i visited Extreme Performance (in Canoga Park, CA) today to talk with them about performing the install for my L swap project and during our discussion Shawn (the owner) revealed to me that he refuses to use the XCalibrator units b/c it has "blown up several engines" in his customer's rides, specifically supercharged applications. he made a point about the availability of 91 octane on the west coast vs. 93 on the east coast and this contributes to causing engines to run lean and he's had to replace the engines on several Lightnings and mustangs as a result. Shawn offers custom tuning services at his shop but he swears by the Predator and diablo units and is emphatically against the Xcal. this came as a complete surprise to me b/c in the months and months of reviews i have read about the Xcal 2 i have never come across ANY negative information pertaining to the Xcal. after reading all the good reviews about the Xcal2 i'm not phased by his opinion and i'm certainly not going to run and trade it in for a different programmer but i was wondering if anyone else has heard about this problem or is this just an anomoly??

i know zip about tuning vehicles but i asked him "if the custom tune is done correctly how could the device possibly cause the engine to blow up?" he said it was irrelevant, the device has a poor track record of blowing up engines and many supercharger company's will not support the Xcal such as Vortech and Procharger. i've had my Xcal tune from MT loaded for about three weeks now and i am nothin' but happy with the way my 4.6 is performing. granted i don't have a blower kit installed (yet) but his comments made me think about re-using the Xcal to tune my truck post-L swap. i'm pretty confident if MT does that tune too though everything will be money

 

this post has Mike Troyer writen all over it!

i myself dont think its the tuner that blows up the engine its the tune that goes in it.. or lack of tune.

this post should be a good read after some people see it..

 

man thats no lie.......I'm gonna go hide in the corner and wait.

 

^^^^ Same here

 

Pretty funny - I'm goin back to 87 to play it safe.

What's that smell?

 

zombiemachine,

Disregard anything that tuner tells you.Thats the first I hear of that kind of marketing.Actually saying the xcal unit itself is the problem is,well,complete BS!!! The only thing that can cause those motors popping is in the tuning,(aside from any existing mechanical problems).If he ever did load a sct tune that blew up a motor,he was using a canned tune and had no ability to fine tune it for the specific application.I can say from experience that 2 years ago I had a diablo tuner try to tune my truck and he had to download 3 different tunes from the web which none worked w/ my setup.W/O datalogging the fuel trims and afr,your just shooting in the dark,or d/loading tunes from the net...
Hes obviously trying to sell what hes got.....

fwiw,frank

 

haha.....yeah i prolly opened up a can of worms with this post! well common sense tells me that it's the tune not the unit that determines whether or not an engine runs strong or blows up. to argue otherwise just doesn't seem logical IMO. he admitted that there are "tuners everywhere now" and was very skeptical about the prospect of dialing in custom tunes via email. if this is the widespread problem that he claims it is i would venture that the problem derives from where the "custom tuner" tries to load a generic or canned tune without going into the truck's specifics the way MT does. i think the fact that MT requires you to datalog and fill out those comprehensive worksheets is the primary reason we have not heard any reports of "blown up engines" from TP. anyone who has hung around this forum long enough knows that all trucks are not created equal and generic tunes just don't cut the mustard. based on what i've read here i would NEVER consider loading a "generic" tune on an L or heavily modified f150

 

that's an excellent point, i TOTALLY forgot to mention to him that my Xcal 2 is capable of datalogging! i would have to guess that he is not familiar with the Xcal 2 b/c he has used other programmers for so many years. i think if he was aware of it's full capabilities it might reverse his opinion. next time i head over there i'll bring my Xcal and a laptop so he can marvel at this majestic piece of tuning technology

-james against the machine

 

Hey zombiemachine,

Good luck w/ the 5.4 L charger swap..I dont know who your working w/ but Madenterprises(sup. vendor) knows plenty about it.And if your not willing to do the tuning yourself,M.T or Sal(another supporting vendor),will get you dun up right..

Frank

edit....boost rules

 

and I'm I complete noob concerning tuners......but I wasn't born yesterday either.

Even I know, that a flasher like X-cal only loads what the tuner tells it to load. So if an engine blows......MAN....it's the tune...not the flasher!

FOAD

 

I think it's a lot more of who is writting the tunes that go into the programmers. Anyone could come up with a horrible tune and stick it on a diablo chip, superchip, or Xcal. You can't really blame the chip, but the person who wrote the tune.

I know when I get a tune for my new truck, I'll be turning to Mike T again. I really want that Xcal2.

 

Saying the Xcal2 blew up motors is like saying the bottle touching yours lips made you drunk not the tequella you drank Its just a vessel for the crappy tune someone (who did not understand everything that he knew) loaded into a car/truck and ignorred the warning signs and through ingnorance let it blow. If these reports are even true. Something like this would have spread on the internet like wildfire. JMHO

 

thanks! i got my Factory Tech plate kit from Mr. Dunn, he's been very helpful and informative thus far. i'll be purchasing his L swap conversion kit soon too so many parts to buy and so little money.....i see a lot of taco hell and ramon noodles in my future

 

Pretty funny. Mike Troyer doesn't even need to defend the XCAL 2. Everyone here already knows better. Rock on Mike and rock on fellow XCAL 2 owners. Eatin' Hemi's and *****tin Chevys. All day long.

 

I can't say I'd trust any shop willing to make such sweeping generalizations. Just for giggles you ought to call Vortec and Procharger and see what they say about the Xcal. I'm betting they don't have any problem with it and that shop just made that up. And if they're willing to lie about that, what's next?

I'm also very wary of shops who admit to having to "replace engines" with any frequency. Makes me think that they might be the problem and not the product they are blaming.