LS1 Life

Who has recommendations for some great tuners here in arizona.
Anyone help? Gonna be needin a tune in a little, proly along with a few other people.
Suggestions? Feedback on tuners? Ratings?

Ruckus46Gt

iTrader: (9)

nicd is the man for tuning hands down. Shoot him an email
nicdtuning@gmail.com

everyone will reply with the same answer just for the heads up and to save you time

LS1 Life

I was hopin not...
I've heard a lot of speculation about Nick...
Not sure if they are rumors or not, never really talked to him before.

96AZHAWK

iTrader: (19)

Where in AZ are you located?

Let's see... there's NicD, there's... NicD, and then there's... Nic...D.

Have not heard nor experienced anyone that is better at tuning here in AZ.

chellzers

iTrader: (9)

he told my boyfriend 300 dollars for a tune... seems a little steep to me.

96AZHAWK

iTrader: (19)

Rumors like what? You should either talk to him to see what kind of vibe you get for yourself. Dude is always very busy, sometimes too busy to work in a tune on short notice. I have heard that some people have not liked his advice or taken it more as criticism, but it is coming from a guy that sees the end result of multiple combinations of mods on a daily basis, moreso even than any one performance shop around here. I'm sure there is someone else out there that can tune the car, but I have not heard of anyone else doing it. I know that Top Gear Motorsports works closely with Brian Herter of pcmforless, so maybe that is another option of getting a mail orderish tune and having TGMS load it on your PCM.

Ruckus46Gt

iTrader: (9)

yea 300 for a tune isnt bad at all. My stang to get tuned was 550, my friends camaro ran him 500, The cheapest i've seen an ls1 tune for was 250 and that was for bare min tune, car had exhaust thats it and that was a military discount from a shop back on the east coast. My car picked up a good chunk in the 1/4 after my tune from nicd, and have had no issues at all. You should have no worries with a tune from nic, I'm sure you might even have a few cali guys chime in cause I've seen a few people drive in to get tuned

LS1 Life

I've gotten multiple reasons not to use him and lots of reasons to use him.

Ive gotten the story that he wont tune anyone that can beat his car.
He falsely tunes vehicles, if he doesnt like the people in general.
He cant tune forced induction vehicles worth beans.
His prices are too high, hes full of S..t, and a cocky guy.

He's the best!
He'll take care of your for the right price.
Made this car that car push another 30rwhp....
He's cool, sarcastic, chill....

Im not tryin to blow smoke into anyones throats but im lookin for help.
The people that i hear all this from are from people on alot of different forums and a few people i know.

96AZHAWK

iTrader: (19)

Thunder Racing has a custom mail order tune at $450, CMS in Cali seems to be $350+, PCMforless is $250 plus shipping for mail order. So I don't see that $300 is all that bad for a full dyno tune including part and full throttle tuning?

Ruckus46Gt

iTrader: (9)

lol i got a laugh, look above as far as prices go and end there. His car flat out moves and is a turbo car so there goes the idea about not being able to tune forced induction cars. I will say this you cant please everyone and people will bring junk. I've seen someone bring a car with crushed exhaust (ran over a parking divider and brought it for him to tune and well you cant expect a miracle in that sense. So basically i'm saying look into the full story not into a half *** painted picture

96AZHAWK

iTrader: (19)

Cool, here is my personal experience based on multiple cars being tuned by him and I'll comment on each of your comments and I'll leave it up to you or others to chime in:

Ive gotten the story that he wont tune anyone that can beat his car... (His car is possibly capable of 9's at this point so I don't know who could beat his car and I have no idea if this is true. My cars only run 12's and 14's so I am not a threat I guess. )

He falsely tunes vehicles, if he doesnt like the people in general.
(Who knows, possibly if you rub someone the wrong way? Much like pissing your waitress off at a restaurant.)

He cant tune forced induction vehicles worth beans. (I've seen and heard of many forced induction cars that he has tuned perform well at the track.)

His prices are too high (not really, compare to whom?), hes full of S..t (maybe he was constipated at the time), and a cocky guy (I agree he came off a bit cocky when I first met him, but so do a lot of people who know their stuff and have folks question them all the time).

He's the best! (At tuning, locally... probably)
He'll take care of your for the right price. ($300, not too bad)
Made this car that car push another 30rwhp.... (no idea, different dyno, who knows)
He's cool, sarcastic, chill....

Braunbeck

iTrader: (4)

I bet I could tell you who said that **** also, don't ****** by into that bullshit. If you have the setup and it will take it he'll tune that bitch for as much as it will put out, whether it will be faster then his ride, that's ****** crazy to say that ****.

Soul TKR

iTrader: (4)

I've heard other shops on here comment that NicD does good work as well... If I didn't have all my work done by CMS i'd probably go to NicD...

Dabeztz28

iTrader: (27)

YOu cant even get a hypercrap for that. 300 dlls its cheap! Keep in mind he has to pay like $100+ to register the vehicle, pay for dyno time, and what ever is left over he gets as profit. That a good price for a bolton car.

