.com

to check out the full VIP package

and everything it contains.

Alright, let's get back to the episode.

Are you sort of saying here that you'd have customers remote

and they're struggling to get their car running

so it's a process of going through from start to finish

with the configuration to set up the sensors

making sure that everything's configured correctly

and once that's done in theory then the engine will run?

Precisely, exactly.

And it was just keeping those,

I guess some people might not think it basic

but it is very, very basic things that need to happen

in order for the engine to run.

And as long as you are able to be walked through that process

effectively, I would say nine times out of 10,

the car is going to start

unless there's some sort of mechanical problem

or, you know, sensor, that type of stuff.

Usually that is the problem,

that is the reason why it won't start, I should say.

I guess there's a big difference though

between that sort of hand holding and remote work

to actually get the car configured there

so you can figure it in the engine running for the first time.

That's quite different to actual full tune

where we're doing wide open throttle, full power tuning remotely.

So you're doing that sort of work alongside

or is it just at this stage sort of configuration

and getting the engine running?

In the beginning of the remote tuning

a lot of it was just getting it running.

Like let's say I helped dealers,

I helped all sorts of walks of life of individuals

most of the time just get the car started,

get the base map running

and so that they could bring it to the tuner.

Now over time that did evolve into doing full tunes

and there are trials and tribulations to that.

You know, me at the time,

I wasn't a business partner of Elliott,

I was just an employee doing what was being told by an employee

from their employer.

And so a lot of it was,

there was a lot of learning experience for me

and obviously there was mentoring and things like that

but a lot of it was just here you go, get the job done.

You've seen me do it many times.

Here's my base map, you know, have at it.

And you know, I would say maybe that first year

of actually doing full remote tunes

I was actually having a lot of success

a lot more success than failure.

Was there failures, 100% there was.

And I guess the way it worked out is that it was never like

I never saw it as a failure of where necessarily

I did something wrong or something like that

there was more of like, you know, feel pressure dropped

or things problems that happened, you know what I mean?

Like that some individuals say,

well, this is the reason why remote tuning doesn't work

XYZ but it continued to grow.

And so segueing to that

so we're talking about the jobs that I've had

we're talking telephone company working for Elliott

tuned by Sean.

Yeah, it's quite a fast progression.

So, so I worked for Elliott for about five years

and I was at my point in my life.

I had pressure for my girlfriend at the time

pressure for my friends like, hey, you need to make more

money and Elliott way at the time was like

I can't pay you more money.

And we kind of we're still we're friends.

We're not arguing, you know, I

a lot of the world perceived me as

and this is just the feedback that I've gotten over the over

the many years is that they thought I was like part owner

of Elliott's business and it was like

because I was the face of the business for a while

and it was like, no, I was just an employee

doing what I was told to do

and at first suggested to Elliott because I

my roommate at the time

that was living with me and my girlfriend

he did websites

and so Elliott needed a new website.

It was horrible at the time

and so me and my roommate

we built Elliott's website and then

Adoptronic needed a website.

Me and my roommate built Adoptronics website

and so through that I was like, all right,

I already know how to build a website.

I like doing the remote tuning

and I was like, hey, like can I like sell ECs on the side?

He's like, no, I don't really feel comfortable about that

at the time and then like two or three months later

he went by and he's like, you know what?

If you want to start your own business

and do your own thing, I'm okay with you to do that.

And I go, oh, wow, you know, this is like

kind of, I would say it was probably mid-summer

in would have been 2017.

Yeah, mid-summer 2018, sorry, 2018.

So I was like, well, Elliott, okay, this is

this is good because I get, you know, the opportunity to

I see what you do for yourself

and I want to do the same thing.

I want to build my own business, make my own money.

You know, I hated working for the telephone company

because of the corporate structure.

I was like, so with that being said, Elliott,

I don't have a website right now.

I don't really have a way to get customers.

And I was like, would you do this for me?

Would you pay me the same amount of money

you're paying me right now?

But I only work for four hours a day

and the other four hours a day, I build my website

and he's like, sure, I'll do that for you, Sean.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah.

That's very generous.

Yes, yes, yes.

And so I literally went balls to the walls

and built my own website at the time,

a little bit with my roommate helping me at the time.

But it was towards the taper end of my, you know,

at that particular friendship.

I bought my business license or whatever, you know,

it was like December or November of 2018.

And so that summer, essentially that winter

is my official start date of Toon by Sean

was January 1st of 2019.

Is this sort of a case though?

I mean, I get the importance of having a website

for a business.

Yep, sure, you need some visibility there.

But also, I mean, you put a website up

and generally the phone doesn't start ringing five minutes

later.

There's all sorts of procedures around marketing

that website, driving traffic to it,

getting your name out there.

I am assuming that through the five years

you've worked for Elliott,

and I'm guessing towards the latter end of that

is when you're doing the majority of this remote shooting.

You're starting to build up your own name

and your own reputation.

So where's the work coming from,

that reputation that you've built

through working for Elliott

or this website's just sort of knocked it out

of the park on day one?

It was 100% through Elliott.

So I still managed Elliott's website

for a little bit after that.

We set up agreement

where on his website,

the remote tuning link that was at the top

linked directly to my website.

Okay.

Yep, and so yes,

it may be some competition with Adoptronic

because I had Adoptronic on the website.

He had Adoptronic on the website,

but he was the North American distributor.

You know, I ate, he ate and he ate,

you know, at the time.

And so we all worked together

in selling Adoptronic ECUs

and tuning them.

At this point, if Elliott as well,

just to get a little down the weeds with this,

if Elliott's the North American distributor,

does that mean that for you to sell Adoptronic,

you are purchasing from Elliott anyway?

Correct, exactly.

Okay, so basically,

no skin off his nose either way.

Maybe he's not making the same cut,

but he's still clipping the ticket on the way through.

Exactly, 100% and I still sold his turbo kits.

I still, it was just like,

it was like I was a dealer of him

at that point in time,

which we already had a dealer network set up.

And so that's kind of where my name continued to grow

is through Adoptronic.

And Nathan had showed up to Elliott's house.

And I think at that point in time,

that's where we were told that Adoptronic

was getting purchased by Helltech.

So Nathan Clark, the president of Helltech.

And so we all knew that they were buying it.

And I think about a year and a half

or two years went by

where I was selling just Adoptronic

and I went to a PRI

and I was like, hey, Nathan,

I'm still killing it on selling Adoptronic ECUs.

He knew that we were selling a lot of them

because we were essentially buying them

through Helltech, not Adoptronic,

because Helltech owned Adoptronic.

And I was just like, hey, Nathan,

I have to ask you this,

are you planning on canceling the brand at some point?

Because this is my livelihood

and this is what I need to know.

And he's like, eventually we are going to do that.

Yeah, I think that the writing was pretty much on the wall.

I think for most people could sort of see

that that was the way things were going to go.

For better or worse,

I know there's a lot of Adoptronic fans around the world

that were pretty disappointed.

I mean, having known Andy White,

the founder and owner of Adoptronic

for probably upwards of 10 years now,

I class him as one of the smartest guys

I know in the aftermarket ECU world.

And I sort of saw that under the Adoptronic brand,

we used one of those in our FDRX7 to start with,

actually because of Elliott.

And the ECU I found was really close to being a great thing.

But I think Adoptronic, as it was under Andy's stewardship,

was probably a little bit under resourced

to be doing what he was trying to do.

So I sort of saw there was going to be a lot of synergy

with the Adoptronic technology

that Andy had developed,

bringing that under the Haltech banner

I think was going to definitely lift Haltech up.

But I could kind of see it was probably going to come

at the expense of Adoptronic sort of dropping away,

which is exactly what did happen.

Yeah, and it's a little bit of a tidbit about Andy

that I, you know, because I'd gone to a couple peer eyes.

I actually had designed or essentially facilitated the design

of one of the bigger booths that we did at Adoptronic

when Elliott was more involved.

And at peer eye, there was one with the V12 engine,

Rob Dom's car, and I think Aaron Parker's one.

My buddy where he worked did all the graphics for all of that.

Anyways, a funny story is like Andy was always really big

on being like, oh, you should have a college degree

and like all of these things.

And I was like, Andy is like, I think college degrees

are great, but I don't have one.

