[mease87]

I Got the Sct xcal 3 from a Dealer. i bought it with 3 tunes 93/91/ and 87.

right now my car has 91 octane in it. we uploaded the 91 octane tune and test drove it. the car would make a raspy pinging. we then uploaded the the 87 octane tune and the pinging went away by about Half. but still some pinging was noticed . we then went back to the computer in his office and changed the timing and then uploaded it agiain to car. the pinging went away entirely for the test drive we took. i drove home and about 50 miles later i can hear the faint sound of pinging in different gears and RPM. not nearly as bad as the first or second time.

My car is a 2000 3.8 V6 stick shift With 56,000 miles with a cold air intake and still has stock sparkplugs and wires.

could i need new spark plugs and wires?? could this maybe fix the pinging problem when the tune is in place? or could it be somthing else entirely. my car has never made a ping its its life. so ik its gotta be somthing with the tune. or maybe my stock parts or plugs are not mixing well with the tune? any thoughts?

[Trick Tuners]

You should never let it ping!!!!
Detonation Explained

Yeah, its a problem with the tune. Are you sure you loaded the right one for your car?

[HMUSN]

Def. a tune problem, generally when you add octane the pinging stops, not the other way around.

[mease87]

Well as of right now i set it back to stock tune till after i put new spark plugs and wires in it. im hoping this will fix the problem. if not im gunna have to make the long drive back to the dealer i got it from and have him tune it agian. i mean i am due for new spark plugs and wire i believe. the car is almost ten years old and has 56k on it. maybe this is what is throwing it off

[mease87]

so like i said i returned my car to stock settings. i was messing around with the xcal3 to see its funtions. when you go to program car i see you can do custom tune or pre programmed tune. obviously the custom tune is the 3 that the dealer made up for me and that has the pinging problem. i saw that in the pre programed tune i can mess around with all sorts of stuff like spark time and idle speed ect.. am i better off just messing with these parameters myself? any suggestions if i do what to set everything at?

[Trick Tuners]

load the preprogrammed tune instead of the dealers tune and see how it works. Maybe he loaded the wrong file. He should be able to email you a tune too. I can't see spark plugs causing detonation, especially if they are the stock or cooler heat range. They can easily cause a miss, but detonation is a long stretch.

[mease87]

Well how do i load a pre programed tune? when i go to that option it just imediatley starts letting me change parameters. and then load it based on what i put it. there is no tune in there i can just choose like the custom ones the dealer made for me

[Trick Tuners]

Originally Posted by mease87 Well how do i load a pre programed tune? when i go to that option it just imediatley starts letting me change parameters. and then load it based on what i put it. there is no tune in there i can just choose like the custom ones the dealer made for me

If there is no tune in the preloaded section than you have a X3000 and it has to be custom tuned (no preloaded tunes). The 3015s can be custom tuned, and have the preloaded tunes. (the older 3000s have preloaded tunes too)

[mease87]

Yes mine is a 3000, does this mean i have the bad version of the xcal3? im just disapointed cause i just droped 380 bucks so my car would perform better and have more power and it seems the oposite is happening. GAhhhh... well right now its just back at the stock tune and i dont know what to do. this guy SCT dealer is about an hour away from me and he is the only one in the state. so hes is like my only option to go to. hes owns a small little shop thats almost the size of a small house.


so i guess i need to just go back to him and see what he can do i guess.
my xcal did not come with a link to my computer or any kind of discs.

[Trick Tuners]

he can do email tunes, just like i can.
Information on email tunes and the free retunes - Trick Tuners Forums

[mease87]

If i get a tune from you and the car is still pinging can you fix that? basically how can you know how my car is running and what tune it needs if your not phyically there . i would like to get tunes from you, you sound pretty knowlagable in this stuff. just dont have another $100 to drop right now. took me a while just to save for this. plus i dont have a cable to hook to my computer. where do i get one

[Trick Tuners]

yeah i can fix the pinging for sure. So can he, if he has a slight clue about what is going on. I would contact him and tell him to re-do your tune from scratch and see how that works. I don't have my notes, but i think the 2000 3.8 is the split port design. Maybe he loaded the other one. Read my link more closely to see how my email tunes work.

[mease87]

Yea it is a split port design. my year also has air injection. not sure if that makes a diff with the tunes. But Yea it didnt seem like he was to computer savy. he was a very slow 1 finger typer. But anyway, if im going to buy tunes from you dont i need a usb cable to plug into my computer? where do i get that

[Trick Tuners]

Originally Posted by mease87 Yea it is a split port design. my year also has air injection. not sure if that makes a diff with the tunes. But Yea it didnt seem like he was to computer savy. he was a very slow 1 finger typer. But anyway, if im going to buy tunes from you dont i need a usb cable to plug into my computer? where do i get that

lol, there are too many high school drop outs turned tuner!
The usb cable is a standard A to B cable, very common on printers.

[mease87]

so just go to radio shack or somthing and ask for a a to be cable ? and show them the SCT port maybe

[Trick Tuners]