Augy, what is it you are trying to do? If the tuner is the one that the seller used to tune the car there isn't anything to transfer - it is married to your car.

If you wanted to get new tunes however, then you have to buy those separately and load them to your handheld tuner. The previous owner's "tunes for life" doesn't transfer. It is only good for the same car and same owner. But you can use the tunes that were written for that car and are loaded on the tuner already without issue.

 

The seller didn't provide a lot of information on the tuner and I don't really know what is programmed into the 3 tunes that it came with. I didn't get any files or "recipe"...just that the tuner was necessary for the replacement rear end gears (shift points and speedometer..it's an automatic) and for the cold air intake.

The car has an open recall on the air bags which I have an appointment for on Monday...I had read somewhere while reading up on the tuner that you should put it back to Stock before taking the car to a dealership in case they reset it, which can unmarry or somehow disassociate the tuner and the car. I guess my main concern, having never messed with a tuner before, was going back to stock for the dealership appointment and then being able to reload the proper "tune". I was hoping I could get set up or identified as the owner of the this married car & tuner just in case something went wrong.

I found some decent info online and followed that example and was able to set the car to stock...drove it and it shifted poorly and speedometer was off. I then reloaded of of the three tunes and everything went back to correct. I guess my main concern now is that I don't know what was in the "tunes" on the tuner (if it was any more than just the CAI and rear end gear). I'm still trying to understand this technology but I was worried that if I didn't know what was in the current tune and I later add some mod that requires another tune, would I be able to capture everything. Having played with it a bit now, it looks like you can adjust quite a bit manually...including the gear ratio...so maybe my concern was unfounded.

It appears the 3 tunes are for varying levels of performance with the last letter of the tune "name" indicating Sport, Performance, or Race.

Anyway, I was mainly concerned with this unfamiliar technology and having the dealership unwittingly make the car undrive-able and not have any way of getting back. It appears that fear was mostly just ignorance but it's a bit like brain surgery on a car :-)

 

The reason things are off when you put the stock tune back in is because the stock tune isn't set up for the gears you are running. So the tune is acting like you still have the stock 3.31 or 2.73 gear. As a result, your shifts and speedometer are off.

And it is running rough because you have an aftermarket CAI that changes the air flow and requires a tune. The stock tune is looking at the data and and can't run properly with the data it is receiving.

 

Right, that makes sense to me. I did notice that I can change that (the rear end gear) with the "options" settings so it seems like the "tunes" are really just a bunch of predetermined settings, most or all of which you can manually adjust. The idle speed in drive was at 550 and the whole car would shake/rattle at a stop light...I was able to bump that up to 750 rpm and it is much, much better. I don't want to get carried away with the settings though...