I feel like I can learn and in most, you know,

essentially immerse myself with what I'm doing

and still be very good at my craft.

And it was just an argument that we had.

It wasn't like a bad argument.

It was more of like a discussion among peers.

And at the time, like when we're all at peer,

I'd having some drinks and eating food or whatever,

you know, and so I remember that discussion with him

and I guess I always appreciate Andy's kudos

and you know, his information that he provides to me.

He doesn't treat me any different than anyone else.

It's just over the years, you know, I sold his product.

You know what I mean?

I helped him grow his business as well as any other person

and he's always, you know, showing me respect

and I show him respect, you know,

and it was, it's been a great relationship.

And so anyways, to go back to a little bit

about Adeptronic and Haltech.

So when I was doing the transition from going

from Adeptronic to Haltech, there was many swear words

said when connecting to a Haltech ECU and waiting.

Ah yes, waiting minutes.

Minutes to start tuning.

I was very vocal about my dislike for the connection time

and I think actually that was one of the first things

Andy worked on and to his credit, he resolved.

I come from a very unique position where at HPA

we are brand agnostic and we utilise as many

of the popular brands as we can basically get our hands on.

And I think that gives me a fairly unique experience

in that most professional tuners will align themselves with

one, two, maybe three brands of ECU that they use,

Sal and Choon.

And that gives them quite a narrow focus

so I get to see the broad range.

And you know, every brand is fair to say

has some features that you look at and you go

hey this is pure genius, why isn't everyone else doing that?

I would say Adeptronic's staged injection is a perfect example

of that, just set up your injector characterisation

and forget about it, the ECU does everything

in the background and it's just flawless.

But then they'll have something else and you're like,

this makes absolutely no sense as anyone actually ever used

this feature because it's garbage.

And again, you can say this across all of the different

brands and you get to Haltech in that connection time.

As a professional tuner, if I'm tuning 5-10 cars a week

that would just do my head in.

It definitely did.

I don't know how it went that long

and without people just absolutely knocking down

their door in anger.

And yeah, so it definitely was just that.

It was anger, lots of anger.

And being like, how can you sit here?

And then you would disconnect or however reason

they have to wait again.

And it was a learning curve.

But so I like to say that I got into Haltech at the best time.

So I got into Haltech right at the right time.

So right when Andy got in there, I was obviously still

tuning both platforms.

And at the time, one of my mentors, Phil Son, and I credit

a lot of him guiding me through a lot of hard times

in my life through business and just helping me.

He's always kind of been just a mentor for me.

And he was like, Sean, I really think you need to just be

the Haltech guy.

Just stop doing Atatronic.

Get away from that.

Don't do any other ECU management systems.

Because my friends would throw anything in front of my face

when I first started my business.

The first two years or whatever it was.

I tried Link.

I tried ECU Masters.

I tried Holley.

And what I kept finding myself run into is I didn't have

that hand holding that I had with Atatronic and Haltech.

The tech support essentially is what you're talking about here.

Someone you could just pick up the phone or flick an email to

and you're getting instant feedback and answers to your questions.

Yup.

Andy with Mark at his team and all the individuals at the

Atatronic team and then as that transition to Haltech,

even at the same sense, I could call up to Haltech Australia

and that's what I did most of the time

because I was more familiar with those guys anyways

to answer all my questions.

And so I kept running into the situations

where I was trying to either do a Link the Atatronic way

or Link the Haltech way or Holley in the same formats.

And I kept struggling with a efficiency.

I felt my efficiency was just out the wall

and or when I ran into problems.

I didn't know how to fix them.

I couldn't fix them.

I couldn't figure it out.

I didn't have the resources to figure them out.

And so I just kept gravitating back to what I knew best.

I think there's definitely something to be said for that

and one sort of story I've said before, but I'll just repeat it.

If someone back when I was running my old tuning shop

where we basically specialized in Link.

New Zealand made brand and made sense.

I knew the product very well.

We did some MoTeC for our high end stuff

and that was probably the main issues we dealt with.

So of course I knew both of those products

like the back of my hand, just like you do with Atatronic

and now with Haltech.

If someone had bought me the best ECU in the world,

maybe a Bosch Motorsport ECU with $20,000 or something like that

to put in their XYZ car, I wouldn't have known where to start

and I'd guarantee that I would have got them a better result

on an ECU that would be a 10th of the price, a Link or a MoTeC

because I knew the ECU insider now, I knew all of its little quirks,

I knew how to set it up quickly and I'd just be able to get a better result

instead of trying to learn from scratch on this $MEC ECU

that no doubt is more powerful, more capable,

but if I don't know how to use it, then I'm not going to be able to leverage

all of those features and chances are the car's just not going to run as well.

So I think narrowing your focus down to one or maybe two or three brands of ECU

does make a lot of sense on that front.

Couple of other things I'll just add in here, generally,

and maybe you're in a unique position with the remote tuning

and that gives you access to essentially, I'm guessing,

we'll talk about it more, the entire world.

So you can draw from a customer base that is solely going to be

your brand of choice, Haltech in this case.

As a shop owner, where I was doing in person tuning

and particularly in New Zealand, the town, the city that I lived in

was about half a million people living in it, so it's not a big city.

If you wanted to try and only do one brand of ECU,

it was going to be probably difficult to make a living.

So what we sort of found, and I think this probably goes for most tuning shops,

you'd sort of have a couple of different ECUs that you used

that allowed you to still know them intimately inside and out

and you'd sort of have an ECU for two different price points.

Your entry level, sort of weekend warrior, club level race car

and maybe that was Link, for someone who's building something

with a much higher budget and they wanted the best of the best,

we were selling them in a MoTeC ECU, so that sort of covered our bases like that.

The other aspect with this is tech support,

which I think you've sort of already highlighted is so important.

I think one of the things we say at HPA is if you're looking for an ECU

for your own project, A, if you're taking our courses,

it would make sense obviously if you're using an ECU that we use in our worked examples

because then you can get first hand experience of how it's dealt with

but secondly you are always going to have questions.

Something will not work how you expect and it's just so helpful

if you can pick up the phone.

Ideally if you can pick up a phone and get tech support in your own time zone

but being able to pick up the phone and actually talk to someone,

go through that problem there and then, it just saves you so much time.

So it sounds like you found that Haltech did an extremely good job with that tech support?

110%.

So I would say in the beginning when I was just kind of doing both

and I didn't really have a guy at Haltech.

I was just calling randomly into tech support, this, that and that

and then I'd say maybe a year or so after Andy was there

at this point structure of who was important to talk to like for me

I already was talking with upper management at Haltech.

I knew them better than the US employees did at Haltech

only because that's who I talked to and so it was like he was just like

Nathan's like here, you know, you need to you can't be asking Andy questions.

You can't be most people don't get access to Andy

sort of you go through the actual correct channels.

Right.

And he was just like I really need you to all right, Nathan, that's fine.

I can do that.

But who is the person that I can have as my person?

And that's actually where Nick Koalic.

He is a Haltech tech support guy, extremely smart individual

and he has been, you know, my go to guy for many years.

You know, if I get stuck on something or even right now.

I mean, if I do this every single day and there's times I get stuck

or I might do the same thing 10 times and the 11th time that all 10

other cars at work, but this one doesn't and I'm just like, what do I,

you know, what went wrong here?

You know what I mean?

And a lot of times it comes down to something that's completely stupid.

You know, completely just not relevant.

Every once in a while, either find a glitch.

I'll find something that they hadn't reported yet or what's

even more lovely is sometimes there's a glitch that's known

that just not everyone knows about and they're like, yeah,

that'll be fixed here.

Go down one firmware and because I actually personally,

I update the firmware every single time.

I am a firmware surfer, as you would call it.

If the new firmware is out, I always jump to that newest one

and, you know, obviously work through any issues that might be there.

And then obviously with my structure, I can let customers know

be like, hey, you know, that firmware is not good anymore.

Like we need to get this updated ASAP, don't drive your car anymore,

that type of stuff, you know, and that happens from time to time.

Yeah, I think actually that's a point that is often overlooked.

The firmware updates that every ECU manufacturer comes out with

and it can be very easy for the average enthusiast.

