Technical Support - Why it is SOO important!!

Guys, how we doing? Hope everybody's okay. so yeah, here we are another, another weekly episode into the tuning industry. So this week I wanted to talk about why tech support is so important. So tech support shouldn't just be about are the tools not working? What do we do? tech support is about supporting the dealer or your dealer or yourself. If you are a dealer, it's about supporting you more than just that. It's about diagnostics. It's about how to log boost. It's about what tools to use to do this, what how to diagnose a car, what's happening, when to use a bench mode, when to use OBD, when to do this, when to do that. And there's lots of things that are involved. So being a master isn't necessarily just about knowing the tool. It's about knowing cars, knowing the tuning industry, knowing what can happen, knowing how customers are, knowing what can and cannot happen.

 you know, so from first off, you receive the tool and you get a car and you, and you go and you, you drive it down the road and it doesn't feel quite right. And you think, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? You see, the problem is it might not feel great, and if you were just a mechanic, you'd sort of go, yeah, okay, that's all right. A customer can drive it. There's no lights on the dash, but when you're tuning it, you pH you are asking a little bit more of all of the components in the vehicle. So they should all be with intolerance from whatever you're tuning, all the components. the tune should be with intolerance of all of the components. The problem you have is that when you start asking a little bit more, so for example, a turbo that has a slight over boosto issue you might necessarily know that on a test drive you wouldn't, you, wouldn't you drive the car and you wouldn't necessarily know that there was anything wrong.

You go and tune it. And now we're asking for say, 0.3 bar more boost. That's just enough to tip it over the line so that it shows an engine management light. And you'll sit there and go, right, well it's got an over boosto issue. what is that about? Well, I mean, technically you should be logging the vehicle. Every single car you drive before you tune it, you should be logging data on the vehicle and that will enable you to pick up potential faults. Cause all that the tune will do is exacerbate an existing fault. The fault is there, but it's not big enough to make an engine management light. Come on to make it particularly obvious. but the fault is there. And then when we tune it, you are asking for a little bit more. and that will exacerbate the fault that's already there and make it pop up. And then, you know, you're saying they go, right, okay, well what does, what has the tune done here? What's, what's happened here? Your customers going, wow, that wasn't like that before. Log data. At the end of the day, most diagnostics machines, you can at least log boost. Boost is an absolute minimum. So when you're driving it down the road, which you should do a test drive before and after, before you give it back to the customer test drive before plug in the O B D the diagnostics reader,

Get the machine up and running and log the boost. And what you want to log is you want to log actual against specified. So actual boost is what the car, the, the, the boost that the turbo is delivering and what the car is delivering specified is what the car's asking for. So what the ecu what in the software, what the ecu u's asking for. So let's say hypothetically we're asking for two bar of boost in the ecu and that will say, right, I need to get two bar a boost. Now you drive it down the road, you log the data, you come back, you look at the data and it's, and it's hitting regularly. 2.2, 2.15, 2.25 bar of boost. So it's over boosting. The turbo is making more boost than is being request requested. Now at 0.2 bar, maybe 0.1 bar, that's not enough for the ECU to flag up an engine management light and go, right, there's something wrong here that needs to get sorted.

But when we ask for, let's say for example, two and a half bar of boost, then that means the car will then be over boosting probably by 0.3 0.4 of a bar. And then that's enough for an engine management light to come on. So if you contact us, for example and you are one of our dealers and you go, look, I've logged it down the road, it's, it, I, I can see well you can even send the logs to us and we can have a look and we'll go, right, it's doing this, this and this and this. We've seen them all before. So with that in mind, if you've logged it in the first place, you can then approach a customer and go, right, this is happening. Now it could be down to sticky wastegate, you know, some of them have variable vein wastegate that get stuck with carbon so they don't open quick enough.

