Why are diagnostics so important when Remapping / Tuning anything???

Hi guys, Simon from Max Tune. So we are doing we are doing these videos of not tutorials, but they're just trying to help you guys out. Starting off in the tuning industry. If you're already in the tuning industry you know, hopefully there'll be some advice there for you as well. So, diagnostics, why is it so important and why do we mention it all the time? Well, mostly it's gonna save you a world of headache because if you know from the offset what's happening, it's rectifiable. If you guessing it makes things very difficult and it can make you look very silly. So diagnostics, well, even the big dealerships don't always know what they're doing. And don't always do what they're supposed to do or know what they're supposed to do. There's only a certain amount of computer can tell you what to do without you knowing going, mm, just cause it says that doesn't necessarily mean to say it.

Is that alright? So when you go into tune a vehicle, absolute first and foremost is drive the damn thing, drive it, find out what it feels like. If you've driven plenty your cars in the past or if you own a mechanic's, auto shop, repair, whatever, already you are going to have been driven driving vehicles. Now, I used to be able to get in a car, well, I still can. You can get in a car and you can go, oh yeah, that feels, feels tight. It feels nice that that's a nice feeling car. But a lot of the time you can get in it and go, mm, what's that? A slight hesitation, a slight miss doesn't pick up as much as it should. Excuse me. Roll a window down when you're driving it. Listen to hear the engine outside as well. You can hear b you can sometimes hear boost leaks outside.

 You can also hear exhaust leaks. You can hear clunking banging, knocking. And the last thing you wanna do is take a tune vehicle that's going to a hundred off brake horsepower down the road with a knocking bull joint. It falls out and the wheel comes off. That is not what you want. So first up, first of all, before you do anything, before you even get a tool out, the van is go right, gonna take the car for a drive. Also don't, this one's difficult because obviously there are laws in the countries, but you want to try and get it up to at least the speed limit and you don't really wanna be shy about getting it up to the speed limit. If there's an opportunity to get it up to the speed limit, you know, take it round to the red line in, in, in, in the RPM range because most people don't ever take it round to the red line.

And if it's gonna break on you round of the red line, it's stock. What's it gonna do when it's tuned? Guaranteed something mechanical will fail because it's already failed at stock. So take it round to the red line, you know, in as many gears as you possibly can. The more load you can put on the engine the more you are testing the integrity of that engine and the other parts around it. So you can be confident when you go to tune it, you come back from the test drive, nothing's changed, car drives mega feels great all the way around the rev all the way around the rev band, all the way up to the red line. It feels mega. You can be confident that before you start, you go right, okay, we starting with a tidy car. If it doesn't do that and something really doesn't feel right, people genuinely appreciate you going, right?

I've just driven the car and there's a knock here and there's a knock there and there's a little bit of a hesitation in the power band. I am a bit hesitant to tune the vehicle honestly. Not taking someone's money can be just as profitable as taking someone's money because you are building trust and you're just being honest and people appreciate honesty. In a world where people are out to pull your pants down at any minute, any time of the day, being honest will stand you apart from everybody else. So if you do go back and you find something, you go, oh, I'm not so keen on that, that's really not something. Then you can start doing a bit of investigation and this is when you pull out your diagnostics machine, plug the diagnostics machine in, do a full scan of everything. Now this is mostly to find out everything you possibly can but also to cover your back.

 Purely because people can be a pain in the backside. So there are loads of tuning companies out there that do not do your diagnostics before and after. And honestly they're shooting themselves in the foot and they're not helping the customer out at all because you will go and tune a car, you'll go away next day, customer ring up and go, ah, airbag lights on. That wasn't on before what? But if you have got a full printout of all the codes that were on the car and there's a code in there, you know, restraint module, don't know, faulty to earth, something like that, right? And you can go right, well I've got the full printout that we did yesterday, which I have already given you anyway dear. Give them the printout or send them an email. No, most diagnostic machines will make a PDF that you can send to them.

You can email to 'em. We always used to, excuse me cuz it'll make our life a billion times easier. And you can send them a PDF and if you haven't already, and you can say on there, look, there is your airbag code that was already there, that's prior to us touching it. There's the time, there's the date. You can see that it was prior to us touching it. This saves you a whirlwind headache. Now if you didn't have that, you can say, oh well it wasn't there before. It was, it was there before we touched it. And the customer doesn't know that. There's no proof that that was the case. And obviously everybody thinks that everybody's out to get them and they will try and get their money back and they will try and make your life hard. Not everybody, cuz there are some wonderful customers out there, but if you do your job properly, you won't have an aggravation. So also the diagnostic machine comes out. So take a full read of everything to cover your back and to find out exactly

