Silvia Club of NSW

Hi I was told/advised to go see SAS. That is the part that spun me out the most, being advised to go somewhere else to get it checked out.

Anyway, I didnt mean to open up a can of worms or anything I just felt i had to state what I experienced. Overall the unigroup and administration guys did a great job of putting all those cars through without any mishap and in the time they did.

Hi Johnny,

It is quite simple really. Jim is always so caught up in watching everything that occurs at CRD that it wouldn't be practical. While it may look as though he leaves the boys alone to do their job, he does in fact watch and supervise a lot more than people might realise. Then there is the fact that there are 100 people a day who want to talk to him on the phone and 10 cars which need tuning on the dyno. Jim would be lucky to finish on any night before 7pm, and Saturdays aren't really any better for him.

Having said that, he does take the time to explain things to people, and he has taken quite a bit of time with me and my car. He will answer any question I have, and he goes out of his way to show me stuff. However, letting me "play" on his dyno would simply be impractical for a few reasons. For starters, I don't think Jim could quite bring himself to leave me alone to experiment as I test a few things to see that I've understood everything he has told me, then there is the bigger issue of finding a suitable time to do it. The guy's a CRD basically have Jim chained to the dyno as it is. I don't think they'd be happy for him to walk around hassling everyone else up close and personal while I was testing.

In summary, Jim has told me exactly what to do to my car and when to do it. However, I am not a mechanic or tuner and would like to spend some time somewhere where I can ensure that I have understood his instructions. This will entail some playing on my part in a controlled environment ( on a dyno ), which really wouldn't be practical to do at CRD.

The last thing I want to do is play with the tune as I have no doubt whatsoever that Jim has done the right thing. Seriously Johnny, on the race-track my car is a pure animal and perfectly safe. Without doing anything to the tune parameters; I can throw my slicks on, change my pads, hop behind the wheel and it just hammers. The torque and power it has is simply awesome. I check peaks after each session and there has not been anything which leads me to think that I have anything to worry about as far as the tune goes. There have been two people who have driven it in it's current and final configuration. One was on public roads ( within the posted limits ) and the other was at Wakefield. On each occasion they needed to be prised out of the drivers seat with a crow-bar. Even then, they left finger-nail scratches on the steering wheel as they refused to let go

Anyway, Jim has given me some simple instructions on when it would be suitable to change some parameters along with how to do it. Saturday night showed me that I need to play a little bit to ensure that I understood him properly and can do it correctly when required.

Cheers, Brenton

Hi CMY0SX,



I guess Ustasa should really reply to this on behalf of Unigroup, although I have asked other tuners about this before.

It seems that it really comes down to the two operators and their individual traits. While it may seem as though the guy with his foot on the loud pedal hasn't seen or noticed the guy jumping up and down or bashing on the windscreen or even just waving his fingers, in almost every instance he has. However, the guy with his boot firmly planted into the throttle is in fact watching other things as well. The other stuff he is watching ( on the dyno screen ) is in fact telling him a lot more about the car than the bloke who is impersonating a contortionist with funny ears, while having his head stuck under your bonnet. When combined with the fact that each listener reacts differently and some are more animated than others, you really need to be able to "read" the contortinist and know how to interpret his animation. While a few of the Unigroup guy's seemed to be quite animated, I don't doubt for a moment that the operator hadn't seen him. I think it was more a case of knowing how to interpret their signals, and not being as familiar with them as their workmates are, we may have been misinterpreting them.

If anythng, I feel that the Unigroup guy's were being a little conservative dealing with cars they did not know. Not that this was a bad thing.


Cheers, Brenton

The first reason why we go to Unigroup is cos they are safe - They wont push cars very hard on the dyno unless they know that the car can handle it (tuned there) there isnt many cars that hit the rev limiter that night - other workshops seem to believe this is the way to do a 'power run'.
Second thing is their cheap - We have a special deal running with Unigroup cos we have been there many times and never have been to another workshop since the day they opened.
Third thing is the guys are very proffesional and have great facilities - parking and the like and are always willing to help out where they can - what people must understand is that due to price and time restraints they cant just spend 15mins doing a powerrun then turn around and spend another 10-15mins talking to the owner about various things when they have 40 cars lined up behind yours waiting to go on.. We didnt pay unigroup for this and we have experienced before that this does make the day WAY longer... Impatience usually overrules.

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Perhaps you guys need two types of dyno days. One for the dyno queens who don't really need much advise as they already have a fair idea what’s going on and just wish to hang out while there pride and joy is dynoed and another for the ones who need some advice after there power run as they are new to the vehicle or the vehicle is new to them. Having two separate pricing arrangements to deal with this, could help in satisfying everyone.

I was only there for 5 minutes, sorry guys I should hopefully be able to turn up to the next one and show what a Toyota can do

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I dont think the car leaning out for 2-3 seconds is that bad compared to how it has been while driving on the road for the last few days/weeks/months.

Hi Brenton, thanks for the rundown - that goes a fair way in clearing it up for me. And its good to hear that Unigroup have an emphasis on mechanical sympathy - to me thats a good thing. (Who wants a premature engine rebuild anyway?)

And l6a6w6s6 (Michael) - I agree with you on the comment about them being great blokes and seem to be very profesional too.

MYS15T: Yes I was thinking that too - ofcourse. BUT if they are setting up your boost or tuning it after mods etc.. it is good that they have good practices.

Sounds all good to me anyway.

nothing changed between the 2 runs other than the dump pipe the car is total stock boost and all. i never had the car dynoed totaly standard
but i think there was a slight increase after the exhaust.

as a side note, i havent heard good things about x-force products.. maybe its just that their dumps arent as free-flowing as they should be... u would definitly expect a bigger increase in power from a dump/front fitment..

Well I read at as he had a CES "full" system, which means turbo back, so he had a CES dump pipe.
He then relpaced this with an x-force dump and front pipe combo and did not loose any power.
What he is trying say is there was no difference between the CES and X-Force systems between turbo and CAT.

i also interpretted that post the same way as MYS15T.

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Exactly! thanks for clearing it up i didnt think it was that complicated!

Dam soo many cars pulling nice numbers. The bar has definately been raised.. Is there an offical list somewhere?

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The bar will be raised even higher as those owners that found problems, or got disappointing results, open the wallet to rectify the situation (myself included)

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