So you get more boost. Some of them could be the actual actuator diaphragm. It doesn't move an open quickly enough. It could be a boost solenoid not creating enough vacuum that pulls the wastegate open. It could be a pipe that has a very slight split in it, not causing enough vacuum to open the wastegate quick enough. And all these sorts of things that are mechanical issues that you might not necessarily know about we can look at and we can point you in the right direction where to start looking before you start tuning it. Benefits of that is your customer is gonna go, wow, thank you. That's, that's amazing. Cause the last thing you wanna do is tune a car, make it worse for the customer and then he is gonna blame you. That is pointless. So what you can do is you can say, right there is this issue, we can investigate it, we can look at what it is for you.

 and the customer will be happy that A, you've gone to 'em, that you know what you're talking about. B you've gone to them with an issue that you can show them the log boost and you say, look, this is what's being asked. This is what we should be asking for and this is what we're achieving. the customer will have faith in what you're saying. You've been upfront and you've been honest and you've said, you know, if we tune this, we're probably gonna make it worse. So what you're gonna really need to do is fix that issue first and then when we tune it, you shouldn't have any subsequent issues. and that sort of advice and those sorts of insights because we've seen them all before. This is what our tech support is. It's not just this is how you read the car with this tool. It's the whole thing combined about how to tune a car and any issues,

Any problems we will help and resolve. Now there are lots of companies out there that are really awesome as well, you know and there are some that really don't have a clue. They will literally just smashing a file or they're not interested in you at all. They just want your money and to smash a file out to you and then you're left on your own. That is not what we are about because if you don't know, how the hell can you learn? I mean, it's just simple. You know, you didn't know how to drive a car until you, you didn't know how to drive a car until you had some lessons. You know? So it's absolutely fundamental that during the process of you becoming proficient at tuning, that we are there to help you as much as possible. And that, and as I say, that doesn't just include how to read the car.

That includes what's an issue with the car, what have you found on the pre pret June test drive? How can we help you resolve that? Where can we point you in the right direction? We've probably seen most of them, like most diesel will BMWs between probably 2005 and 20 20 15. Say for example if you go drive down the road and go, oh, it doesn't feel so great, or you're logging boost and you've got under boosto nine times outta 10, it'll be a little seal around around the pipe that goes into the inter cooler. It's a tiny little seal that costs about a pound 80 and that will be the issue. So, you know, you can start smoke testing, we can teach you how to smoke test stuff and we can do all of this remotely via video calls, stuff like that. And we can show you and we can sort of point you in the right direction of what diagnostic tools you really need.

 you know, something that can, at least log data would be great. you're gonna need a smoke tester. Really, it's not essential. But if you wanna find that boost leak, you're gonna need a smoke tester. You can pick some great secondhand runs up and they'll work just the same. And wherever the smoke's coming out, that's where you've got a leak. because there should be no smoke coming out of anywhere. It should be completely sealed. So if you've got smoke coming out, likelihood it is, you can have an under boosto issue or you're gonna have a vacuum issue. and that's never good. So for us, we feel that it's best and we want to take you along the journey to learn more about how to do stuff as well as the tool itself. And that's something that you should, you should just get really to be honest with you.

 if you are paying someone for files and you've bought their tool and you're part of their network, there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to try and help you and point you in the right direction. that's what we do. I can only tell you what we do. I dunno what others do. some will probably do that and, and, and that's awesome because that's how the industry should be. I mean, if you are investing into a company with their tools and their software, then you know, I I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect some help further than just the file. and we will always do that because at the end of the day, it benefits you, it

Benefits your customer, it builds a relationship with you and your customer. So you know what you're talking about when you talk to them. You can explain things in the right way. that's understandable cause we'll do that to you as well. All you have to do is basically repeat what we're saying. and and yeah, that is why tech support is so important cuz it's not just the car in front of you, it's your relationship with that customer that then will go away and go, do you know what you need to use these guys? Cuz they've found an issue with my car before they even started. It was a little vacuum pipe, they replaced it, it cost me a tenor and now the car's amazing. And they will tell their friends that they will speak to other people and they will recommend you just from us being able to help you that little bit more than just the file or the tool not reading properly that gives you a client base and a customer base that trust and I, you know, and, and, and want to come back to you.

You know, my, my famous phrase to everybody is, with all due respect, I never wanna see you again until you've got another car that you wanna tune with us. You know? I don't want issues, I don't want aggravation. I don't wanna spend two, three days trying to sort something out that I could have just sorted out for 10, 15 minutes in the first place. So, you know, that's what we are about and that's what you should expect from tech support. so yeah, I hope that helps and I hope that gives you some sort of insight that that's what you should be looking for. yeah. Awesome. Alright guys, take care.