You know, they install an ECU, maybe take it to a turn

to get their car tuned and obviously they're not thinking

about firmware updates from there.

But as you mentioned, there can often be some quite serious

and potentially engine destroying bugs in some firmware.

Obviously very rare, but it does happen.

And when these things are highlighted, maybe it's a very unusual set

of circumstances that have to go down in order to bring this bug to light.

And hey, maybe that could damage your engine at worst.

So it's always a good idea when these things are brought to light.

Obviously firmware update will occur.

It's a good idea to make sure that you're staying on top of the latest firmware

so that you don't end up suffering the consequences.

I'd say the flip side of this in most ECU manufacturers

sort of specify this when you go and do a firmware update.

That's the usual story.

Don't do a firmware update the day before a race meeting

or something of that nature.

You know, there can be some unintended consequences

that you're going to have to work through as well.

So allow a bit of time, I guess, to make sure that everything's

working as expected.

Often these firmware updates will also require you to actually

reconfigure some things because, you know, the structure,

the way things are done often changes.

Yep.

And that's kind of where being a specialist I found, you know,

to talk a little bit on to being a specialist is that's a good segue

into that is me always updating the firmware,

always being on the latest and greatest stuff,

understanding the aspects of the features and what's going on.

I'm at the forefront of those things coming out.

And I've seen this countless times, tuners that are amazing,

like no, like, you know, essentially I bow down to them.

You know what I mean?

Like they know more.

I will admit that 110%.

But I'll get the car and I'll fix the problem simply because

they didn't get there.

The last time they touched the Haltech was eight years ago

and it's just they don't get to touch it as often as I get

to do.

And that's I find that being very powerful and it allows me

to, I guess, have an edge over a lot of individuals is

because I'm getting that opportunity.

I'm on the forefront of what's happening on a daily basis.

It isn't like I I touch anywhere between three and six cars a

day, whether it be some days, I'll have I'll start at seven

o'clock in the morning and I'll work till 10 o'clock at

night and I will do a different car every hour of the day.

So you're getting getting more runs on the board than most

people.

Yes, 100%.

And so it's a lot of that and it's a lot of even like my

customers have the ability to do follow-ups and it isn't just

like a you come in and so this kind of segues into where I

was talking about earlier about how the business model

of bringing your car to the dyno pay once it doesn't

work out.

You got to pay again doesn't work out.

You got to pay again type situation that business model

I really didn't like it.

And so that's where team by Sean came in my whole perspective

my whole goal of tuning is to get the car set up first get it

started work out through all the bugs try to make sure the

car is as prepared for the dyno as possible and then go to

the dyno which may it not be perfect it does generally we can

resolve all problems before going to the dyno and my

success rate of being success at the dyno is pretty high

I would say it's probably 90%.

That's that that is rare.

I think I always say that for when I was running my my own

shop and we're tuning cars that were brought to us from

other individuals so you know we didn't have a hand in

this building the car configuring everything wiring

everything and for those sorts of cars the sort of the

home built cars I would say that probably on average

one in five cars would go on the dyno get tuned and leave

and basically nothing went wrong the remaining four out of

those five cars would need some level of diagnostics

and sort of repair work or remedial work in order to get

through the dyno session obviously some of them just

never get through because the problems were too great

so a lot can be said for that process of being thorough

with your configuration making sure that the cars starting

running properly before you ever go near the dyno I think

a lot of people rush that stage are too excited about it

they want to see the power figures so let's go to the

dyno but it just does it seldom works out.

Yep I am the I'm the bearer of self control is is is

what a lot of I am for a lot of people you know I slow

down their thought process of what they want to do with

their car and how they want to you know what their goals

are and what they want to accomplish and not that they

can't accomplish them it's just we have to first crawl

and then we can walk and then we can finally run and

that's kind of where my process is just that the

crawling is getting the engine started for the first

time I would say most of the time I would my success

rate on that probably it's a seventy five percent is I

can get a car started get everything programmed and

the customer is driving their car being able to drive

for two hours within the first hour of of doing the

first tune session and now this isn't boosting this is

just cruising maybe touching into boost kind of just

tickling the different areas of what would be considered

dangerous or where there could be a potential problem

and just getting an understanding of what the car

wants and what it needs so most customers will do their

two-hour drive and then after that time depending on how

the numbers look I actually rely on a lot of long-term

fuel trims that first session that first two-hour

drive I'm not having them do any logs I'm just

having them long-term and then seeing what the

long-term did let's actually let's just start pause

right here so for for the individuals listening who

have absolutely zero familiarity with what the Haltech

I mean probably anyone who's got any involvement at

all in tuning will understand the term long-term

fuel trims but could you just talk to us about

how the the closed-look control and the long-term

trims work in the Haltech architecture?

Yes so the O2 control in the well we're going to

just go from the current firmware, NSP software

they have a short-term and a long-term the short-term

is a instant reaction that you can set up different

parameters whether if you put your push your foot too

fast or you can set different throttle positions that

type of stuff to allow the ECU to target a certain

air-fuel ratio so it's going to raise or lower the

volumetric efficiency number to meet the target

AFR that you've put in the target AFR table and so

short-term is your instant gratification it is the

it's going to try to get there all the time it's going

to move around depending on where you are with the

car and what Haltech allows you to do is to set a

parameter that when the car sits at a certain short-term

fuel trim for X amount of time it will then take

that value and start applying it to a long-term fuel

trim map that is equivalent to actually adjusting

the fuel map so if you turn off your car and turn

it back on again it's going to have that positive

or negative trim in there essentially basically

applied to the main fuel map now it isn't actually

applied you can go in and zero it out if you want

to or you can apply it and a lot of what I do

is I'm interpreting that information by being like

alright why are we way off here or why are we this way

or that way and either being like alright we've got

a problem or everything is going as it's supposed

to be going and that's to me it's a lot of I can't

give you a scientific way of how I look at that

that's not how I tune I just see the stuff so

often that I can be like alright we've got

something that we need to look into here this

is that this is a problem or this is going smoothly

and depending on what I see whether it be you know

let's say one bank is also in one bank is is adding

a ton of fuel and it's always showing lean well

guess what what that means when I say bank it's

usually generally speaking a an engine that has

cylinders on two separate sides of the motor so

like a v6 or a v8 v12 if you have a dead hole

that is going to consequently cause that wideband

to read lean because it's just pump it's an air pump

it's pumping air in and your fuel trims are going

to be very rich on that bank and so I can look at

a short-term fuel trim even when I first start

the car and be like hey I'm pretty sure bank

to has a dead hole can you go and fix that

and I'm right I would say nine out of ten times

and it's either something like a spark plug wire

I've had it where the spark plug isn't tightened

all the way into the engine.

Oh yeah there can be a million things causing this.

I'm interested there just with the remote tuning

versus doing it in person you obviously get some

of your sensors removed in that you can't

physically see and hear the engine running.

Do you see that as a pro or a con?

I guess what I'm saying is there it gives you

maybe sometimes it can be a little bit less

misleading because you're forced to look purely

at the data in front of you I just yeah

interested to see what your thoughts on that are.

