Good reliable tuning shop for 2jz

[Artemy]

I'll most likely be picking up a car with a SC300 with a 2jz NA-T in it and the guy says it needs to be tuned. I was wondering what shops around the DE,PA,South Jersey, MD area are good and reliable to go to for a 2jz tune

[DB Dude]

I believe First State Motorsports (iirc) in Delaware has a good reputation for 2jz tuning. If its not called that, its something else similar.

[marshallpre1]

Are you picking up the one in NYC?

[tjmhillz]

FSM is located in Delaware and the owner Dan is one cool guy. Hes also on the forums under Dan@FSM. Also what ems/piggyback is currently in the car? That would also help narrow down a tuner as well. Theres Mo at Swift Racing in Maryland. He is awesome with tuning and building 2jzs. He actually has a 7sec IS300 and has built plenty and tuned plenty of IS300 and so on.

[TalonTsi97]

What EMS is in the car?

[saxon]

john @ j_k_tuning just tuned a supra for 900whp at low boost

his email is john@j-k-tuning.com and he is located in carlisle pa

[Artemy]

Are you picking up the one in NYC?

no, i saw that one on CL. the white one? its not that car.

FSM is located in Delaware and the owner Dan is one cool guy. Hes also on the forums under Dan@FSM. Also what ems/piggyback is currently in the car? That would also help narrow down a tuner as well. Theres Mo at Swift Racing in Maryland. He is awesome with tuning and building 2jzs. He actually has a 7sec IS300 and has built plenty and tuned plenty of IS300 and so on.

I'm not sure who I talked to but I gave them a call before I went to work today and spoke with the guy. seemed like a really cool guy and willing to work with the car. it has MAF Translator Pro on it and Tunerpro RT tuning software. I've never heard of it and neither has the guy I spoke with on the phone. He said he is willing to take a look at it though and see what he can do. I think I just need to get a full standalone ECU... but that also can't happen till the finances are there lol

[marshallpre1]

Oh ok, I was looking at a black one actually... dunno if i should pull the trigger or not... I also like empera's..

Good luck! What about PFSupercars?

[Artemy]

As long as you don't pull the trigger for the car I'm looking at, it'll be fine with me. I'm going to check it out on Monday so hopefully all goes well. I'll try to give PFsupercars a call and see what they say.

[Nick 95 6sp]

Dan at First State Motorsports is a great guy and you can't go wrong dealing with them.

The guy who has done a lot of fabrication and tuning on my car is Rick aka DEFIV and his shop is in Doylestown, PA; see below. I really appreciate the fact that he's intimately familiar with all Supras for many many years and he's an anal perfectionist, which is what I want working on my car if I'm not doing it myself. If you mention my name when you call I might get a free doughnut out of it next time I'm up there.

Neither of the shops above have dyno's on-site so they use nearby dyno facilities to tune, or street tuning if appropriate.

Rick is:

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g292/nickjt/HKS%20Twin%20project/DEFIV2.jpg

Having said all that, when I had my first single turbo setup running off the stock ECU with the MAPECU piggyback, Vince at RT Tuning tuned that for me and it ran flawlessly. They have their own dyno facilities right in house. They are in Lansdale, PA and a sponsoring vendor here. I hope he might also favor me with a doughnut.

[Artemy]

thanks for the information! I guess I'll just have to give a couple places a call around and see what they say about it. I'm just worried that I'll have to get a full standalone, which I don't have the money for right now because it's got an hx40 turbo on it (turbo off a cummins) so it'll be pushing a lot of air

[90blacktsiawd]

I was talking with that guy about his car for a while and eventually decided that it wasn't for me. He didn't have receipts for a lot of stuff and some of his knowledge was seriously lacking. According to him he's been driving around with no tune on i believe 750cc injectors and claiming that it's "not a problem" and then didn't know how the car was metering air other than it didn't have a mas. He picked it up off the original builder and basically just drove it as is for a bit and now it's been on craigslist for maybe 5-6 months or something. Guys name is Brijesh or something like that right? He offered up the car for 4k about a month ago to me.

If you can get it up and running cheap it's probably a good deal. But that car looked like a basket case to me. I'd start getting ready for some headaches if your gonna tow that thing home.

O and i spoke to someone at RT Tuning about the car when i was looking at it. They said in order to get it tuned properly i'd either have to go full standalone or get a jdm supra or soarer (forget which) ecu so that it could do map based tuning. Contact Erik over @ RT and he can tell you the same info he told me.

