Does the pcm have a counter that will only allow "X" amount of accesses ie several reprograming of the pcm will it lock you out if its exceded? does the ppc tuner do anything to the trans for inproving shift quality? who makes a performance gear set & torque converter? How detuned is the auto from the manual cars? I drove several of both and they all acted differently. 1st 5spd 16lbs of boost almost all of the time. 2nd auto finance rollback 2k miles 8lbs in 1st gear just before shift it went to 18lbs during shift pushed to 21 lbs the same for 3rd & 4th gear. 3rd auto new 14- 16 lbs of boost just before red line up to 18-20lbs then back to 14-16 lbs repeated for the other gears. 4 another auto car in showroom 6 hours before i took it home only 2 miles on the clock this one was the proper color blue 14-16 lbs of boost in 1st then just before shift point up to 18-20 lbs it would shift and then repeats for the other gears. According to PPC the dino run they did it shows in stock forum m5 trans the 160HP run at 55 mph in 2nd gear, so they want us to believe that with a m5 spd car you are loosing 100hp to the wheels I dont think that is proper reporting on their findings. With a manual trans hp & tqe loss is only about 15-17% autos aprox 20-28% given the fact that were talking normal opperation of the trans. Is the PPC tuner safe or is it pushing the limit of the motor and trans. I have a duramax diesel and i am very familiar with turbo boosted vehicles it makes 700hp and 996ftlbs of torque SAFELY after the stage 5 tranny fix. all day long pullin ski boat toy hauler no mater what..... it was SAFE so does anybody have any real data for me and not just I read this or so and so said this I'm looking for real black & white data!!!

 

ttt

 

There isn't enough data or support from the tuning community to completely answer your questions. PPC is the only company that offers a tune at this point, but only for the M5's. HP Tuners supports the PCM, but not enough yet to do anything useful.

Concerning performance duty A4 transmission parts, I haven't seen any available yet.

The auto is detuned from 260 lb/ft of torque to 222 lb/ft because the A4 transmission is only designed for 222 lb/ft max. GM Powertrain states the A4 is HP limited only in 1st and 2nd gears.

GM Powertrain SAE J1349 A4 dyno graph:


GM Powertrain SAE J1349 M5 dyno graph:

 

The "street info" I've seen is that the ECM has a rolling logger for flash _dates_. That is, every time the ECM gets flashed, a timestamp is logged. When you get to the 11th timestamp, it rolls over and writes on top of the first one in the log. It does NOT log any specific info on what was changed in the flash process.

Again... street info I've picked up here and there. I do NOT vouch for the accuracy of the info.

 

cool the info is good and I understand the SS is new to the tuning world my duramax diesel tuner was over a grand so the PPC is right in line for the first to hit the market I'll wait 6 months before any power upgrades that is if the wife does not mind Also gives others a chance to address the issues that may arise from the PPC and hopefully the HP tuner people to get there stuff togeather. I dont want to a full blown on the tune just enough to scare the crap out of most of the mustang & wrx drivers ... I still want to get 200K trouble free. miles on the thing

 

HP limited in 1st & 2nd gear so that means I can tune to push more power in 3rd & 4th What else do you know about the SS with the a4

 

That's not street info, that is a fact. We can see the last 10 programming events with dates and program numbers. We also check the GMVIS for warranty history to see what dealer programmed the PCM and when it was done. If it doesn't add up or if it is a non GM program, warranty may be denied.

 

So what do the dealers program in the pcm can they make changes like firming transmission shifts increase boost things of that nature. Ive driven several autos and m5 they all had there differences when it came to power boost and feel.

 

Nothing outside of factory flash updates. There is no "open box" for the dealer to mod tunes. They get a full flash binary from GM that includes fixes/updates. There are no factory flashes that firm transmission shifts or increase boost unless those issues are explicitly to address either field issues or marketing-driven changes (like the Cobalt-SC "Stage 1" tune).