So I actually see it as a pro and I'm going to

explain why I see it as a pro and where I've

developed the skills to see it as a pro and

that's not as a pro professional but as a as it's

a good thing and so going back to my telephone

company days I'm going to just give a really

funny story is I was helping a lady set up

her dial-up connection and I would always be

like hover the mouse over this icon and left

click or right click and she says okay I am

hovering my mouse over the icon and I'm right

clicking and I was like alright what do you have

in front of your screen and she goes I got nothing

I don't see anything and I'm just like alright

so we do this like three or four times and I'm

getting frustrated she's getting frustrated and

then finally through her own frustration

she describes it as what she was doing she was

physically picking up the mouse and pointing it

at the icon and then clicking that's not that's

not going to work so what I'm getting at is

that through having those skill sets of of

interpreting putting myself in the shoes of

the individual at the time has allowed me

to tell them what they need to do and what's

happening and so the information that I have

in front of me I'm asking those questions hey

how does the car sound you know do you hear

anything weird you know I'm asking those those

those questions to develop an understanding

of how the customer's experiences and what I've

found is that and this is kind of you're

gonna be like well you wouldn't you know if

you're driving the car that you that you're

gonna make the tune good I disagree with

that because I suck at driving the car and

I don't perceive the things that they see

and I'll get in the car and I think it's fine

I'll hand the keys over to my customer and

they're gonna be like what why did you let

me have the car doing this and I was like

well it never did that for me so there's

a benefit in other words and the customer

driving the car in the exact way that

they're going to drive the car they're

experiencing how it will be when they're

driving it precisely and I've had so much

more success that way by actually having

the customer drive the car and I have a

lot more local customers now that my

you know I have another business that

I'm growing and and I have a lot more

customers which I may add a lot of them

don't understand the remote tuning concept

that I have to then they have the worst

time understanding how it works versus

my actual remote customer base that's

bigger than my local base and so I've

had to like rethink about how I can

describe this to this individual who

wants me to just take their keys and

then hand them a car that runs perfectly

where it's like I really actually need you

to take the keys yourself and I will make

your car run perfectly and so I just see

it differently in that way for that so

how it works for me I guess okay all right

a few things I want to dive into here

so you've talked briefly about the

the long-term fuel trims and I get

that most most ECs these days are going

to at least provide closed-loop fuel

control I don't think I would probably

install or tune one now that didn't

have a built-in or add-on wideband

for that aspect the long-term fuel trims

not every ECU's offering that and I do

like that function for me what I'd

generally do with that is I'll disable

long-term fuel trims while I'm tuning

on the dyno I'm concentrating on using

the O2 control for short-term fuel

trims means that if you're out a little

bit you don't have to instantly catch up

with the keyboard the ECU will do the

heavy lifting for you and then you

can correct on the fly then once

maybe I've got the tune complete

I'll enable the long-term fuel trims

sort of take the car for a drive

you mentioned a couple of hours there

but it could be a couple of weeks

whatever it might be and then have a

look at what trims if any have been

applied and hopefully if you've done

your job properly the long-term

fuel trim table is probably going

to be filled with no more than

maybe plus and minus 2 to maybe

5% at the max I think that would

probably be a sign that everything's

looking pretty good as you mentioned

then you can apply that to the fuel table.

So the first thing here is you've

sort of alluded to getting a sense

of if everything's working okay

by what you're seeing in that

long-term fuel trim table.

Could you give us, you mentioned

the bank-to-bank variation but could

you give us any other red flags

that would sort of immediately be

a bit of an eyebrow raising moment

when you look at that long-term

fuel trim table?

I guess a lot of it comes down to

is massive swings in different

aspects.

So I'll give an example of this

this morning.

We tuned a car for another shop.

It was a CTSV with a piggyback

on a Haltech.

I think it was a Rebel I can't remember

but it doesn't matter and

you know we tuned up the car

when the car is warm,

the shop owner has driven the car

works fantastic.

Calls up the customer,

customer comes and picks up the car

like six hours later starts the car.

You know, they don't wait for the car

to warm up.

They just started up and start

driving and we had done cold starts.

We had done all this type of stuff.

Well, when we start driving bank

one is going deadly bank

two is exactly on target.

And I'm like I go to my the shop

owner is like I can't tune around

that that is a that is a mechanical

problem like if one bank is at 12

and the other one is is at 30

all the trims are exactly where

they're supposed to be.

I can't make a compensation to change

that now that that's that's pointing

to a much bigger issue

than a tuning problem for sure.

Correct.

And so like he's like I agree

and he's like I've changed spark plugs.

I've done plug wires.

I've done coils.

I was like, well,

have you done a leak down test?

I suspect that if you do a leak

down test when it's cold

and you do a leak down test

when it's warm,

you're going to see a vast

difference in how much cylinder

leak by is in that scenario.

And I have.

That was just this morning still

waiting on the results of that one.

So waiting on the result,

but I suspect that we're going to

find something there.

It or it's going to be something

absolutely silly where a connector

on that side is is doesn't make the

connection quite when once it heats

up, it makes the connection right.

It's going to be something silly

is what it's going to be.

But those types of scenarios

come up day in and day out

for me constantly.

I have I have now.

So it's 2019.

So we're we're we're 2025.

So I've been doing this for six years

anywhere between three to 12 times a

day, 12 different cars a day.

And I see this all the time

and I'm not a person to just do

the same thing day in day out.

I'm always thinking about

how to improve myself,

how to better my craft

in my own way.

And it's getting harder,

but I learned from others.

I look at others.

I look to other resources.

You know, I'm actually totally

contemplating just sitting down

one day and taking 10 different

tuning classes just to see

what others do, not necessarily

to because I'll be able to actually

understand to be like,

all right, what they're doing

ain't going to work for me

or I learned something new.

You know, yeah, I think

there's a there's a common

sort of tendency in the

tuning industry for people to

grow a big ego and think

that they know best and then

shut down all sort of

outside resources and

never ask questions

and never talk to other tuners.

And I think that's just such a

dangerous way of going

about business like

none of us know everything.

And I mean, that's still why

I am passionate about the industry

is every time I jump on the dyno

every time I tune a car

almost without fail

there's something new to learn.

So I think, you know,

keeping an open mind

and looking at how others

are doing what they do

can only be a benefit.

Even if you decide, like you said,

oh well that's not going to work for me.

But you know, you've explored

another possibility.

So far we've kind of touched on

fuelling and to be honest

I'd say that's probably

I'd consider the easiest

part of tuning.

When it comes to ignition timing

that gets a little bit more complicated.

We haven't actually talked about

whether you're tuning these cars

remotely on someone else's dyno

or on the road

or is it a combination of both?

Yeah, I'll get into that.

So obviously start off

in the customer's driveway

or at a shop in their

you know in their work area.

We get the car started

do all the things.

I actually start off

with street tuning the car.

That is the first aspect

of getting the car

prepared for the dyno.

I actually on my website

I charge more money

if someone wants to do a street tune only.

And I do that

because it is a lot more work

in my opinion to get it right.

And then it also is dangerous

and in all aspects

you really don't know

if you've done a hundred and ten percent

the right thing.

I've had so many customers

be like this car is amazing

and we go and do the first pull on the dyno

and it looks like a Mount Everest

you know like

it's the worst thing ever

but they said it was awesome

you know what I mean?

So I guess quote unquote

demand of my customers

to do all aspects

to street tune

dyno tune

street tune again

and so

that's kind of how I run my structure

is I start off with street tuning

we get it ready

we get it prepared

we go to the dyno

we finalize the tune

ideally not find anything that's bad

like I said

I'd say about 90% success rate

and then get off the dyno

and whether

the feeling changes a little bit

here and are there

maybe the transient throttles

are having issues

or

it comes and stalls

when you get to the stoplight

because sometimes customers

are very nervous

when they're first driving their car

and they don't allow their car to stall out

they don't allow their car

to do different things

it's such a human thing

that they

they're so hyperactive on their car

and you get done with the dyno

and they're like the stress is gone

they're like

I made it through the hardest part

so they drive the car differently after that

exactly

and so then there's issues that come up

and

and at that point in time

it's all part of the tuning package

so for me

they jump on

we resolve those problems

we get those things taken care of

I think a lot of people

tend to believe that the dyno

is the be all and end all

when it comes to tuning

and yes

it is an amazing tool

however

where possible

I always will confirm the tune

out on the road

or perhaps the racetrack

if the car's not street legal

once we've been on the dyno

because you sort of just mentioned there

that you might find some small differences

in the fueling

you know

it's very difficult to replicate

the air flow and temperatures

on a chassis dyno

that you'll see

out in the real world

at perhaps 60 or 100 miles an hour

hence you can see differences in the fueling

likewise you may find

that a turbocharged engine

the boost control

is rock solid

you could run a ruler through it on the dyno

but you get it out in the real world

and maybe on a transient

maybe on a gear shift

you'll get a big spike in the boost

that you couldn't replicate

or weren't seeing on the dyno

the other one that's really easy to overlook

is that the dyno requires a certain amount of torque

to keep the engine rotating

so when you're trying to tune those very light load areas

the areas you'll be in

maybe when you're just starting to sort of

slow down

to come to a stop

you're just breathing on the throttle

or maybe you're going down a slight hill

you can't get into those very low vacuum areas

of the map on the dyno

but you can on the road

so these are the things that I think separate

sort of average tunes

or maybe even good tunes from excellent ones

their attention to detail of getting into all of those areas

so yeah I applaud you on that approach

it totally makes sense

particularly the straight tune before the dyno

as you mentioned there 90% success rate

you sort of ironing out all these problems

that would quickly cut your dyno session short

if you find out maybe

you've got a coil that's breaking down

once you're under a high load

you can highlight that before you actually get to the dyno

Coming back full circle

just with the ignition side of things

now I've sort of highlighted that you are using the dyno

obviously dialing in the ignition timing on the dyno

is not too strenuous

because you've got that horsepower and torque feedback

knock however can be

well in my opinion is probably the biggest killer

of any performance engine

and particularly if you're tuning on a poor quality pump gas

most likely if it's turbocharged or supercharged

you will probably find the knock threshold

before you reach NBT

when you're tuning the timing

so how are you dealing with this?