[Artemy]

yeah that is the same car. The car has 550cc injectors installed in it but he's including the 750cc injectors in the sale. he said the car has been tuned before but they upgraded to a bigger turbo and that threw the tune off. It seems as though the guy just can't afford to drive the car, get it tuned, do the maintenance it needs, which is why he's just selling it. The car isn't even tagged or registered right now so i know he hasn't been driving it which is a good thing since its not tuned. If it is possible to get it tuned then it'll be a great deal for the price, IMO. Even if I had the time to part it out I'd easily see a profit from that. I'm going down there with a friend tonight to check the car out so hopefully it all goes well

[90blacktsiawd]

I had tons of questions for the guy that he just couldnt answer in terms of what parts were on it etc and he just had no clue what was going on with it. He has the mod list from the previous owner but thats about it. It did seem as though he just couldnt afford the car. But digging through someone elses 2nd hand mess to try and figure out what was going on just didnt appeal to me with how vague the guy was about the car. He said it was a gte bottom end with a ge head i do recall that.

And he absolutely said he put a few hundred miles on it and that it pulls like a beast. The fact that it has no tune on much larger than stock injectors and beat on it was the final thing that drove me away. When you go id be sure to do a compression test on it to make sure nothings damaged down there.

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[Artemy]

Yeah I'm most definitely doing a compression test on it to make sure everything is still in good condition in the bottom end. As long as everything is basically in tact and built right with good compression, it should be fine. I also talked to Erik at RT Tuning and he said that they'll be able to tune it. Seemed like a really nice, cool guy and willing to work with the program and the car. It all just depends on how the car really turns out to be when I go down to see it tonight

[90blacktsiawd]

How'd everything turn out?

[Artemy]

basically, the car was in a lot worse condition then described in the ad and by the guy. It can be a nice car with some work put into it but it is most definitely not worth $4000 in the condition it is in. I didn't get a chance to do a compression test because the car was not close to worth what he was asking and he didn't want to go down on the price and his brother was waiting on us to be done so he could go run some errands so we kinda just left after looking at it for a little. I made him an offer on the car and I'm just waiting to hear back from him if he wants to accept it or not. It will definitely be a project but once its complete i have a feeling it will be a very nice car. I'm firm on my offer I made him and I think he knows that he's not going to get $4k for it. If I do end up picking it up I'll be making a build thread for it as I start to fix it up

EDIT: and if he does end up accepting the offer I'll be going down on Sunday to do the compression test and drive it while the actual owner is there

[90blacktsiawd]

I had a feeling that the car wasnt what he was claiming it to be. It just looked pretty ragged in the pics he sent. That combined with his lack of knowledge about that car, his openly admitting to driving it around untuned and how pushy/desperate he acted about getting me to drive the 3 hours to come buy it just didnt give me a good feeling about it. I mean he openly stated several times that he had driven it a couple hundred miles the way it sat and the turbo spooled hard and pulled like a beast didnt make it sound like it was well taken care of.

If you dont mind, how much did you offer him? I think it started up around 6500 or maybe it was 5500. Either way he dropped the price twice for me.

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[Artemy]

well he said he'll let me know later tonight if he wants to take the offer so once I know the results, I'll be willing to put it out on the internet.

When did you talk to the guy about buying the car? because I found a thread on a website with this car for sale and it said it was sold on March 5th 2012

[90blacktsiawd]

I was talking to him around the end of march through the end of april.

[Artemy]

So i guess he bought the car in the beginning of march? Idk this is all a little confusing. I forgot to get the VIN off the car when I was down there so hopefully he'll give me the VIN tonight when he calls back so I can look up the car history.

[90blacktsiawd]

I deleted the beginging of our text conversation as someone was supposedly buying it. Maybe that was the begining of march. He came back to me early april saying he still had the car if i was interested and hed dropped the price. I dont believe he ever gave me the vin to look into.

Was the body in good shape? I think it had a lot of miles on it. The paint was obviously beat from the pics but i didnt get to see it in person. If you want to pm me your number id be glad to forward on what i have left of our text convo for you to go over. Or maybe i can find a way to save it to word or somethin.

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[Artemy]

well in the pics i saw the paint on the car looked fine. He didn't send me any more pics of the car besides the ones in the ad (my mistake for not asking) and i think the body has about 192k on it. I'm really considering getting this car. I'm going back down on Sunday to do the compression test, drive it, and talk to the owner about it. It would be a great project to work on and can be turned into a really nice car. I didn't see any rust on the body though, it just looked like it needed paint. I couldn't really see under the car too well though.

[Artemy]

So I went down there again today and did the compression test and all the numbers were between 145 and 150 psi in every cylinder. The guy also drove it out for me and went through every gear and there were no strange grinds or noises. To get the car mechanically running right it basically just needs an intake manifold gasket, tune, and alignment. After that it's all cosmetics that need to be done. I think I'm going to go for this project and hope for the best.