What's going on. Now if there are codes in there and they're stored codes and they are current codes, then these are the things to start looking at. See, sometimes, you know, you can get cam shaft sensor a on say a nice big Mercedes camshaft sensor, a time and alignment, something like that. And what you'll go, oh, well it's a cam shaft sensor. Not necessarily, it could actually be a stretch chain on the big AMGs. The earlier AMGs, you know, they like to stretch chain and if the chain stretches that top cam is not going to be turning and not going to be in exactly the right position that the Cams shaft sensor and the ECU are expecting it to be. And therefore it throws a fault code. Also, the timing would be slightly out, so it'll be down on power, it won't feel great, but all these sorts of things you wouldn't know about unless you did diagnostics on the car first.

Now the car might drive, okay, you might not necessarily notice it because you might not have driven 75 AMGs and you don't know what they should feel like. Whereas the diagnostics machine will give you that and you're like, right, okay, probably now is the time to stop. And so, because if we are going to tune it, we are probably going to make this issue that already exists that you didn't necessarily know about worse. And that's the last thing you wanna do. You don't wanna make anything worse for somebody because they will go, well, that's your fault. Well it's not, but they'll be very, very hard to prove otherwise or to convince anybody otherwise, at the end of the day, you wanna be as clear and as transparent with everything as much as possible. And I'll guarantee you people will appreciate that a lot. Even if it's something like on a slightly over boost issue, something that can be genuinely rectified, you know, with a bit of cl a bit of cleaning around the variable veins.

A new N 75 valve that's like 15 quid. You can might have a small vacuum leak, you might have a pipe that's not the Jubilee clips just slightly worn a little bit and it's not holding it clamped on, they might be a little seal. All these things are really, really small stuff, but you wouldn't have known about it had you not done the diagnostics in the first place. And now you can fix it for minimal amount of money and then tune the car and then it's mega. So always, always, always drive the car, do diagnostics first. If there's no issues or you can't see any fault codes or there's nothing there, or there was stuff that was pending before stored and it was, you know, previous, previous codes. Just have a chat with the customer and go, look, we, we, we've seen these codes on here.

Do, do you know what happened? Oh, well yeah, no, last year this happened, this happened. And it might be that the other garage or the the other place that they've been to has not actually deleted the codes off. We see that an awful lot. They don't actually bother to delete the codes once they've fixed something or they think they've fixed something. Or it could be I don't know, I've only had the car three weeks. I mean, it could be another case of another mechanic from the previous owner's done the same. So you have to bite the bullet and go, right, okay, well just to make you aware, these were here. It doesn't look like they're current, but these were here. And I don't know because we don't know the history of the car, I'm sure it'll be fine, but I wanna make you aware and therefore the customer, so when something does happen, for example, say that code is something that hasn't been fixed previously, and then you tune it and it ends up being a problem, you say, right?

Okay, I I did say that, I don't know, nobody knows the history of the car. That was the code. This is definitely coming up now, this is definitely an issue. Might be a spark plug, might be a coil pack, might be a misfire, you know, who knows, but excuse me. The fact that you've been upfront, honest and you can show everything in the first place makes your job easier, makes life easier. And especially, you know, if, if if you, if you're a slave of ours and you ring something and go, we will always say, where's the diagnostics report? And the reason being, because it's very easy to, to, to blame your master, for example, for the, for where the file came from. Now without knowing any other information about the car, we know that what we will provide you will be the best that's possible.

And if we're unsure of anything, we'll call you and let you know. But if we confident that, that the software provider is okay no matter what happens, we will always ask you for a diagnostics report maps because then we can see what's happening and we can go, right, okay, it's actually you need to check this, this, and this. So if you're not okay with diagnostics, you're not all the way up with it. You know, in the latest modern stuff, it's okay, we can help and we will always help. But if you don't have that report in the first place, it's very, very hard. You're just guessing. Is it the tune? Is it the car? Was it the car before? Was it the, was it the tune that's made it worse? Was it the, is it the tune? Except I mean you just don't know.