I mean I know that the Haltech has a pretty sophisticated

knock control system

but the problem I think with any issue with knock control

is for the knock control system to be functional

and effective

you have to characterize it correctly

and validate that it's working properly

so I'm interested in your approach to that

yeah so I will say first and foremost

like that whole thing

when I first started doing Haltech stuff

I knew I needed it

I got lucky I have a lot of customers that I could just direct

hey go to E85

like it's safe

yeah

that's the route to go

like that's the real solution for knock control

yeah that's the solution

and that's what I did at the first

three four years of my business

was really directing a lot of individuals

to go to ethanol

and that helped my success

vastly

by just

guiding individuals to that path

did I do some pump gas tunes?

yep

and in reality

was there times that maybe perhaps

I had a mistake

or this that and that

possibly

I could never really tell

you know what I mean

now with that being said

I knew I need to get knock control down

and

I struggled with that

figuring out how can I

not have knock ears on my

and actually

accomplish what needs to be done

and so

at first

going through all these things

what happened is

as Haltech actually updated their data log viewer

and

when they updated their data log viewer

that's when

my knock control

started my path

to being successful with knock control

at least the way I see it

has been a success

and so

I use

the Haltech's knock control

and I look at it on different engines

I will look at on a pump gas engine

and then I'll have the same engine

but just in a different car

on ethanol

and it's like

whoa

the engine's so much quieter

like there's no noise at all

it's like the knock sensor isn't even here in anything

and

I mean here's something but like

you can tell the differences between

how it is

and I will say this

it is

it comes down to interpretation

it isn't about

I can't say that there's a scientific way that I do it

that I say can be like

I can tell this person

hey

you do this

you look at it this way

and you will hundred percent not have knock

it's more about

all right

I know that this timing is safe

ultra safe

like I've had enough engines where I can know where

MBT is

on any motor

for the most part

and then I take 10 degrees out or

you know

X amount whatever I feel comfortable about

and I can run it up on the dyno

look at

the frequency

or essentially look at the noise output in the Haltech

Haltech actually has this option where you can filter it

30 to 35 is what I use

I can tell everyone that

personally

and

might not be the end all

but

it allows me to actually

quantifiably see

when the engine is knocking

and not knocking

I can

also there's going to be a valley

a big huge mountain

and I was like

all right that must be where the knock is

what do I got going on here is my

I actually find more often than not

on pump gas is that the mixture is too lean

and that's what's actually causing the knock

not too much timing

and so

I'll go through

reaching up the mixture

all of a sudden

that line where that knock was there

smooths out wasn't there anymore

I think a lot of people

even some professional turns

I don't think maybe get the the link between

if your ratio

and ignition timing

and knock

and

as you mentioned there

if you're a little bit lean

and if your ratio

what that's going to do

is create additional combustion chamber temperature

and that's what really ultimately drives the engine

to knock

I mean granted

no matter what mixture you use

if you keep on piling timing

and at some point you're probably going to

end up with the engine knocking anyway

but

when you're sort of

in the ballpark

and sort of walking that tightrope

sometimes reaching in the mixture

can move you away from knock

sometimes

always experiment and find

you know when I'm at that knock threshold

will I get more power by

reaching it up a couple of points

and maybe that'll allow me to creep in another

one to two degrees of timing

with safety

so

it's not always a you know

a black and white

sort of

this is the air-fuel ratio we must run

and this is the timing

you know

there's some flexibility in there I think as well

I think a lot of

I've excelled at the piston engine tuning

is because I start my

the first car I tuned

was a rotary

everything's easy

when you've come from the rotary world

so

like

I came from the world

or if you make it knock

you might as well just

buy him a new engine

you know what I mean like it's

I've always argued

I do not

see the usefulness of knock control

on rotary engines

because

A. to validate the system

you must make the engine knock

that's not real smart advice

with a rotary engine

and generally

the rotary engine

is a knock monitor

in and of itself

because if you make it knock

the apex seal will exit the chat

110%

or some other level of damage

that you're probably not coming back from

short of an engine rebuild anyway

so yeah

piston engines much more forgiving

yes

and so

I always like when I started off

tuning piston engines

I will say this right now

they were the probably the richest piston engines

you've ever tuned in your

in existence

when I first started

because my concept of

the range of where air-fuel ratio needed to be

was all rotary

and it was just bled into my mind

that that's how you tune an engine

and it took

many years of

I guess I started off being

really safe

in the beginning because

it's just

where I came from

and so

it's just now until the last two years

two three years here

that I've

I've really

had that just like

okay this is where

things are happy

you know some motors might actually be really happy

on the leaner edge of things

or

you take that same air-fuel ratio

same compression but in a different motor

it makes

significantly less power

and it's not happy and it's not safe

and all these other things

and it's a lot of just

experience

interpreting

what makes what I've had been

I've been very fortunate

that I've had a few friends

one friend I will say

that has really helped me

understand piston engines

not through his own experience of tuning

is Gus

Erickson

he's a BMW guy

and

we would try to push a stock M50 motor

as high as we possibly can

like we made

almost 900 horsepower on a stock rod

non-vanos

M50 motor

and

with very big turbo

and

pushing it all the boost well over

you know 5,500 or 5250

and it lived that way for

a couple months

you know

it came out with some

wiggly rods

but

it still ran when we took it apart

that's

that's pretty good

yeah and so

he had this method

at the time

was

we could buy a M50 engine for 500 bucks

take all the bits off of it

sell the head

sell all the bits

and just take the short block

the bottom end

and the motor would be free

and it would just be our time

and we got it down

he was so good at it that

he can get the motor out

and a new one in

in one night

so we would

we've blown the car up

found an engine

swapped it out

and we're tuning that engine again

at 6 o'clock in the morning

the next morning

it's a fast tune around

yes

and so

we did a lot of that stuff

like we've

probably blown up

20 engines

and so

that has

allowed me

to

really grow

and

and and it's

it's

you know

some people will be like well

what was your contribution to him

like you know I've

I bought his first turbo kit

you know

did all the ECU stuff

like

helped him build the car

through my revenue of my business

and so that we've

really grown

in that perspective

and so

I got to give it to him

you know for

being my guinea pig

and I was his guinea

you know we kind of

we were having fun about

everyone knew

what was going on

you know what I mean

and so it was

it was a great experience

for me

and you know the cars that

my other friends that

didn't necessarily

have that type of

gumption

and resources

you know

we did things very carefully

and it was just

a lot of experience

yeah I think

that's

that's a really important aspect

of tuning

particularly when

you're learning

and building up your own experience

how hard you're going to push

how close to the

the edge you want to walk

is really going to come down to

your financial risk profile

if you've got a

a very expensive engine

and you're going to be

really financially put back

if something goes wrong with that engine

understandably

it makes sense to leave

a little bit of

potential on the table

and be a little bit more conservative

with your tune

flip side of that

when I was running my drag program

you know we at the time

had the fastest four wheel drive

Mitsubishi Eva on the world

and when you're trying

to beat the best in the world

you have to push the boundaries

and sometimes you go

beyond the boundaries

but that's a natural progression

and at that point you also

are going into that

with your eyes wide open

you know exactly

what the potential downsides

can be

on that front actually

with the remote tuning

versus

if you are tuning

and you've got the car

on a dyno right in front of you

what would you say there is

a power difference

essentially are you providing

a slightly wider safety margin

with your fueling

and your ignition timing

and maybe your boost

on a remotely tuned vehicle

versus one that you're tuning in person

I would say

there is no difference between the two

okay

interesting

I wholeheartedly feel way more comfortable

being behind the computer

in a remote tune

then driving the car

when I dyno tune the cars

locally here

most of the time

I have someone else drive the car

and I just focus on the keyboard

and so

even when I'm in the car

I'm not even driving the car

and

I'm not saying I take risks

necessarily

these are

my whole tuning

portfolio and everything

you know I have

hundreds of different tunes

for hundreds of different engines

that are all of successful engines

and so

every engine builds on its success

of each other engine

so as I am successful

of other engines

I continue that categorization

of tuning

to every car

and so

yes there's compression ratios that change

and there's fueling that's changed

and those are all different aspects

that are documented

between different things

but

it becomes this

understanding

of

hey

I have this car that's super successful

it's doing great

raced many seasons

I take that same tune

and I apply it to others

and that's

it's a building a portfolio

of knowledge

and

that is where I find that my efficiency

has greatly increased

over the years

is because

I'm not reinventing the wheel

I'm simply just rinsing and repeating

the same thing

within reason

obviously I learn new things

and get better understanding

and learn lessons

and

grow

always

I don't always just like when I say I use a tune

that tune has been improved

every single year

on all of the things that I've known

it isn't just something where I go back

in the folder and be like

oh I tuned this car in

2019

I'm going to grab that fuel map

or that timing map

I would say

absolutely not

you know because

I've learned that much

I'm always growing

I always

you know like

people are always critique

even now you know

people critique my work

and

if someone has something to say

I listen to them

I don't be like

now you don't know nothing

I know more than you

now I go

okay well

I'll consider that as possible information

I think

no matter who you are

and

how good your work is

you're always going to have

a small handful

of customers along the way

that felt for whatever reason

rightly or wrongly

that they've been

you know

hard done by you

and are going to be quite vocal

that you don't know what you're doing

I just don't think you can go through

life as a professional tuner

without having that

vocal minority

that are

like to sort of try and

pull you down

now I want to move on

and just talk about

sort of a couple of the projects

you've got going on at the moment

where

you're trying to

do some things with the Haltech product

that maybe

maybe it doesn't necessarily

lend itself to

ideally out of the box

now what I'm talking about here is

some of these late model cars

can integration with all of the different modules

inside of the vehicles

has become increasingly more complicated

and the upshot of that is

it's often making it more difficult

for us to do

an aftermarket standalone ECU

which is way

for a lot of these late model vehicles

now reflashing has sort of become

the preferred technique

when it comes to tuning

you've gone with a slightly more complicated approach

to get Haltech's into some of these vehicles

and can you just give us a rundown

on how you're dealing with

the CAN network

and reverse engineering that

because obviously the Haltech

is not completely user configurable

in terms of its CAN interface

so you sort of lock down a little bit

to what Haltech will read

and transmit on the CAN bus

Yeah, so I think

so yes, you're very right about the Haltech CAN

it is locked down

but what the Haltech CAN isn't

that a lot of other manufacturers do

is their proprietary CAN

is not encrypted

it is not locked down

it is for the most part

public information

you can literally go on to Haltech's Wiki

and look at their CAN

EBC file

and literally reverse engineer

their CAN

there are multiple different companies nowadays

that are either making IO boxes

or utilizing

that workaround

for their products

and so I knew of that

and I was essentially

I will say I'm not

a CAN expert

I'm just not

I'm wanting to learn it

and understand it

I've actually learned quite a bit about it

as of recently

we've got a course for that

I know, I knew you were going to say that

but to be fair

what you've just said is completely right

the skill set of tuning an engine

and the skill set of

reverse engineering CAN

and writing CAN templates

they're not the same thing

so a lot of tuners

do really struggle with CAN

and I completely get that

and so I would say

just to back up a little bit

I have a little bit of a story here

that's kind of got me into

a little bit of the CAN stuff

I will wrap back up to the

to the newer model things

but I just think the story is a little funny

is you're familiar with

Formula Drift, right?

