OK, I have heard the importance of a good tune, and obviously you can get some good gains...

My question is why is a good tune so expensive? $1,000+ for a computer download to reflash the chip? i would think this would be a $19.95 special, so maybe I'm missing something.

Anyone care to advise on WHY this is a good investment?

 

19.95 for the download, 1800$ for the knowledge of the person writing the files.

 

Send me 19.95 I'll tune your car. It might blow up, it might not. It might be fast or it might be faster than what you have now.
Any thing can be done for the price you are willing to pay

 

Ok..now this is funny...sorry...

 

are you serious ? LOL how bout the time they spent on this R&D ...etc

 

Because of all of the above AND Because its a Porsche ..LOL..

 

I have a $19.95 special this holiday - ECU tune, exhaust, header and turbo upgrade.

Here's a snapshot of my R&D:

 

That's funny as hell! :-)

 

LOL

I see your point though, the 996T has been around for over 10 years now, the work involved in creating the tuning files was done long ago, but the prices are still way up there. I happen to have extensive tuning experience with a variety of cars and ECU's, and some standalone ECU setups. But even though I feel confident I could raise the rev limiter, up the boost settings, and tweak the timing... I don't have any of the tools that would allow me to reprogram the ECU in my car. Those tools are probably pretty damn expensive to obtain. Consider how much a Durametric costs, and that's just a cable and some software that doesn't have the ability to do these things.

 

Well...it's likely that the tunes back in 2001-2002 cost $3k-$4k, so $1200-$1500 is a bargain now...and the software to tune these ECU's is between $10k and $20k...

 

Tuning any Motronic ECU is expensive because you don't just simply hook up a program and cllick and drag fuel and boost curves. Anybody getting into modifying Motronic ECU programs are doing it with almost zero information or support on the files or definitions. When you hook into these files they aren't labeled as "fuel map" or "boost map" like some of the piggyback ECUs in the japanese market are. Right now you can download a program to be able to modify your maps for free and mess with it. If you want to buy what you need to be able to decode these it would be 10s of thousands of dollars per car. Or you can do what many people would have to do and dedicate a year to manually decoding the tables. And that will help you that one car alone. The motronic ECU has more than just one fuel and boost table to consider when tweeking. And some of those tables are merely adjust a voltage or duty cycle to a valve to adjust things like boost and fuel. No guide to tell you what duty cycle equals 1.1 bar of boost. And no info on whether that boost map is the one for normal boost or boost intervention for lean conditions and such. That is alot of info to have to consider. Well consider that time you are paying for with a tuner to give you a product that already works and is proven. Some tunes take years to be able to recoup research costs on before you are making 100% profit. So $19.95 for a tune? Why not. It is only a $20k engine.

 

i agree with some of your post. take the m/b amg engine. ecu is vin coded and encrypted in german. so to tune it first you must be able to read in german. then crack the encryptions. then be proficient in tuning fuel and timing maps. when the tunes first came out they were in the 1500$ range. now they are in the 500$ range.
btw the cost of a new amg engine for a 3.2 litre v6 with a s/c is 36,000$

 

Their is a huge difference between a $500 tune and $19.95. It all comes down to market value of the tune and how quickly you can recoupe the cost of developement.

 

Another question to ask is if you were a businessman and had people knocking down your door to pay $1200 for a tune why would you drop the price $500? That is almost as silly as a getting a $2000 paycheck and telling them your work is only worth $1000 and giving them the rest back.

 

let me be clear . i think 19.95 for a tune is an absurd price. its just as absurd as the 1800$ price i just paid for my tune on a 10 yr old car. the recoup was done yrs ago. if it takes 10 yrs to recoup the r&d for a tuner they would have went out of buisness long ago.