Stillen supercharger install went flawless. The tune is another question....not unexpected though. What is unexpected is the slow support we are getting. When we ask for a direct contact to the guy we are giving info to so we can speed up the process we are told we can not have it. Told us to stay late and wait for the new tune. Late last night they said has to be in the morning won't be completed. His is day 4 waiting o get my car correct.
What good is a. Supercharger without the support you need.
Hopefully stillen sees this and makes improvements. Totally unsatisfied with their service and attitude. I was planning on some wheel spacers and exhaust and clutch. I can gaurentee you it won't be stillen. And as. I. Make my way to the car shows and meets I will make sure people realize this.

 

So a week went by with stillen still not giving us a new tune, instead they kept accusing the installer of doing something wrong, finally we got the car on a dyne and a tune was given to us.
I have to say if I had to do it all over again, I would not get the stillen kit, it doesn't put out the numbers it claims to give, it is not much of an improvement from stock. And their customer support is horrible. And their business practices are shady to say the least, they where asking me to take pics of the engine bay without the installer knowing and then send them the pics. When I told the installer this he said "he'll if they want I will take the pics and send it to them".
They don't stand buy their product. Needless to say no more stillen for me. I would recommend from my experiance you do the same. Should have gone turbo. Any body want to buy a stillen kit?

 

Wow, sorry for your trouble. I had one of the first kit when it came out last year and needless to say I had the same issues with the tunes but I guess I had good luck because STILLEN had good support for my case. that didn't matter much tho cuz after numerous tunes my car still had problems. at the end of last year I decided to leave it for dead and switched to their competitor GTM kit which got very good results.

what I recommend you doing is get a full custom tune, the ones they provide is crap. there are people running the stillen kit made decent power only with a full custom tune. that's pretty much your only option if you want your car to run correctly. unless you wanna sell the kit and take a 3k loss. no one on this forum will buy it from you trust me LOL.

good luck and keep us informed

 

First of all I have to say WOW, I'm very sorry to hear that you are upset about your experience. To be honest with you, we thought you were happy after acheiving your 400 wheel horsepower with temperatures in the high 90's and humidity in the 60-70% range! We figured that you since we have not heard anything after our Vice President and two of our engineers stayed late on a Friday night while your car was on the dyno, so that they could provide you with custom tunes that everything was good.

Just so everyone is aware, we had asked that the car be taken to a dyno so that they could perform the data logs necessary for us to perform the custom tuning. The first response we received was no, the car won't fit on the dyno, just fix the tune it's not making enough power. Obviously anyone can imagine how difficult it is to tune from 3,000 miles away without data logs or dynos. So, after a couple of days the car was taken to a local dyno. After a bit of massaging on the tunes, our engineers were able to stay late on a Friday night and supply a tune which put down nearly 400 wheel horsepower (I say nearly because I think the final number was 397 or so) in pretty nasty conditions...high 90 degree temperatures with 60-70% humidity is not ideal at all for tuning.

 

Eric,

Are you ever going to tell the whole story or should I? Please return my phone call.

 

As a Stillen rep, you should know that SAE corrections factor in ambient conditions.

Second, are you guys tuning for power or for reliability?

Re: Wei: I think we'd all love to hear the full story.

 

Kyle is going to supply with a story. I wanna hear what he's got to say too. Getting my popcorn ready

 

Yes, a dyno does have correction factors, however, at the end of the day, there are outside factors that effect performance such as elevation, temperature, humidity, engine oil temperature, coolant temperature etc. Obviously an engine running in 0% humidity and 40 degree air temperature is going to be a lot happier and run a lot better than if it were to be run in 70% humidity and high 90 degree temperatures. Dyno correction factors are one thing, but at the end of the day, the conditions the car is actually running in absolutely make a huge difference. Run a car in Florida or Texas today (100+ degree temperatures with high 90% humidity, leave it strapped to that dyno and don't touch it until December, and I guarantee you it will show you a SIGNIFICANTLY higher dyno number. Heck, wait until midnight or 2 in the morning and you'll see the same thing...The car will produce better numbers. Regardless of any correction factor.

We are tuning for reliability.

In regards to Weiboy's car, I just got off the phone with Weiboy and he has told me to go ahead and post. I'm going to give the abridged version as I have already commented on here somewhere regarding the rest of what happened and don't feel like posting it all over again.

Weiboy was an early adopter, he originally had his kit installed up at Beshoff Infiniti.

We do not try and hide anything regarding the struggles we experienced with the tuning early on. We learned quite a lot during the early release and we actually found quite a lot of glitches or bugs in the factory tuning that we worked with UP Rev to get through.

Weiboy was extremely patient during the process and I really do believe that he wanted to see it all worked out. He lives in the Bay area and we are down in Costa Mesa, CA. He drove the car down one day and we did some custom tuning and everything seemed to be working well. I'll be completely honest here and say that I do not remember exactly why it came down the first time. I think it was low on horsepower but I'm not 100% sure about that.

