Andrew,
With all do respect for Giac, I know it has been in business for a long time. I did have Giac file with my stage IV EVOMS and worked ok. I installed my SG700 kit and many problems started hapenning and could be number of things. I have paid over $6000 in software file with Giac so far. I wish I could change my mind and come back. No fense to Giac at all. I will never do business with Speed Gallery again. I simply lost my trust which is a avery hard thing to gain back in life. I will post my results with my new set up coming soon.
Regards, Art

 

DAMMMMNNEEDDDD Art never thought you love me dat much baby.... my car never missed a beat. glad i took the alternate route. best wishes on ur new set-up

 

Hi Art,

Good luck to you in the future we wish you the best. I do need to correct some things however. Our custom tuning services are highly sought after. In fact, the high demand for these services sometimes limits our customer pool to commercial parties looking for calibrations of mass market kits. Tuning for a kit that will have mass market appeal can be much more difficult than tuning a one off car. In the late 90's and early 2000's all we did was custom tuning, but as our popularity grew we had less time for custom tuning for individual parties. We feel that it is still important for our company to have a balance of custom calibrations for private parties as well as commercial ones and have allotted time in our development schedule to bring customers in from time to time.

GIAC programmed cars, have always done very well in competition. I would suspect that the one who passed you rumors of GIAC cars out competed may have an ulterior motive. I also hear rumors of a GIAC tuned 3.2 liter M3 and GIAC tuned 700 car that put car lengths on all others. The best 996 turbo quarter mile time on this forum was running a GIAC calibration for big turbos and an Hitachi MAF regardless of whose name is on it. 09.67 @ 149.8. A 996TT running a GIAC calibration for big turbos installed by AJUSA in San Diego did win Excellence Magazines High Roller Shootout, which included a road race, a quarter mile and a dyno competition. In fact, GIAC calibrated cars took the top three spots in both the dyno and the quarter-mile portions of this event.

Art, your issue may be as simple as making more boost than the other cars due to your wastegates being setup differently. You may be out of fuel pump in first gear because of the higher than normal boost, causing the misfire; however, this is just a guess as you did not take us up on our offer to look at your car. You have already purchased our product I am not trying to sell you on something, I just think it would be a waste for you to not explore all the options you have available to you before starting over.

 

Andrew,

With all due respect, I wasnt going to say anything- but I am going to have to strongly disagree with you. I had your programming (stage 1 upgraded to stage 4) as you recall, I should have been seeing 1.2bar as advertised with the kit, but I barely saw .9bar, after trying to adjust wastgates etc for over 9 months (with minimal support and guidance from the installer and GIAC). I ended up with multiple blown mafs, a broken wastegate and blown turbo.

You're advice of exploring all options, isn't an option for most, including me. Many people dont want to "trial and error" tuning, especially after an expensive failure (this should have been done while you were developing the product). Yes, I understand that there should be minor adjustments as all of our cars are different to some degree, I get that, but where were the options or support during my 9 months of unsuccessful tuning before the failure? This is why I didnt give the installer or GIAC the chance to make things right. Too much grey area and pointing fingers for cause of failure. Like the previous poster, you lost my trust and confidence.

Your example of competition cars carries no weight with me, of course youre going to make sure its right, but what about the rest of us? I know of half a dozen people who had GIAC, ALL of them have moved on to something else because they couldnt get their turbos to run as advertised.

You were a gentleman with allowing me to sell/transfer the license, as much as I appreciate that, it doesnt fix my car. I agree with the previous poster, GIAC needs to do more homework and have a tuning option at the point of sale, not after a failure.

Bottom line, dont paint a rosy picture when there are definite problems.

 

damn, now you guys speak the truth. see what happens when everyone jumps on the hype wagon. if you guys would have spoken up earlier it would have saved many a headache and agony.

wait a minute I have a jetta to tune..

 

Andrew,

I'll keep this short, since others have alot to say, and i wouldn't want to take up all your time.

Have you ever been to these runs? I'm not going to call out anyone, but please don't speak of car lengths and so on unless you see them with your own eyes. I would love for you to come out personally next time we have runs. You can see for your own eyes whats what. How about you PM your number, and I'll personally invite you.

Regarding the run you are talking about: I'm sure most people on this forum want something that is streetable. One run is great but if it won't run problemless for more than a couple days, what use is that? After you guys put the sg700 file into my car, i must of had 20+ visits to SG because of the endless problems. Not only that, after an update was released, i was also refused this update.

I'm sure most people wouldn't agree on being your guinea pigs.

 

I guess it's the old adage, "gotta pay to play" syndrome. lol..

 

You know guys there are a lot of reputable people who can give their stories both ways on this issue. The truth we all have to remember is that there are many options and MOST are good ones. You mix in a few specifics like location, packages, reputation, support, dyno #'s exc... and you just aim at where you want to be with the goals you have set to enjoy your car the best you can. We are all enthusiasts here and it's good to hear what all other experiences have been good or bad. I just think that any tuner, installer, manufacturer exc... can get great raves and bad ones too. Every one will have the mix of good/bad. Some handle it better than others. But remember there will be good/bad everywhere. I think that GIAC is another one of those companies and my personal experience has been good and supportive. Not perfect...Neither was my dentist visit you know.

Andrew just seams to be trying to point out that GIAC has done lots of research and development on the Hitachi MAF and is offering the upgrade to it's customers as are other tuners. These "other tuners" I actually happen to have personal relationships/experiences/transactions with most of and they all do have a lot to offer. None are perfect though. You also have to look at the hardware side of things. A ecu upgrade from anyone may produce 1.2 bar on most cars as designed but not on others for a number of reasons. I happened to fall into the GIAC section of the market ever since I was working for By Design years ago and had/sold many of their tunes and kits that they tuned for. They were always very busy but for me the product was great and support effort was there.