NicD is probably the best and most well know tuners in Arizona. He is only human so offcourse there always someone that isnt satisfied or likes to hate. No one can satisfy EVERYONE (Unless its me and your reffering to females). Theres also a couple of less know tuners around, i only know people in tucson.

2nd2nunn

Performance Solutions can help u with a tune. we just did a 6.0 in a 01 SS with a small cam, stock heads and a fast 90mm intake and the car made 481hp and the guy loved it. the guy actually had a sts kit on the car before and he loves the na version way more. also, once u leave with one of our tunes, if u have any issues what so ever there is no charge to get the issue fixed....as long as you have not changed anything.

We've done a ton of cobras for the past couple years we have been open and we have one of the best tuners for the any model car. he has been tuning cars from the lower hp imports to 1400 hp racecars for 13+ years now.if you would like we are having a dyno day/car show june 28@ 9am come by and check out the shop

if u have any other questions give us a call 602-269-8955/ask for Ernie or pm me.

myfast70

iTrader: (38)

Don't hesitate to call Nic. he may be tough to reach sometimes but he is well worth the wait. If you already don't feel comfortable with him then don't even bother because you will look for things to be wrong. I had him tune my car and it has been flawless ever since! I thought his price was very reasonable for what he does. He will do a "street tune" and the a "dyno tune". Car is very drivable, does not have any flat spots or hesitations. A+ all the way.

LS1 Life

HAHAHA well put good sir. Yeah there is plenty of speculation out there and i agree the only way to really find out about someone is to check em out for yourself. Something i thought about for a bit, the cars we all have cost quite a bit to run overall. Its just more money for a cleaner running system so i agree price is just part of the deal.

Performance Solutions has their own tuner, but talkin with the owner a while back he said their main focus for the longest time has been mustangs. Havent gotten many reviews about their operation.

Nic D, known to be the best in arizona. Multiple reviews.

CMS... no clue...

Mail order tunes... what the duce... would like a tune based off dyno runs.

Any others?

tails8

iTrader: (7)

Another vote for NicD. Had him work on my TA when I had it and plan on having him do a look over on my current project when it gets running.

I've known Nic for a few years now and yes he can be sarcastic at times. However the man tells it like it is. If your car needs something he will tell you. If your car's a pile he'll tell you. If he doesn't feel he can tune your car to run without blowing up he won't work on it. If you get your feelings hurt or something by the way he says things, well dunno what to tell you on that. Learn to deal with things I guess. As far as the rumors, ya, how about people actually talk to someone and get a feeling for themselves and make a decision from there and stop spreading ****. God knows AZ has enough of that..

As far as $300 being too steep. That's cheap. You may have skimped on other things on the car. Don't be a cheapass and get a crappy tune. It'll cost you more in the longrun via broken ****..

Tails

NicD

iTrader: (7)

Haha, I probably know who has been spreading rumors like that but I digress.

Anyways I will reply to your statements.

I couldn't care less what your car is capable of running, I tune everything LSx and some that aren't LSx based. I have tuned a few cars that have been faster than mine for the past 5 years or so.

Falsely tuning a car? Sorry, I don't play childish games and ******* with somebody's car with a bad tune is rediculous. If I don't like you I just don't tune your car at all, period. I do this for fun on the side and getting paid to tune an *******'s car isn't worth even a dollar to me.

I specialize in tuning forced induction vehicles if anything so I don't know why somebody would say that I can't? I have several examples of FI LSx cars that run the number and have lived long lives.

My prices are VERY reasonable and cheaper than most shops because I simply don't have the overhead to deal with owning a building, etc. But to be honest if anybody thinks that $300 for a full tune including the dyno time is expensive I don't know what to tell you. Buying a cheap handheld or just the editing software alone is more expensive than that and my spare time is valuable to me.

As far as being full of **** I would love to know what false statements or wrong information I have given that would make me full of it. I have no problems with admitting I am wrong and have done so in the past but I would expect statements like that to be backed up with something. I know I come off as cocky because I tell it like it is and some people can't handle honesty like that.

Seriously though I would love to know who is saying some of this stuff because you are not the first person that I have heard those same things now. I would love to know who is spreading the rumors.

TT632

iTrader: (3)

As a former GM Engineer I would say Nic is probably the only person in the valley I could recommend for tuning GM cars and trucks. He has more Corvette/F-body/GTO and truck tunes than anyone I know of in the state. He tunes for multiple shops and is very conservative. He has been invaluable in helping me with my 1100 rwhp Twin turbo project and I will continue to have him consult when its time to turn it up a notch or two.

He is very busy, but seems to still have the time to answer endless questions and I'm sure I wouldn’t take the time to answer. The way I look at it, there are a number of places that you can pay many times what Nic charges and still fall short of his abilities. I'm sure there are other capable local tuners, but It’s a no-brainer on this recommendation.