Yeah, yeah, of course

and ProSpec where you have to

you have to run a link ECU

so I had a

a customer here locally

that had driven in ProSpec

and he

he wasn't paying attention to the rules

as much as he should

and he bought a Haltech for his car

and commissioned me to install it

well as time went on

and I went to go install

he's like, man

they're telling me that I have to install this link

and I go and I read the

the rule books

and all it says in the rules at the time

was that the link has to control the engine

it doesn't say anything other

specifics

just says it has to run the engine

so I took that as literal

so

I

had the link

fury

control

six injectors

six coils

and then I took the Haltech

R5

and controlled the other

the whole rest of the chassis

and then

took the CAN protocols

and transmitted that information

Haltech's CAN bus

over to the link

for like the coolant temp

the air temp

and all those type of things

in order to

get the car to run

I was having issues with getting the car to run

I could run it on the Haltech

I couldn't get it to run on the link

so I called up to link

and said, hey, this is what I'm doing

and then lo and behold

I get a call from the FD officials

being like

you can't do that

and I was like, what do you mean I can't do that

the link's gonna run the car

it's gonna run the engine

wow

that should just be inferred

that you can't have the Haltech on the car

and I'm like

but that's not what the rulebook says

yeah, that's the problem

when you've got rules

it's not the intention of the rule

necessarily

it's the wording of the rule

that's the important part

precisely

anyways

so

it just brought me to the story

of when I first got into CAN

is that I

I was trying to

link two engine management systems together

and so I always kind of had this idea of

like how do I

make this translation

between any device

whether it be a factory ECU

or a different module

and vice versa

and during this timeframe

I had

knew of Mitch Mitten

through another shop

that I worked with

they had worked with him

on a couple projects

getting their AIM stuff set up

and getting some CAN integration stuff done

and I kind of

reached out to him

I added him on Facebook

and started talking to him

and there's kind of

you know

we just started being friends

at that point in time

just talking about different projects

and you know

I kind of told him my idea

and what I wanted

and he's like

I could probably do that

and I just didn't have a car

to do it with

at the time

and an interesting side note here

Mitch Mitten is actually

one of HPA's

very early members

yes

and he actually told me that

the other day

and so

we've been talking

and

we actually met

at PRI here

this last

last PRI

2024 PRI

got to meet in person

shake each other's hands

that's kind of stuff

and you know

I

I had this project

that

I had done

HALTECH

as a piggyback

on a factory

ECU

on a fifth gen Camaro

and

this individual

he was told up front

like when he brought me the car

I was like hey

why don't you just

use HP tuners

like

I literally

used to push customers away

and just be like

no

like you're

spending gobs of money with me

to have something

that's a piggyback

that's going to have some issues

you should just

go this route

that's what I did

in the beginning

I think it's really important

to use the best tool for the job

and as you say

the piggyback

and in a lot of instances

we've got reflash software

that we've developed and well known

it's just

it doesn't make sense

right

well this individual is like

now I want a HALTECH

and this is

this is much

about two years prior

to all of this

this story origination

with Mitch

and so I installed the HALTECH

and

you know

everything actually went pretty good

I think we made like

900 plus horsepower

on a fifth gen

and

the owner

was

you know

he wanted some upgrades

you know fast forward

two years later

and he

I had told him

I was like hey

my intentions are

hopefully some

some day

I can get rid of your factory

ECU and just have the HALTECH

and

at the time

I was more about relying on

you know I was thinking

HALTECH was going to just

have the CAN protocol

and this would be

just a simple

transition

but no

but years go by

and years go by

and no GM

HALTECH support

well

you know

through this adventure

of my other shop

my business partner

at the time

or right now

he was actually working for another shop

when we worked on

Scott's car

through the

the initial piggyback

phase of the car

and so now we're business partners

and he brings the car to us

to

I think we're going to put a bigger

supercharger on it

or something of that nature

I think it was actually

breaking belts

and so

we were just going to

we put a clutch

a pulley on the

on the supercharger

so that when he hits limiter

it didn't

break the belt

and

and at the time

I was like

we were going to do a UC 10

I quoted

I had a full quote out

to just

do a UC 10

I had another company

3D print a bezel for me

all this stuff

and then I was just like

I reached out to Mitch

and I was like hey Mitch

do you want to finally

like just do this project

that we've been talking about

for so long

and he's like

yeah

let's do it

so we

started that project

it was

almost a year ago

and

we reverse engineered

him and I worked together

on

what it comes down to

is what we'll do is

there's a software

called Pekan

there's many other

different softwares

but I use Pekan

and

we hook up to the car

and it gives us

all of the can bus

information

on the car

and

we simply just

dissected it

you know

unplug the ECU

turn the car on

what does the bus

look like

plug the ECU back in

what does the bus

look like

what happens

when we press the

starter button

and you kind of

it's just like

for me

it's just hot and peck

like

hey I press the start button

oh I just saw the

hexadecimal goat

go from

you know

01 to AB

or whatever

I'm

I'm not

a hexadecimal expert

I'm just a person

who's really good

at seeing

changes

and

through that

him and I

worked together

to come up

with

the bus

information

and

the first revision

of it

honestly was pretty

glitchy

customer took the car

he's like

my car's doing this

it's doing that

and like things we

we tested the car

but it was

when we handed the car

over to him

it was winter

and in Minnesota

here

you don't drive a

fifth gen Camaro

that makes 900 horsepower

you just don't

and so

so obviously

he took

he took it off

out in the spring

and he ran into

some problems

so like

he drove

3,000 miles

and it put 30,000 miles

on his car

and

that's the wrong way around

yeah

thankfully

there's

companies out there

that will allow you to

as long as you say

your shop

and that you

there was a mistake

made

they will fix it

and so

I got it fixed

and so

through that time

we had the fifth gen

and the problem

with the Camaro was

it was already

manipulated

by Haltech

so the only way

I could run the car

is to have the Haltech

piggybacking off of it

so

we had a lot of flaws

through that

and we had to

he had a lot of struggles

and

since it was our first time

we really made it difficult

so fast forward

after that Camaro

I posted up a video

of the Camaro running

with no factory

ECU

on a Haltech Rebel

that blew up

but

to my like

I guess

sadness

or however you want to say it is

everyone's like

what about the C6 Corvette

I had like

out of 30 different things

I had

one person be like

fifth gen

otherwise I had 30 people

that say a C6 Corvette

and I was like

it sounds like maybe

you started with the wrong platform

100%

let's just come back though

and get a

sort of a more

full understanding

of how this works

so you've

reverse engineered the CAN bus

so you know

what messages

the ECU is sending out

essentially that you're going to need to

replicate

to make things like

let's say the gauge cluster

the odometer that you mentioned work

there's

millions of things potentially