I don't want to discredit anyone's bad experience with GIAC or any other tuner, but just show more depth as a client and re-seller. Some of the guys who posted here may have had issues more complicated than software or software alone. Especially when hardware changes a bit. Sometimes a little diagnostic time will prove this.

If it is of any interest I am going to have my car (SG 700) updated to the GIAC Hitachi update and post my observations as a civilian (no longer working at The Speed Gallery). I know there have been "issues" with cars using this kit but I can be true and say mine is great track day after track day at 110 degrees at Willow Springs. So is Zulu's, MojoTT's, Mark, Steven and a few others that I stay in touch with. No more beating a dead horse but to whomever experienced otherwise, it could have been failure, hardware or install related too. I can't say for sure which combination unfortunately. Why do I say this? Most of them run good and use the same program. I hope your new ventures are satisfying and your able to enjoy your cars.

Thanks for listening.

Sam

 

hey sam, not with sg anymore?! where are you at? pm me.

 

You have mail

 

Sambo, you had a vested interest in GIAC when you worked for a seller of their product and you still have a vested interest since you have 3 cars with the tuning and since you worked for a shop that does the tuning I would expect you to have a good experience. These other guys do not seem to have that luxury.

DEEPBLUE
blown MAF's, blown turbos? and how do you break a wastegate? Did you adjust it to max or smething?

any clue as to what you believe hte problem was? Tuning, adjustments gone to far??

is the GIAC software the same as EVOMS and a few others(vivid etc)?

 

Yep, 4 mafs, I had the evoms intake with the intake waffle. There is allot controversy around the evoms intake, too much for it to be a coincidence. I dont believe this attributed to the wastegate or turbo failure. The K24 was "out of thrust" the impeller was scraping the housing, it's probably worse than it sounds.

The driver side wastegate was maxed out, simply ran out of threads, this is the side of the broken turbo. The passenger side broke at the notorious threaded bend. No idea how a metal rod could brake unless the wastegate is putting tremendous pressure on the actuator rod or the rod has a flawed design with structual fatigue by making the bend on the threads.

Here is what I was told, the broken wastegate the opposite turbo to overspin because it was trying to make up the boost difference, I dont think the GIAC program was ever "asking" for 1.2bar so as much as you adjust the W/G's, you wont get what the dme isnt asking for. (I saw .9 sustained and not much more. I did see spikes at 1.0-1.1 a couple times but that was right before everything went to hell).

Bottom line, I think the GIAC DME wasn't asking for 1.2bar, maybe a program mismatch to what was installed and environment operated. The installer had me adjusting the wastegates thinking we would eventually see 1.2 or close. I dont think the wastegate failure is a direct correlation, it just failed like many others due to faulty design (bending a threaded rod). I think being at 5000'+ altitude and 91 pump gas are variables in this, but these are supposedly taken into consideration- but I dont buy it from my experience as well as from the other previous GIAC users I have talked to.

I think what really irritated me was trying to resolve the problem, I didn't care much about blame but to get what I paid for. The installer was too passive in helping get to what was advertised and helping find a way forward, when I went to his vendors directly there were allot of finger pointing. The rest of this post would be my personal and emotional ranting so I'll just end it here.

 

There is only one way to avoid all this type of BS, If your car is a simple stage 1 or 2 car then in most cases a simple over the net flash will be more then fine.HOWEVER when you start getting into turbos ,exhaust, fuel systems, , head work ..ect ..ect.. your car must have a custom tune. I never understood some people dropping all kinds of money and leaving HP on the table, every car is different and requires fine tuning.It's beyond me when people do all kinds of work and don't spend the time or money on a dyno.Its more about HP, its how reliable the car is and how it runs in all street situations.I don't know much about GIAC and in fact i did just drive a friends GT640( GIAC) and it felt pretty good. We have all heard bad things about tuners out there, and 8 times out of 10 its the owners fault for not having the car tuned....for that given combination. I am not saying there hasn't been legitimate problems and we all know when your not taken care of how bad it feels , I am all for informing my fellow 6speeders of bad workman ship or inferior parts but its not always the " tuners fault"

 

Hey 951,

I hear you loud and clear. I just think that GIAC is willing to extend that extra needed service to make people happy. Dealers aside now.

Kilrgt, That is a well rounded post. The new level of tuning is avail with all these guys. Especially now with all these bigger turbo's and good tuners. Things are changing.

Deep blue, I read your post and see the frustration you must feel. I think that GIAC is trying to put forth more customer contact for these reasons. You just can't leave it all to the individual dealers sometimes. Even though you should be able too. I don't know were you/the car stand now. If you would like pm me with Your current status. Maybe I can lend a hand. I have seen k-24 GIAC cars make 1.2 bar. Some EVO/GIAC Hammers hit 1.3 peaks. +there were less MAF issues back then. I wish you got what you needed to get her right without people just tightening the gates so much. That sounds like it should have been diagnosed. Anyhow I love this stuff and have seen it all so feel free to throw a line.

I guess it can't be perfect. But it would be nice to see some results around here and resolve some issues if possible. I have been cruising the boards and see this see-saw all over the place with lot's of tuners, manufacturers, installers yad yada yada. That is why I try to chime in the lets give it a try theory. No matter what happened in the past for whatever reason. The good vendors I have dealt with just want to try and fix it now before misunderstandings and blame spirals even more. Again any vendor.

By the way I would take this stand no matter who it was if I believed in it.

Hope to help.

 

Let's remember one more thing guys. EVO/GIAC and Proto were the pioneers of 700+ hp on the 996TT's and the obsticles that came along with it.

Anyhow i'm heading there now to get the MAF upgrade. Let you know how it goes. I'll try to be short.