Riffnugget wrote:Hey guys... just recently registered here on the forum. Real nice community!
Welcome aboard!
Riffnugget wrote:Anyway, so I bought my 2007 MY07 Liberty GT Spec B automatic last week, and I've been told by other members to 'talk to Matt at Kido tuning' to get a tune.
Now, I know absolutely nothing when it comes to tuning, all I know is that it can be recieved via email, and it can improve economy and power etc.
Congrats and yes, the sorcery you have heard about is indeed true.
Riffnugget wrote:
So I have a couple of questions, how difficult is it to perform?
Not hard at all. You get a Tactrix cable to read/write the ROM file via a laptop. You send that ROM file via email to the tuner. He makes modifications to it using a ROM editor, sends you back a tweaked version which you load (flash) back to the car, go do a test drive and use your laptop to take some logs of critical elements of the car, send the logs back to the tuner who reviews them and then makes further tweaks to the ROM and sends it back to you for more logging.
Lather, rinse repeat until the tuner is happy with the technical side of it and that you as the customer is happy with how the car is behaving and driving in general. The process could take days or weeks.
Riffnugget wrote:I do consider myself tech savvy, but I haven't done anything like this before.
It's ridiculously easy. If you've flashed a phone before, this is even easier, You are going to turn your car into a glorified USB device.
Riffnugget wrote:Is there a possibility of something going wrong? Could I ruin something doing this? Is it dangerous at all?
Yes, yes and yes, but this is why you get a professional tuner to do it. His job is to find the upper limits of the engine and then adjust the tune down slightly so that you stay just under the danger threshold. Each car is slightly different - no two tunes are 100% the same (unless you buy a generic tune which is safe for all cars, but will never achieve maximum performance).
Riffnugget wrote:And how much will this cost?
This varies between tuners and also by how much work needs to be done. Including the fuel you will use (because you will be doing a lot of third-gear runs to get the log data), I would budget for $1K, possibly more if you are getting multiple maps done for S, S# modes, etc. Your final tune cost may well come under that figure if the tuner already has a pre-tuned base map that works well for all GTB's and then it's simply fine-tuned for your car.
You have several options for tuners. KiDo's one of them but there's also XRT and others as well (both of whom have their own sub-forums here - check them out). They all do great work.
Note that if you do hardware mods later, you should get your tune re-adjusted to get the most out of those mods. Consider doing the hardware mods first and THEN do the tune, unless you're wanting to explore the exact before and after effect of each mod as you go.
I was going to procrastinate, but I put it off...