Advice on SCT Tune from RoeRacing

[Stray Cat]

Hi all,

I see that Roe may be out of business.

I have a 2005 Copperhead. Long story, bought it from an older owner. When we received the car, it was apparent that the car had been tracked. It was in good shape, but for sure was a car that had been raced at one point. My tech went through it, it Runs and drives great. My tech here in Dayton was impressed with the car when he drove it. I put in a Borla Cat Back and High Flow Cats.

I purchased and SCT tune from Scott at Roe. We tried to get it to load. It would not. Our thesis is that the car already has a tune in it. It was originally from Arizona, ended up in Houston and I bought it out of West Texas. So I have been told that we need to do a DRB at the dealership and get the tune back to stock. Only THEN can we load the SCT Tune from Roe set for my altitude, my 93 octane fuel, and the cats and exhaust.

My Viper tech, while saying that the car runs strong, pulls well etc., says to get the car to run properly here in Dayton with my Mods, for proper temp, gas mileage etc., we should do this, and get the proper tune on the car.

If your car ran well, would you do this ? I paid good money for that tune. But would hate to put the car tune back to stock and this not work, have no technical support.

Thoughts ? Any advice from someone who knows these things would be much appreciated,

John

 

[MoparMap]

To some degree whatever tune is in the car should be able to adjust for variations and mods, though it might not offer the peak performance or efficiency available. The computer has adaptive tuning built in that will let it adjust fuel in different portions of the map under different conditions, but it can only adjust so far. That being said, I'm really not sure just an exhaust swap would push it past its limits. The stock system was still reasonably open, though did have the crossover at the back. It was still 2.5" though, which is likely to be the biggest contributor to flow. Without other supporting mods as well I don't think you'd probably see a huge difference. An engine is effectively just an air pump after all, so both the intake and the exhaust contribute to that and one might be limiting it before the other. A cam swap is going to be the biggest difference for sure.

I bought my car with a custom tune installed, but also got the tuner with the car. I think I had a similar oddity though where the first time I plugged the tuner in to check the tune, it acted like a "stock" tune, but the car never engaged the skip shift or lit the light, and there was no resistor bypass installed, so my guess is the shop that tuned it flashed it using a shop tuner or something and then also loaded the tunes onto the handheld to go with the car. So not sure why yours won't accept the tune unless maybe it's a handheld tuner thing. Admittedly I haven't played with any outside of my car, so I only have the one experience.

All that said, peace of mind is certainly worth it as well. I have only a vague idea of what shop tuned my car originally, and they weren't a Viper shop to say the least. The car ran well and dyno'd strong for the minor mods it had, but it might have been slightly on the edge for fuel I had available (like a 93 tune when I only have 91 available). I did a cam swap on my car and had to get it retuned anyway, but it was peace of mind for me to have it done by a shop that I actually knew and had confidence in due to their experience with Vipers. So long story short, if you aren't really going to beat on the car I probably wouldn't worry about retuning it unless you notice a particular issue or rough running or just want to know for sure what tune is in it.

 

[Stray Cat]

Thanks very much MoparMap. I paid about $700 bucks for the tune, was told that the car would run better and cooler. But like I mentioned, My viper tech here in Ohio drove the car and said it runs well and pulls hard and he knows them quite well. So yeah, probably just leaving it like it is might be the most simple and easy thing to do. I've had a brand new Copperhead in the past, and the exhaust and gears simply make this a different (read more fun) car. Love the sound and it just feels so very much quicker. I know the GEN III's get sort of a bad rap compared to the other model years and generations, but man, I love this car.

Thanks!

John