Before submitting an inquiry we ask that you read through this FAQ page to see if your questions may be answered here.
Downpipe Installs, Check Engine Light Disabling, and Emissions Related Questions:
We get tons of calls and emails regarding emissions related issues. ECS Performance can not and will not turn off your check engine light(s) or help your car pass emissions with that has deletes. Tampering with emissions devices is a federal offense. This is the same reason we will not install high flow cats, catless downpipes, external wastegates, EGR & TGV deletes, etc. If you call us and ask us to get your emissions deleted car able to pass emissions we're just going to tell you that we can install the factory emissions related components. Most tuning software available these days doesn't even allow for disabling of check engine lights or to even properly tune a car with certain deletes. *WE WILL NOT INSTALL YOUR DOWNPIPES EVEN IF IT HAS A CAT, IT'S STILL ILLEGAL*. Whether or not your state has emissions testing isn't the issue, it's federal which means it's not a state law to tamper with the emissions devices, it's a federal law. These days factory cats on most cars aren't nearly as restrictive as people think. We see cars from the factory making crazy power on factory emissions components. Instead of putting that money into a downpipe we suggest intercoolers and charge pipes for most forced induction cars. You'll get the same gains without the headaches of having check engine lights and emissions issues.
Parts Installations:
We'll happily install customer supplied parts! We prefer to supply parts when we can but we get it, we don't have everything. Just be aware that if you supply the parts and there's fitment issues or the part can't be installed and we have spent time on the car (even if we aren't able to make it work) we do still charge accordingly. If we supply the part and there's a fitment issue, that's on us. But if the intake you bring along requires a bunch of modification or turns out it can't go in but we spent time trying to make it work, you will be charged for the time spent on it.
Do we support it for tuning?:
Can we tune your car? Possibly. We try to be able to tune most cars that have a good size modding community but some cars lack the aftermarket support in both parts and tuning software. We work with Cobb, ECUtek, UpRev, HPtuners, Hondata, Ktuner, Haltec, AEM, and some others. This doesn't mean we tune every car those companies support though. For example; HPtuners supports diesels. We do not tune diesels here at ECS. If your car is supported by one of these companies and you wish to know if we offer tuning for it, shoot us an inquiry through our site.
If your car is running a standalone ECU we may be interested in tuning it so long as it comes in running and driving on some sort of base-map.
Cars we don't offer tuning support for are makes like Toyota, Hyundai, Lexus, & Kia. All of those manufacturers have notoriously difficult ECU's to unlock so most software companies don't put in the R&D into tuning support for them. They're notoriously difficult to find tuners for and we do not have any recommendations for any of them. Some of them do have options for piggybacks like a JB4 or LAP3. We can install the piggybacks but do not offer tuning on them.
"My car just needs a tune" or "My car needs a re-tune":
If your car ran properly previously and nothing has changed as far as adding or subtracting parts and now the car runs poorly, it isn't the tune. Tunes don't change. If your car ran great for the last year and then one day is running rough, a tune isn't the right way to fix it. Could we tune around the problem and make it run right? Probably. Will we? No. Because that's the wrong way to fix the issue. Something mechanically has changed and is effecting the way the car runs. We'd love to help you figure out what it is. Diagnostics is one of our specialties here. Reasons for actually needing a tune are you changed out parts that require tuning or you're just looking for some power gains. But if your car used to run well and now it doesn't, it's not the tune!
This type of call we get a lot with Subaru owners who saw their DAM drop. If your DAM drops in a way it's actually a good thing! It's your cars ECU keeping your motor safe by turning down power when it recognizes something is wrong. Most times if it drops to around the .7 range we say go through a tank of gas or two and reset the ECU. If it keeps happening lets investigate. If it drops to the .5 level there's likely something going on mechanically and not just a bad tank of gas. Yes bad gas can happen even from your normal place, especially in the winter time with the additives they put in there.
"Can you check out my tune or work with my tune from a different tuner?":
Any legitimate tuner is going to have their tune locked to their software or tuning cable and we will be unable to open it. We can't modify someone else's tune. Best we can do outside of giving you a new tune if you aren't happy with your current one is load your car on the dyno and see what the graph looks like. We don't work with other tuner's tunes though. We start from scratch with every tune we do.
Engine Swaps:
Outside of our Subaru engine swaps, ECS doesn't offer engine swaps like putting an LS into a Miata or something like that. Swaps like that are hard to be profitable on and aren't worthwhile for most shops so we opt out of them.
Adding Forced Induction to a Naturally Aspirated Car:
This one's tricky. In order to do this for most cars we'd have to mess with things like the catalytic converter(s) so we can't do it if it's a turbo kit. Installing a supercharge that bolts to the top side of the engine that is belt driven as opposed to exhaust driven means we don't need to mess with the cats. If you're looking for us to add a turbo onto your NA car it's likely a "no" because we can't fabricate or install the downpipe necessary to do it. Adding a supercharge we'll absolutely do.
