Dynotronics Review and Hard Lesson Learned

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scottie350

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2010 mazda 3 gt 2.5l
Hey guys new to this forum but on mazda forums around the web, thought as my first post, and since there is very few of them, id give my review of my recently ended dynotronics experience.

So as of the last couple days after finalizing my decision, and getting my information in order, ive decided I should share this experience with others, so this doesn't happen to someone again.

I started tuning with dynotronics back in December 2014. I like others was stoked about this. I had heard good things, albeit I also heard bad things, but at the time I didn't know there were other mazda tuners out there for me to look into and compare.

Everything started off good, got my order in a decent amount of time, transaction went smooth. **** ya right? So going over the instructions, everything seemed good, pretty straight forward. I stuck to the instructions and god the ball rolling. SWEET!

I got my base tune back after doing the procedure, minimal muss, minimal fuss. ok "seems good". So from December 3/2014, till January 15/2015 ive had 5 adjustments including my base file. Over the course of these adjustments, I noticed a slight bit of difference, but not a whole lot, and nowhere near what I was expecting. Eventually I started feeling and hearing things that didn't seem right, but figured this was part of the adjustments. For awhile....

Eventually I started REALLY listening to my car, my shifts, my transitions, my engine through the RPM, until I got right under the hood listening to the engine, and hearing the exhaust. Knock, knock is what I could hear. Checking my engine oil, my oil was expecially dark (I Run a full synthetic oil, and my oil has always been commented as "practically still new, and clear" when I get it changed at service time. MORE FLAGS.

So from there I started going over my recent logs, to my utter horror, I noticed that my knock retard on my last 3rd gear WOT pull was knocking HARD the entire way through the pull. 2.58* to be exact. Digging into my logs more, EVERY SINGLE log was like that from day one. Getting progressively more worse with each adjustment. The timing being advanced further and further. (Ive attached a copy of my knock retard logs for every adjustment as well as my stock map knock retard log, youll notice it runs at 0* knock, with 2 minor fluxes which peaked at 0.318*, which is like I hit a small bump) This is a HUGE difference from 2.58*

In my research after seeing this, I have found out, that anything over 2* is VERY bad, the cars ECU also turns on its safety measures at 2.8* to try and protect itself. At the levels I was running, a thing called "peppering" can occur, which is scoring of the cylinder walls due to the piston literally being vaporized. I

I got ahold of dynotronics Immediately, to ask what octane they were trying to tune me for. To my horror again, they were tuning for 91-93 octane. Now when this was all started, there was never a question, mention, or anything of the sort of what octane I wanted to run. I assumed that they were just going to fine tune the 87 octane map since nothing was mentioned, I figured that was fine, as id later get a higher octane map made. They told me that as per the instructions, it says they generally tune for 91 octane, and that the instructions say to let them know what octane I wanted to run.

they also added that "BTW, not sure if I made it clear before; 2-3 deg at full load is not desireable on an atmo engine, however at this stage( sensor adjustments), its not something that would make us pick up the phone and tell you to back off. Factory calibration limits are set at 2.8-3.2 deg BEFORE the ecu logic decides to switch tables"

OK WAIT- hitting knock that hard, and also within .2* of factory safety limits is deemed safe in Dynotronics eyes? REALLY??

Being as I printed off the instructions AND have every single email from day one. I went over both their drop box files that they sent me(I will attach these instructions with this review), there is ZERO mention of anything of the sort in ANY email, or in ANY of the instructions about letting them know what octane to run, and that they recommend to run 91 octane. When I told them this, they replied, and I quote:

"and what I said was, I thought you got the new (updated) version of the instructions, it appears that is not the case."

Through further questioning, the response that really did it for me was and I quote "Scott, to be honest with you, I had only taken a glance at your last data when it came in. It was on the sheet to do, but we have been a bit preoccupied with the issues over or files being read/ or not read as the case may be. Call it me having my head up my ass.

You have my apologies for not snapping to it right away, my bad."