He and his friend headed back North home again and all was happy. Then, for some reason the car started experiencing detonation. So I personally flew up there and drove the vehicle back down. While we had his vehicle for that week we supplied him with a rental. While the car was in our shop we handled the tuning and also installed some AP Racing brakes for him.

We got Eric a flight down here and he took the car away and reported back that everything was good. Two weeks later he called up saying that the detonation came back. I remember very clearly saying that it had to be something mechanical...It just had to be. Our engineers spent a lot of time on this and worked extremely hard to make good, safe power. I told Eric that he would need to take the car to a shop and have it looked at or bring it back down but that something mechanical had to have changed. At this point Eric had, had enough. He was convinced it was in the tuning, which I again stressed that the car ran fine for two weeks before experiencing detonation. But, enough was enough.

Now, again, I want to stress that during this time Eric was very accomodating and again, I really think he wanted to see it work out well in the end. However, he had reached his breaking point and decided to go a different direction.

At this time the COMPLETE kit was sold to a gentleman with a 370Z. The new owner made some modifications to the supercharger itself and was able to put down well over 450 horsepower with his custom tuning and supercharger modifications. However, that was short lived as the engine expired shortly after that. The cause was later determined to be an injector failure. One of the injectors was under performing.

This could definitely have caused the detonation Weiboy was experiencing when he says that our "tuning was crap." I tried saying that I knew there was a mechanical problem, we just needed to identify it.

In regards to what we currently see with our supercharger kit, we have had customers bolt the kit right on and immediately achieve over 400 wheel horsepower. We have had other customers bolt the kit on and require some additional tuning support. We've even had some cars with identical mods and identical roms, react completely different to identical tunes. However, once our engineers refine the tune, it works very well.

Perfect example, the shop who installed "Tofst4uvette" supercharger, performed an installation on a 370Z earlier in the year and the car ran flawlessly from the word go. No need for additional tuning or anything.

 

Kyle, have you ever taken a basic Chemistry class in high school? PV = nRT. Elevation = pressure Temperature is temperature Humidity affects density. Engine oil temperature isn't a factor because it is a constant; it will always be there once equilibrium is reached. Coolant temperature also isn't a factor because it is a constant that will reach equilibrium at operating temperature. If equilibrium is not reached, and the temps are going up, then obviously there is insufficient cooling for the given setup, which is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

You guys are tuning for reliabilty, but you're complying with a customer's complaint that its not making enough power? How exactly are you adding power when you are unable to make most of the adjustments we're typically used to making? Leaning the engine out? Is this what is causing those (i'm assuming here since you didn't explicitly state it) changes in temperature? Does the customer want a dyno queen or something that is to be driven?


The 2nd time the kit was used, engine failure was caused by injector failure; isn't this something that should have been caught by basic troubleshooting? I'm sure your facility has the ability to flowbench injectors. Do your tunes not have fail-safes built in?

 

This thread is frightening. I must say it makes me think twice about putting an SC or TT on my car. To spend so much money on this stuff and experience all these problems is not worth it in my opinion.

 

Kyle, the first time I went down there was because my car was driving like crap, check engine light stayed on. Shortly after arrival you guys found out the blower was bad, great! You changed it no questions asked. Made 411whp and 303tq then we left. Believe it not, car was still acting funny after we left and was heading home. Car would just stall out while stopped at a light, idle wasn't solid either.

I sold the kit for $3500.00 shipped, how much was it after tax? Including labor I've lost over 4k labor included. Those things you did for me is nothing compared to what I had to go through and lost.

Thanks anyways

 

Depends on which kit you go with cough cough GTM ftw

 

LMAO!

 

also if you are into FI, getting a car that comes with a turbo or sc set up from factory is a reliable option and cheaper to squeeze powaa.

 

I bought a GTM stage 1 SC kit back in May. The actual installation took about 5 days, but I ran into some small to moderate problems which took about 2 months total to resolve, cause she is my daily it took longer than it really should have. ALL the problems resolved by the shop who did the installation not by GTM. Although, I still have unresolved issue with GTM.. which I do not have much confidence that it will get resolved.. any time soon atleast.

I am not trying to steer people away for getting a TT or SC. I just want people to know that you should have alot of patience, expect extra cost and extra time. Plan ahead, for example, if she is your daily it will be inconvient for you to leave her at the shop while waiting for installation or repairs. Of course every situation is different and every person is different.

The shop that did my installation was IMO extremely accomadating to me and was 100% on my side to get the problem resolved. It was because of them and the service they provided me, that I was able to be patient enough to keep the kit.

IMO, every contract, verbal or in writing, has to be beneficial for both parties or it will not be called a contract. Any one sided deal that is beneficial to only one party can be contested, challenged in court.