Tune purchasing lockout

[GMC-2002-Dmax]

The easiest solution for this is DON'T buy tunes from someone who locks them. If enough people stick to that then either they will quit locking tunes or go out of business. In the gas world locking tunes isnt accepted by most people so there are very few shops or tuners who lock there gas tunes. For what ever the reason people seem to accept locked tunes in the diesel world all the time. Most of the biggest LSX shops and tuners in the country dont lock there tunes but and have all been in business for years but somehow if a diesel shop doesnt lock there tunes people will steal them. I have yet had a single person convince me of a valid readon to lock a tune.

You would be hard pressed to find one of us who are well known and do a large volume of emailed or bench flashed tunes not locking it down.

I lock every tune or ecm I sell, and 7 years later business is booming and I don't see myself going out of business anytime soon because I lock them. With LB7 and LLY autolocking the customer can unlock the ecm at any time with a stock file and my work is now protected from prying eyes or dabblers who want to mess up a perfectly good working tune.

People will steal them, that is a undeniable fact, there is and has always a large population of wanna be tuners who will use someone else's proven tune and try to profit from it. You have the customer who buys a tune and then shares it with his buddies thinking it's OK, well the author of that tune sold it once, if the person who bought it didn't share it then it would not be a problem.

What if the truck goes to a shop and a tech reads the tune out without anyone knowing ??? Is that theft or just "OK" in your book ???

Please don't take this as an insult, but gasser tuing is not anywhere close to diesel tuning, there are many variables that need to be addressed just for the Allison to shift properly, so since shift quality is such an important part of the tuning as well as the ability to effectively light a large single or a big set of twins many of us lock our work down to protect our 100's of hours of work.

I tuned my sons 6.0 Denali and it was not too hard to remove some of the TQ management and bump the timing a bit, hardly what I had to go through to tune a diesel.

But if you want to leave your work unlocked it's a free country, feel free to feed the wanna-be tuners your hard work or lose out on future sales because you don't want to take any precautions.

Good Luck to you,

BTW I need a tuner for a 2010 Chevy E78, how much for one.....???

[minytrker]

A gas tune takes longer to do than diesel, hands down. Making a couple changes on your sons 6.0 isn't hardly tuning a gas. A highly modified gas vehicle could take a whole day to tune for drivabilty and wot. A tune may pick up 30hp that takes hours and hours. In the gas world drivability is what separates most good tunes from bad.
I'm not a diesel guru but still have tuned a lot of duramax's all of which made more power and gained fuel economy and the customers were happy. I own a Duramax myself and messed with it for years.
The diesel world is very different than gas and probably why I never got big into them. I have rode in some with tunes from some very big name diesel on tuners, they were fast but drove horrible. Stuff that's never acceptable in the gas world is almost normal in diesel.
I go on and on and list big name shops that's are known all over US who use efi and don't lock any tunes. If locking is the awnser why don't they all do it?

[killerbee]

Is it possible that you answered your own question?

The diesel world is very different than gas and probably why I never got big into them. I have rode in some with tunes from some very big name diesel on tuners, they were fast but drove horrible. Stuff that's never acceptable in the gas world is almost normal in diesel.
I go on and on and list big name shops that's are known all over US who use efi and don't lock any tunes. If locking is the awnser why don't they all do it?

Anybody can call themselves a tuner. Being "big" is an easily performed internet magic trick.

[2007 5.9]

Creating a 800hp DAILY DRIVER FRIENDLY TUNE is as hard as it gets. I understand that gassers require time as well, and crap tuning isint accepted in the Cummins world..

Is it possible that your clientele is of a more sophisticated era and they understand the complexity and time involved with gas tuning whereas they KNOW they have NO BUSINESS messing with your tuning after you send it to them?

In the diesel crowd..majority are young kids with parents money who get them to buy anything/everything they want. So when they buy a tune from me, they get a drivable/smoke-free maxed out tune. If they get it unlocked they go in and they make it smoke (cause they thinks it's cool) post it in YouTube with the tuners name and now I see a "Smoke Tune" I NEVER created.

