Quote Originally Posted by Shawn
Im not trying to talk smack, I know Scotty tunes a lot of cars(he does, not you). But tuners make a name for themselves but doing great things and pushing the envelope. If you wanna play it safe you'll never make it anywhere. I hate to say this, but i know scotty plays it very safe, all the cars i have seen him tune run rich as shit and the rears of the cars are black as hell.
true, tuners can make a good name for themselves pushing the envelope, but also make a bad name for popping engines on the dyno. i push as far as the customer wants to go. if they ask my opinion i'll give it to them. a lot of time they say they want to daily drive and want it reliable and i make those recommendations and be conservative. however, if they say that's ok and want want to push it xx far because they heard on the internet someone made xx power i'll do it as long as they know that it might not end as happily for them.

what afr do i tune at? not as rich as your statement implies. how much more power does a n/a car make at 13.0 vs 14.0 wot? how about a boosted one at 11psi or less between 11.5 and 12.5? the reality is not very much. fuel is used as a thermal barrier to help prevent detonation and increase the reliablility of the motor in these instances. any boosted car will have a sooty bumper whether it's tuned at 13.0 (insane) or 11.5 (not that i tune all of them that rich).

aggressiveness comes from timing. you stop adding timing when the addition of timing stops increasing power or detonation occurs. luckily many honda motors have a nice buffer zone where power increases slow/stop before detonation begins, unless you are being "aggressive" on your afr and lose that buffer. race gas is the other magic bullet to help push it when you really push the boost up and cylinder pressures get extreme to not follow this rule.

when it's all said and done i have to answer to each and every customer i tune and also answer to shops that refer me those customers. i'm not going to take advantage of them for the chance to "make a name for myself". my goal is to give a good tune and service to each car and customer. if that makes me conservative then i'm guilty.