that need to be there

to keep all of these subsystems happy

but as we already highlighted

you can't

write a custom CAN template

inside of the Haltech

to send out that information

so

how are you doing this

what's the deal

you've got with Mitch

what's his product

that makes all this work

yep so Mitch has this product

called the CAN triple

and what that is

is it's a

it's a

called a CAN translator

a CAN distributor

and so

it has the ability

to have

three separate buses

all of those buses

can be at different

bottom rates

and

you can then

take

the CAN code

that is being transmitted

on each bus

and then

retranslate it out

on another bus

and so you can do

an amalgamation of things

you can do an aftermarket

ABS unit

that doesn't necessarily have

the CAN support for this

and you can then

write the code for that

and translate it out

now

Mitch's normal business model

is to sell the unit

and have the individual

who understands

how to write code

to write their own code

through our agreements

and our friendship

Mitch is my guy for that

I am not the person doing that

and

you know

I'm

full happy to give him credit

in regards to his

amazing skill set

to be able to

write that code

and

we're talking

the first revision

was like

5,000 lines of code

like it's astronomical

how much code

is in this thing

and

we've actually got it cut down

quite a bit

it's not that big anymore

we've learned

he's learned

through

me pressing him to do this

to learn his own craft

you know

how to do it

in a better

efficient way

and he's been coming up with

all these awesome

substructures

and

dbc files

that allow

it to reference different points

and

in the same sense

he'll have an idea

and that I didn't think of

and then in the same sense

I'll be like

hey

what if we do it this way

and he'll be like

whoa

I didn't think of it that way

and we build

on each other's

intelligence

essentially

yeah

I think it's always

beneficial when you've got

two sets of eyes on something

you can see

potentially

a different pathway

to get a result

maybe quicker

easier

or better

for those

who may be still not

quite

picking up what we're putting

down here

so

I'm sort of

taking a bit of a stab in the duck

at how this works

but you can correct me

if I've got this wrong

in Haltech

you can

set up a can output

to run

a generic dash

so

that'll send out

all of the information

let's just concentrate on one piece

let's say

engine RPM

now

that will be sent out

on a specific address

and in a specific format

which

the dash

will understand

and then be able to display

but of course

that's not what

the

1.5

factory dash borders

is expecting to see

it'll be expecting the RPM

signal to be

on a specific address

certainly different to what

Haltech's sending out

out at

maybe at a different

board rate probably

and also in a different format

so

this can gateway

as I'd call it

Mitch's product

that allows you to

take in

the generic dash

can

template from the

Haltech

and then take out

the individual pieces

like RPM

and then send them

out on the OE

and then hand bus

in the format that

the dashboard is expecting

and if I

explained that correctly

110%

that's exactly what it does

but unfortunately

much more complicated to do

than

the 30 seconds I just took

to explain it

yes

it has taken us

almost a year

and we're getting

pretty dang good at it

as an example

the C6 Corvette

we did our first revision

where I could

start the car

and drive it

we did that in a weekend

versus something that took us

months to do the first time

once you've got the

the C6 Corvette

complete

is this

something that you're

going to be selling

as a off the shelf package

to any enthusiast or tuner

or is this just an in-house project

so people can get this if they're coming

to you for their tuning

this is actually

a live product right now on my site

I'm selling it as is right now

it is obviously

I have the understanding that if it isn't

going to work

I'm going to make it work for them

and I've run into a couple

quirks already where

you know

I've actually only had one

one shop so far

install it

and of course

that one shop that's

installing it

it is completely a

a modulation car

it isn't just a stock C6

that you put a hell-tech on

it's a

a full race car

that they want to have a delta

ABS on

and the hell-tech

and they also had

previously wiring issues

that they had to resolve

right

so somewhat more complicated

than it should have been

hundred percent

and we're still working through it

actually

but like

in the same sense

the car

I know you guys aren't

this isn't a video

thing

but I have a

I have a 2009 C6

so we started on a 2006

to my understanding

2009 has a different

ABS unit

than 2006 through 2008

and so

I

had this car

that I

essentially did a partial

prep on

they bought the product

I am doing the install for free

and

this car started right up

no problems

didn't have to change anything

the can stream

was exactly the same

between the two units

and so

at least from the conceptual

of testing

it works on two of them

you know what I mean

and so

I've got about

three or four other cars

that are still being built

and

I hope that they

go successful

because

essentially my second car

that I did

I plugged it in

loaded my base map

car fired right up

like it was nothing

and so

to me

proof of concept is right there

now

that is only

that is only one example

but

limited number of data points

yes yes

so

there's going to be

things that we're going to have to do

and

you know the nice thing about it is

as both Mitch and I

progress

in this can journey

we're getting really good

at identifying

different things

we actually just went through

and redid

the Camaro can

I really should

give Mitch

Mitch did most of it

I'm there just to facilitate

to make sure that

hey

this is working

what you've done is correct

the odometer is working

the gas gauge is working

the

all these different weird things

that you just don't think of

the first time you go around

they're all interconnected

and

it's like

hey Mitch

why is the ABS

on that

because we just redid

the Camaro one

it's like

why is my wheel speeds

on the ABS sensors

reading

240 miles an hour

where

I just

when we had the last

configuration

it was exactly what it was

needed to be

and it goes

oh well

since we moved it

so this is going to go into

segue of

maybe a

perhaps a question

that you have

Andre

is how are you

getting information

back into the

Haltech

because Haltech's

can is limited

what it was

is we moved

from the

IO box

I think it's

the original

well

the Hertz rate

that you can

there's a frequency rate

that you can

transmit

back

is much higher

on the PDM

than it was

on the original

IO boxes

so he's like

well instead of

just taking

a Hertz rate of

one out of 300

or whatever it is

it was

or something like that

I'm doing

all of them

and so

it's like

60,000 Hertz rate

instead of like

it's a

factor of like

10 less

that we can do now

and so

I had to recalibrate

the speed sensors

because

it's transmitting

more of the frequency

events

than it was before

and so

what we're doing is

and there's

a couple other companies

that are doing this

Powertune in Australia

they do this

for the Evo 10

and a couple other

individuals

I believe they're using

a Motec

derivative box

to do this

is we are mimicking

Haltech

IO

can IO

boxes

PDMs

dashes

we mimic the

TPMS

box

and so like

when you

you can pull

if you put IC7

on this

C6 Corvette

it's going to show

the TPMS

sensor gauges

you can data log

all that stuff

you're getting it from right

from OEM

so essentially

you're just doing it

in both directions

the gateway

will translate

the Haltech

can output

into something

that the car

can understand

as everything else

that you want

can go back into the Haltech

if you replicate

a Haltech

can template

for that particular product.