So I'm a bad guy from preventing this action from EVER happening with my tuning by locking it??

You have your opinion that it's a joke to lock a tune...and I have mine that it's up to the individual tuner to do as they wish, and ill keep on locking my tuning.

[dodgeram082500]

Creating a 800hp DAILY DRIVER FRIENDLY TUNE is as hard as it gets. I understand that gassers require time as well, and crap tuning isint accepted in the Cummins world..

Is it possible that your clientele is of a more sophisticated era and they understand the complexity and time involved with gas tuning whereas they KNOW they have NO BUSINESS messing with your tuning after you send it to them?

In the diesel crowd..majority are young kids with parents money who get them to buy anything/everything they want. So when they buy a tune from me, they get a drivable/smoke-free maxed out tune. If they get it unlocked they go in and they make it smoke (cause they thinks it's cool) post it in YouTube with the tuners name and now I see a "Smoke Tune" I NEVER created.

So I'm a bad guy from preventing this action from EVER happening with my tuning by locking it??

You have your opinion that it's a joke to lock a tune...and I have mine that it's up to the individual tuner to do as they wish, and ill keep on locking my tuning.

Well said....

[saintb6969]

Wow, I did not expect to start a war! but I do agree with both sides. I have tried to tune myself and found that it would take more time than what I have to really figure it out, and the pro tuners have not only the time vested but also a wider based for which to see what works and what doesn't. I have no problem paying them for that effort as long as it works, and it fits my truck unlike a box tuner. On the other hand we buy these EFI Live scanner/V2's for a reason and that is to be able to control our vehicles, we pay the $900.00 for a box that we should have full access to, but if we choose to pay someone else to tune it then they should be allowed to protect their hard work, but not lock out everything else that we as owners of the license pay for. I do not see why it would be so hard to just put in a feature to lock out certain areas without locking out the rest. If I lived around the corner from the tuner with the dyno then perhaps this would not be an issue, but as it is I am over 700 miles from him and his dyno and the turn around time to change one little thing is a pain and basically turn my V2 into a useless box tuner that I am unhappy with.

[700kenny]

Locker tunes are a waste.

[skneeland]

Wow, I did not expect to start a war! but I do agree with both sides. I have tried to tune myself and found that it would take more time than what I have to really figure it out, and the pro tuners have not only the time vested but also a wider based for which to see what works and what doesn't. I have no problem paying them for that effort as long as it works, and it fits my truck unlike a box tuner. On the other hand we buy these EFI Live scanner/V2's for a reason and that is to be able to control our vehicles, we pay the $900.00 for a box that we should have full access to, but if we choose to pay someone else to tune it then they should be allowed to protect their hard work, but not lock out everything else that we as owners of the license pay for. I do not see why it would be so hard to just put in a feature to lock out certain areas without locking out the rest. If I lived around the corner from the tuner with the dyno then perhaps this would not be an issue, but as it is I am over 700 miles from him and his dyno and the turn around time to change one little thing is a pain and basically turn my V2 into a useless box tuner that I am unhappy with.

talk to your tuner, perhaps they would be willing to provide you with an unlocked "starter" tune. if your truck is stock at the moment there is probably not alot they have changed besides smoothing some tables and adjusting some limiters.

i can see both sides of the fence. nobody wants their hard work to disappear and be given out for free, or worse, be blamed for destroying someones engine (although there is nothing stopping someone from loading their own tune, blowing an engine, then reloading the tuners locked tune and blaming that....)

Myself, i could never pay for a locked tune, my personal tunes are living, breathing, constantly evolving entities. I have no problem paying someone for their expertise however(anyone have some good experience with 6l80 and bulletproof mods? quite frankly that thing intimidates the hell out of me, lol)

I dont see a partially locked tuned solving the problem either, eventually most people are going to want to tweak the locked parameters. Basically the best thing you can do is educate yourself, read the forums, take the courses, etc. and learn to do it yourself.

*there are also plenty of people out there that are willing to help you get started on a tune, even if your tuner isnt*