Fronzizzle

I don't have a lot of experience with online tuners, but these guys (http://www.pcmofnc.com/) have been extremely helpful. Lots of good advice, good attitude, quick turnaround. Very good experience with them.

Pat Hall

iTrader: (31)

Yeah, I got a mail-order tune from these guys about 3 years ago, and they nailed it on the first try! I noticed they've changed their name. It was PCM 4 Less when I had them do mine. Their prices are very reasonable, and if you request Alvin, he's their most knowledgeable tuner when it comes to the 3rd gen f-bodies. I know just about everyone on this site overwhelmingly recommend learning how to burn your own, but if for some reason, that's not a feasible option at the time, these guys will usually get you a tune that's decent enough to get you up and running.

Fronzizzle

Agreed; Kelly (Sales, I believe) is also very helpful. They basically held my hand and helped me figure out what equipment and software I needed to data log and burn my own chips. I can now get a log file, send it to them for review & tweaks, get the new file back and burn it in a matter of a couple of days.

zenish

good to know.they are about an hour from me.

Johnny Blaze

iTrader: (15)

It always makes me suspicious of a business when they change names.

budfreak1

iTrader: (7)

They are excellent, and I have been to the shop when I stopped through for a reburn on my way to Fl. once. Some serious machinery in that parking lot!
Kelly and Alvin are both awesome, and they do great work. Anytime I need a reburn, I only have to run a 20 minute log file, email it to them, 2-3 days later they email me back a tune, I burn it, boom I'm in business. Can't ask for much more for $50 bucks.

DiabolicalRS

man if i knew they tuned 3rd gens i would have talked to them today. today in NC there was a camaro meet/car show and the pcm of NC was there.

Justin89Formy

iTrader: (26)

pcmforless consisted of two partners. one in PA and one in NC. They went seperate ways, hence PCM of NC.

With that said they have tuned my 3rdgen and my cts-v. Super friendly and knowledgable. They are about to do a LS1 swap on my car in a couple weeks.

ikillu

Yup. Nothing but good things to say about these guys.

dhirocz

iTrader: (2)

Ennh. I had a bad experience with them a couple years ago. I got a tune for a 0411 express van setup on a 383 TPI/T56 for my T/A. Getting through to them wasn't easy, but it took me almost a month to get another PCM shipped after the first wouldn't run. No spark. They had me verifying this and that in the harness; just to verify what I had told them, that I was receiving crank position sensor input with no response from the PCM. I finally verified it worked when I started it (temporarily) with a 4.3 S10 PCM. I sent them that one and they sent it back, which this time ran; though somewhat poorly. Took like 2 months to get it to run due to issues I was having with PCMforless. I was told it was because they dont save the tunes once they send out the PCM's via mailorder, and they had to fragment the tune together (no T56 available with the express van). Biggest issue was the PCM was receiving input to engage the A/C, but no signal out. Almost like they disabled it (which I didn't want done). The solution suggested to me was to run the signal like stock straight to the A/C and bypass the PCM (if I wanted to do that I probably wouldn't have done the 0411, I want better idle control)

I specifically asked how long it would take because I didn't want to miss my family before the holidays before I deployed. Guess what? Spent that time by myself. I was told this would be quick and painless.

I had less issues with the 165 that came in my car originally and the custom PROM I ordered years ago. I said the hell with it and put the 165 back in. Got it tuned up. No issues. And my A/C works.

Needless to say, I'm currently building my second 0411 swap harness now for another 4x 0411 build in another car. I haven't even given PCMforless a thought this time around. I got stuck $400 lighter in the wallet plus my spare 0411 is now loaded with a broken OS...makes a great conversation piece on my workbench, that's about it. It's worthless as is.

I couldn't help but shake the feeling that I was being cast aside as the 'nagging comeback customer'. I think for more common, mainstream types of things like cam and head swaps, or easy stuff like injector upgrades or bolt ons, they work well. Something that requires thinking outside of the box or truely building a custom program from scratch...nope!

Justin89Formy

iTrader: (26)

thats funny. My car was the first 0411 conversion tune that they did and alvin literally told me he loaded an old corvette tun and it fired right up. They've actually told me on numerous occasions that they keep old tunes.

Hell every time I go there they have a guy sitting at a computer with 6pcm hooked up to it, loading pre-made mail order tunes to them. They just crank out mail order tunes like that daily.

either someone wasn't being truthful with you, or there was something special with your circumstance where they didnt have a tune pre made for you

dhirocz

iTrader: (2)

I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if they tried to use a camaro tune which wouldn't work with my 4x. I basically had to fight in an effort to demonstrate I knew what I was talking about and wasn't the custom harness I spent a week building. I tested every circuit, every component, even verified the required inputs for spark before calling them. I dont like being promised a phone call and having to be the one to call back, or promised a deadline that is not met. I certainly expect my product to work as intended and if not I would expect a little more effort from the vendor to make it right. I just hope its not happened to more people.

I don't feel like I got the whole story. Should have been fairly straightforward...0411, vats delete, TPI, T56, express van tune. After all, they said they did hundreds of them!

Pat Hall

iTrader: (31)

I feel your pain dude. I went the rounds with them about 3 years ago trying to get their tune right on my 1989 '165 MAF setup. They used the Vette ARAP bin as the starting point for mine, which is a good tune to start with for my application since it's a 355 with 190 AFR aluminum heads and a Super Ram intake. However, the one problem with that tune if it's not changed is the torque converter lockup settings. The Vette lockup settings are quite a bit different from the Camaro TPI lockup settings. My lockup points and my shift points were WAY outta whack with the Vette lockup settings! Anyways, I got in touch with Alvin and explained what was going on, and he kept arguing with me that there was nothing wrong with the tune, and it had to be my tranny slipping or something to that effect, and I told him repeatedly that the trans was definitely not the problem, considering I had just had it completely gone through with one of Dana's (Pro-Built Automatics) street/strip rebuild kits. Since the trans had zero miles on it since the rebuild, I knew it was the lockup settings in that ARAP bin. I explained to him that whenever I put my stock 89 350 TPI PROM back in, the trans worked absolutely perfect! He was so adamantly against having me ship my chip back to him to fix those lockup settings that in the end, I had a guy here on the boards offer to redo the lockup to the Camaro specs, and sure enough, as soon as I got it back and tried it, the trans worked just like it should then. While I know next to nothing about burning chips on my own, I knew those lockup settings were the cause of my problems, and he had me so unsure that he would do anything to address the problem that I went with the guy here on the site, and problem solved! So yeah, if they bang out the initial mail-order tune and it doesn't come out quite right, good luck getting them to admit they made a slight error and convincing them to accept it back to make just one little change!