For starters, not only am I talking about MY LAST adjustment, this was EVERY SINGLE ADJUSTMENT. and rather than them addressing the issue of progressively more and more knock, rather than backing off the timeing, and maybe asking "hey whats octane are you running, or maybe try a different gas station, I think u may have bad gas ect", NO they CONTINUED to advance the timeing FURTHER.

From the same email:
"Again, my apologies for dropping the ball.................. "

Yes, your dropping the ball over the course of 5 adjustments, could've cost me an engine if it wasn't winter and colder weather, Im actually shocked that I haven't fried my rings. (my car is going in immediately to have compression tests and stethoscope tests done, so this could actually have happened)

Id like to note that I also got ahold of Moto-East, since they do mazda tuning, to inquire what they consider safe levels of knock, without giving a lot of detail of the situation, or who was doing my tuning. They concurred that 2.58* would mean the timing was way too far advanced, and to compare, they tune their 2.5 Miata swaps as well as all their others(closest application that they tune to what mine is) to )0* of knock. ZERO*

I have since reverted my car back to stock file, and THANK god on the most resent adjustments, ive hardly driven my car. HOPEFULLY there is no significant damage to my internals. With this experience, the "ball was completely dropped" where they not only didn't inquire on what octane I wanted to, and planned to run, didn't for those who may not know any better, instruct that this was at all needed, and further failed to catch it during tuning, and rather than safely back it off and begin to question the increased knocking, they advanced the timing further, closer to that of 93 octane mapping.

Again, I have attached copies of my Dynotronics knock retard logs from beginning to when I ended it, I included my most recent stock map log to compare. i have decided not to post copies of the emails just yet, or the instructions, BUT i have them on hand and will create a drop box for anyone who wants to challenge my account and needs proof of everything i have written here.

With not only this, but other really bad situations that people are coming forward with, I'd honestly urge people to look elsewhere for their Mazda tuning.
 

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What a nightmare! Hopefully, your engine hasn't been damaged.
 
As I told you before, we did drop the ball on this. BUT, what you keep referring to as "high knock" is in fact not at all.

The kr threshold in the 2.5 is set in several 2 d tables to tell the ecu when to switch from low det tables to high det tables. To aid the understanding of what the factory thinks "high" det(kr) is one should look close at the way that table is set from the factory. On the 2.5 it is set at 5.7 deg at 1000 rpm and decreases to 3.18 at 6500.

So as you can see your claim of 2.58 deg being extreme is a bit out in left field.

But we should have caught the trend and corrected it while we were working on correcting the load. That is our fault.

However, in general we don,t have customers come to us with a car they want to tune that do not have the very basic understanding that in the least they should not try to run cheap, low octane fuel in a car that has been adjusted.

Since this issue came up we have gone back and re re written our instruction manuals to make them more specific about fuel grade and the tuned engine. In all honestly, we never had this happen before, and it never crossed our minds that we needed to tell the customer what fuel was a minimum. Since most cars come from the factory with a correct calibration based on the lowest grade of fuel, we assumed (incorrectly it would appear) that the consumer would be sharp enough to know also, and that a higher output would require higher octane fuel.

You also failed to mention that during our email conversations we told you that we were more than sure you were not going to find any issues after " having my engine checked out" but if there were for any reason, issues related to kr specifically, Dynotronics would stand the cost of the repairs for you.

As they say " assumption is the mother of all fu*k ups" ; we assumed you understood that tuning required a higher octane fuel be used to get more power, and you assumed we would do nothing more than tune your car for 87 octane. Bad move on both parts.kr threshold.png
 
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As a former Corvette owner (2001), I recall that many other owners would have their cars dyno-tuned after installing higher-flowing intake and exhaust systems. Corvettes come from the factory with premium fuel (91 octane, I believe), and since most owners didn't wish to buy octane booster, tuning was almost always done using the same octane gas. I agree that tuners should never assume octane levels of fuel that is in the cars they are tuning.
 
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