roegs

My car is an '09 GT 5 speed without any mods other than different mufflers. I was looking at CAI / Tuner kits and happened to call Steeda about a Tuner without the CAI. I wasn’t looking for performance as much as I was looking for better drivability around town. No problem they said and I got my Tuner in just a few days. I loaded the 87 tune, and noticed that the cooling fan was quite loud and there was some pinging each time I shifted. The next day(Friday) I called Steeda and gave them a few more details about what I was looking for (better low end performance) and asked about the pinging and if the fan speed could be reduced. The customer service was fantastic and they emailed me a new tune that afternoon. They hit the nail on the head with this tune. The low end performance and around town drivability is night and day and is exactly what I was looking for. I do a lot of in town driving and the biggest gain (in this tune) for me was starting out from a red light and going through the gears. There was always an inherent stumble when starting out with the old tune. With the new one, as I let out the clutch and the rpm lowers a bit, it no longer feels like it may die. I now enjoy stopping at red lights.

My only concern now is that the fan still runs constantly on low speed once the engine gets to operating temperature. Not a big deal, but is a little annoying. Even after a freeway run (it’s about 50 degrees F here) when I exit the freeway it’s still on. The pinging is completely gone. I’ll probably give Steeda another call to see if they can bring the fan closer to the factory temp settings. I’ve read that others have manually gone into their SCT tuner and adjusted the fan temp settings. Is this something best left to Steeda, or is it reasonable to set it myself?

Nuke

Isn't fan speed a user-adjustable parameter?

roegs

I did more searches on what can be done on my SCT tuner and it looks like I can set the on temps for the fans (both high and low speed), but I cannot set the off temps.

roegs

Update approx a year later.....
I've learned that to judge a tune, you have to wait a while for the ECM adaptive learning to settle in. I also learned a few tricks that allowed me to dial in the fan temp settings. This past summer as days started warming up, my car was not running like I thought it should. I gathered some information that included data logging and asked Steeda if they could take a look at my tune. Two phone calls and 3 emails later I gave up. Their customer service (who seems to be good) told me that there was just one guy doing tunes and he was pretty busy. This is not intended to be a slam against Steeda, but I do think that updating tunes may not be high on their priority list. The nice thing about our tuners is that its easy to switch to other companies tunes for a very reasonable fee. I'm now trying a tune from one of the other companies.

sbradle4

I found Steeda's customer service in regards to their tunes to be absolutely awful. I had a Steeda tune with spark knock and it took over three weeks to get a solution from them. Over 3 weeks! I called/emailed almost every other day, and had to reach out to the rep. on this forum. The car is now running well, but if I ever mod the car further, I will look elsewhere to update the tune. I will not go through that experience again.

roegs

Interesting that you mentioned spark knock. I had a similar problem with their tunes. They provided me with an 87 octane tune and another for 91. To eliminate the spark knock, I ended up running the 87 octane tune with 91 octane fuel. I think that advanced ignition timing was a big part of the tunes I had from them as they insisted that the radiator fans run almost constantly to help keep things cool. I've had no spark knock with the new tune that I have now and the radiator fan runs the same amount as it did with the stock calibration.

tj@steeda

Hello,

We were going through a transition period with our tuners. Some of the delays were a direct result of implementing a new team member on the team ... along with other tuners.

I will be happy to have our tuners take a look at your tunes if they are still causing hick-ups.

You can reach me at tim@steeda.com.

Sbradle4, I understand your frustration & I am aware of what you went through. Let me know if I can help assist with anything further?

Best Regards,

TJ

Derf00

I can't/won't comment on any customer service related items. ALL companies will sometimes have hiccups. Steeda, AM and other sponsors here overall have top-notch products and CS, otherwise they wouldn't still exist. (Anyone remember RPM Outlet)?

Anyways, in most cases and from my experience the Pinging/Spark Knock you are experiencing is because during the summer, ambient temperatures are way warmer than any other time of the year. The advanced timing of the tune + High temps create the pinging when the ECU can't retard the timing enough to reduce/eliminate it . You should retard it manually with the hand held a couple of degrees at the 2000-4000 and 4000-6000 RPM range for the tune you use to reduce/eliminate it. Yes in some cases a dirty air filter or fuel filter can be a culprit but, that hasn't been my personal experience. Three out of four summers I've had to do that during the summer. This year is the first one I haven't and I think it's because the humidity is way higher than normal and temps aren't as high as past summers.

With respect to the fan noise. The S197 has two fan settings, a low speed and high speed setting based on temperatures of your cooling system. Some tuners will drop the temperature for the low speed so that it runs all the time. I too found this annoying and asked my tuner to return the fan temps to stock after I first got my tunes. Problem solved. Iirc, the Low factory default is somewhere between 195-205F and the high factory default is somewhere between 215-225F. Most tuners run a 190F low and 205F or 210F High.. Both are too low IMO for DD use. Annoying, noisy, and will wear out your cooling fan motor.

Anyways, that's my $0.02