Correct, exactly.

Alright Sean

I think we could probably

go another hour here

but I do want to

respect your time

we're getting

a little bit long

so I think we will

start to

wrap this one up

and to do so

we've got the same

three questions we ask

all of our guests

the first of those

is what's next

in the future for you?

Well I'm actually

really trying to

target more

can

integration vehicles

I see that as a

a direct path

to grow my business

and to

bring things to the future

I will wholeheartedly

say this

as an individual

of not just to make money

I would love to see that

my success

of integrating these can

vehicles

perhaps motivates Haltech

to feel a little bit more

comfortable

to add more vehicles

to their can structure

down the line

and I as an individual

will be happy to share

that information

because at the end of the day

that just allows me

to sell more Haltechs

and that's what all I want to do.

Yeah I think that

it's a good point

of difference as well

when you can offer something

that no one else can

if they want it

they're going to have to come to you

I think as well

it sets you up for the future

because understandably

as we sort of move into

later model cars

it becomes a necessity

there's just no option

unless you want to strip all of the electronics out

and turn it into a stripped out race car

can integration with the factory modules

is simply going to be essential.

I'm not quite sure

why a lot of the ECU

manufacturers sort of

shy away from doing this

in the house

but yeah Haltech

haven't really been

as two forthcoming with new models

and can support

that I've seen at least anyway.

Next question

Sean is there any advice you'd give

to a younger vision of yourself

to help reach where you are today

in your career faster

or perhaps even

maybe to avoid some of the

hiccups or potholes you've experienced along the way?

Definitely I actually just had this conversation

with a young individual

and he was

he's starting a rotary business

and what I told him is

listen to what others have to say

don't ever be

hard headed

in what you know

there's always going to be more information

to learn

and to take whatever

advice that someone gives you

as that they are giving you advice

you don't have to use it

but to respect their opinion

and to show

that you at least listen to them

you're going to get much further in life

and in

success in business

by just having an open mind

and just look out for those individuals

that want to be your mentor

and that are going to be willing to give you

their advice and their friendship

and to make those connections

because that's what's going to allow you to grow

as an individual

and don't just be stuck

in what's in front of you

and to like I said have an open mind

don't get angry because someone

thinks they can do better than you

but I'm going to learn

from whatever you're doing

and I'm going to continue to grow

and just relying on your

successes

on your own excesses

and not telling others about other people's

failures

are going to get you much further in life

and the nice thing about it is if you just ignore

the people that are

hating on you or trying to

you know whether it be a

competitive business that type of stuff

if you just stay in your line

and you focus on the good

and just showing the good things that you're doing

that's going to outweigh any bad

that they're going to come up

and if you defend yourself

it just puts you into this hole

and mentally

and from an outside perspective

it makes people think that you have something to hide

whereas if you just simply

take the licks

and grow from that

people are going to respect you more

than a girl.

I think it comes down to what we were talking about earlier

to a degree of

not getting an ego

which is so common in the tuning industry

staying humble

but also as you've sort of mentioned there

I think in the tuning industry

you do need to have a pretty thick skin

because as we were talking about earlier

you're not, no matter how good

you are, no matter what your name is

you're never going to keep every single customer

happy and

because you're a typical minority

can be quite hard to deal with

from time to time.

Alright Sean, our last question for today

if people want to follow you and see what you're up to

how are they best to do so?

Yeah, so essentially three good ways

would be obviously Instagram

at TuneByShawn.com

or at TuneByShawn, sorry

and then Facebook, same thing, at TuneByShawn

and then my website

www.tunebyshawn.com

and I have free consultation

options that I really like

having people

set up a structure. One thing I'd like to say

is I do

have a very, I see it

as perceived and others have told me

it this way, a very organized way

of going about my tuning structure

I really like to have everything scheduled

so I actually have an open

schedule that is open

to the public, everyone can see it

it isn't hidden and

I'd say it's probably 95%

accurate. I am human

I forget that I need to

take my girlfriend out on a date

or go to a family

birthday every once in a while but I think

everyone knows that we're just

human and we do make mistakes

so it's

something I pride myself on

is trying to be as organized as possible

in regards to scheduling

and not ghosting customers

because you always got my schedule

system, you can always schedule my time.

Well as usual we'll put those links

in the show notes and

given that you do tune

remotely, I'm sure that

we've got listeners all around the world

with a Haltech that are looking for a tuner

so perhaps you're the man

that they should be reaching out to.

Really appreciate your time today Sean

and it's been great to get some perspective

on your business and your

sort of growth through the industry so

thanks for coming on the show. Of course I appreciate it

thank you for having me this is

I'm so grateful.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Tuned In

and don't forget by using the code

podcast500 at checkout, podcast

listeners can get a huge $500

off our VIP package

which includes over 40 current courses

as well as a long list of courses

to be released in the future.

As a VIP, you'll also get lifetime

access to our members only, webinars

and our community forum.

Lastly, we'd love it if you could drop a review

on your chosen podcasting platform.

These reviews really help us to grow our audience

and that in turn helps us to continue

to get more high quality guests.

To say thanks, each week we'll be picking

a random reviewer and sending them out

an HPA t-shirt free of charge

anywhere in the world.

This is also a great place to ask

any questions you might have too

and I'll do my best to answer them

if your review gets picked.

So this week a big shout out to

Aaron C from Australia who has said

one of the best resources out there

about the automotive performance industry.

There's not an episode that goes by

where I don't pick up something that I didn't know

or didn't properly understand.

Thanks so much to HPA

and the guests on this podcast.

It's always something I look forward to

every week.

Well thanks for your kind words Aaron

and if you reach out with your contact details

and your t-shirt size, we'll get a fresh

HPA t-shirt shipped straight out to you.

Alright that concludes our interview

and before we sign off, I just wanted

to remind everyone who's been perhaps

hiding under a rock and hasn't heard

of High Performance Academy before,

we are an online training school

and we specialize in teaching a range

of performance automotive topics.

Everything from engine tuning and engine

building through to wiring, car

suspension and wheel alignment,

data analysis and race driver education.

Now remember you've got that coupon

code, you can use podcast75

at the checkout to get $75

off the purchase of your first course.

Get our full course list

at hpacademy.com forward slash courses.

Important to mention that when you purchase

a course from us, that course is yours

for life as well. It never expires,

you can rewatch the course as many times

as you like, whenever you like.

The purchase of a course will also give

you three months of access to our

Gold membership that gives you access

to our private members only forum

which is the perfect place to get answers

to your specific questions.

You'll also get access to our regular

daily members webinars which is where

we touch on a particular topic in the

performance automotive realm, we dive

into that topic for about an hour.

If you can watch live, you can ask questions

and get answers in real time.

If the time zones don't work for you,

that's fine too. You're going to get

access as a Gold member to our

previous webinar archive. We've got

close to 300 hours of existing

content in that archive, it is

an absolute gold mine.

So remember that coupon code

check out our course list at

hpacademy.com forward slash courses.

145: How to Avoid Wasting Thousands on the Dyno

About this episode

Mazda Rx7

Ford F100

Scion Tc

Buick Century

Toyota Supra

Jeep Commander

Honda Civic

Opel Tigra

Nissan Gtr

Cadillac Ctsv

Chevrolet Camaro

Chevrolet C6

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Tuned In