So that's why if you have the report in the first place, you've got a base to work from and then we know what's happening. Are we making something worse that was already there, but underlying, or is this a new issue that's arisen because obviously you're gonna be pushing an engine slightly harder than it would've done previously. And then you have different, so it has a certain amount of tolerance. Every ECU and engine has a certain amount of tolerance before it throws a cold code up. If you are narrowing that sort of amount of tolerance, then it's more likely to throw a code if it's going to. So yeah, you've done the diag and actually it's all fine. We've tuned the car, it's all fine. You've driven it down the road, it's absolutely fine. And customers over the moon, but you have got a record. Cause I guarantee you at one, at some point a customer's g in three month time are gonna ring you up and go, oh, ever since you've remapped my car, this has happened ever since I've remapped your car. So why is it taking you three months to ring me for a star? B, we've got the diagnostics report of what we did before and what, what was after and at the point that we left your vehicle, it was perfectly okay. There's this

Because people think that once you've tuned a car, that's it. The car doesn't need maintenance anymore, doesn't need to be looked after. Spark plugs cannot fail, A coil pack cannot go wrong. Nothing in the car can go wrong. It's because you've remapped the car. All you are doing is you're covering yourself and you're enabling us to be able to help you as much as possible. So if you did have a customer that this is what I said in in another video, you know, we'll always try and help you even with the customer stuff. You know, if a customer rings you up three months later and says, oh, ever since you've remapped my car, have remapped my car, I dunno, it's got misfire. And you go, right, okay, well what, what was the diagnostics report before and afterwards chuck that to us and got nothing.

What's the diagnostic report now? So if the customer just says it's re it's misfire, you go, right, okay, well do you want me to come out and I I I I'll have a look at the diagnostics machine or can you go somewhere else and can you get that? If, if that's what you want to do. You know, and if the report comes through misfire and cylinder into one, just move the spark plugs around from one to the other. And now the misfires, I'm selling this two, but it's a spark plug, isn't it? A rema doesn't kill spark plugs unless it's really, really bad and you're burning them out. But that would've happened long before three months. And it would've happened at all four cylinders, not just one. So you know, you can cover your back and also customers when they don't understand, when people don't understand what's going on, and nor should you have to understand at the end of the day, you're a customer who's bought a car and they want it to go faster, why would you have to understand the intricacies of how the engine works?

That's your job and that's our job. Whereas if you can explain things and you can show things logically, like diagnostics reports before and after, you know, we can even show logs and things of what's happening to the car and you can move things around and you can show customers everything that you are trying to do then that will hold you in good stead and most really don't mind. Afterwards they go, oh, right, okay. It's that. Cause the moment they change a spark plug, you change all four really, if one's gone down, but it's change a spark plug and all of a sudden the car's back. Okay? Oh yeah, no, great. Yeah. Oh, oh, that's amazing. Oh, excellent, thank you, remap was it? Anyway, but we are trying to help you and, and and, and you need to help yourself by performing diagnostics and understanding the fundamentals of how an engine works as well.

As I say, as our slave, as our as an authorized dealer, we will always be there to try and help you as much as possible. A lot of our dealers are already in the trade anyway so it makes things easy. But still we'll get a phone call and go, look, we've had this customer and he, he said he's doing this, this, and this, right? Okay, what's the diagnostics report? And we can look and we can go, right, okay, it's probably a stretch timing chain. Pull the cover off and have a look. Oh, low and beholden. It's, you know, so diagnostics, this is something that's not normally talked about when people are trying to sell you stuff to do with tuning excuse me. Or if you are thinking of becoming an authorized

Dealer of a tuning company, people don't normally talk about diagnostics and that is, hmm, sometimes they don't know. Sometimes they don't care, sometimes they're not interested. They just wanna bang out some files to somebody that smashes 'em in the car and then that person just goes and takes their customer's money and never sees 'em again. If that's what you wanna do, that's not what we wanna do and we won't be like that. But there are people out there as in within the industry, there's always somebody that's after a quick buck and doesn't care. That's not us. We are not after a quick buck. We wanna build relationships, be with people, stay with them, help them as much as we physically can and your customers because they will change their car every two, three years. Now you get a thousand customers that changes their car every two, three years.

That's a lot of tuning, that's a lot of remaps. Especially if they come back to you. Cuz normally once they've done one eh, on one of their cars, the next car they get a go. It's a bit slow, isn't it? Oh, it's a bit, oh I need this remapped and I'll pick up the phone to you because you did a really good job before. Cuz they've built trust with you and they've built confidence that you know what you're doing. Now, whether you do know what you're doing and you, you are using our information that we've given you, we don't care. We'd rather you do that. We would rather you be able to go to your customer with full frank, open, honest advice and information then going, oh well no, it can't be that. I'm just going woo, that don't help anybody. So diagnostics is the key to getting tuning right from the offset. And when you do start tuning, having a diagnostics tool, I would say is essential really, if you can get hold of one, there's lots and secondhand ones, there's loads of stuff floating about. If you need some advice or you need some help choosing one. If you wanna become our dealer, let us know. So yeah, and that is why diagnostics is so important. Covering your back, informing the customer, treating their stuff with respect, and you building a good relationship and confidence with your customers. So yeah, max June, guys, we are here for you.