Up and go tuning

21/08/2026

ROBERT’S TUNE IS COMING ALONG NICELY 🔧🔥

Robert’s tune is coming together really well, and we’re getting into the finer details now.

We’ve been working through the engine and gearbox calibration together, looking at how the car is actually responding rather than just making changes and hoping for the best.

The gearbox side is a big part of getting the overall package right. Shift timing, torque management, line pressure, shift behaviour and how the transmission reacts to changes in engine torque all need to work together.

You can have a great engine calibration, but if the transmission calibration isn’t matched to it, the car simply won’t feel right.

That’s where the data comes in.

We make a change, drive the car, log it, look at what the ECU and transmission are actually doing, then make the next adjustment based on that information. It’s a process of building the calibration around the individual car rather than throwing a generic file at it.

Robert’s tune is heading in the right direction and the gearbox is coming together nicely. We’ll keep refining it until everything is doing exactly what we want it to do.

No copy and paste files.
No guessing.
No shortcuts.

Actual calibration. Actual data. Built around the car.

🔧 Up and Go Tuning
Custom ECU & Transmission Calibration
Road & Remote Tuning Australia-Wide

20/08/2026

WHY A CAR CAN MAKE MORE POWER BUT RUN SLOWER

This is something people get caught up on all the time.

“Made more kW, so it has to be quicker.”

Not necessarily.

Peak power is only one number on the graph. What actually matters at the track is where the engine is making torque, how much usable power it’s making through the rev range, and how effectively the car puts that power to the ground.

You can gain 20kW at the top of the RPM range and actually make the car slower if you’ve lost torque where the car needs it.

Then you’ve got the rest of the combination.

Converter stall. Diff gears. Shift points. Gear ratios. Shift recovery. Torque management. Throttle control. Tyre grip. Wheel torque.

Even the tune can make a massive difference.

If the engine makes a heap of power but the converter flashes past the useful part of the torque curve, the tyres are getting smashed, the gearbox pulls too much torque on the shift or the engine falls out of its powerband after each change, that extra dyno power isn’t necessarily doing s**t for the ET.

A good tune isn’t about chasing the biggest number on the dyno sheet.

It’s about making the engine, converter, gearbox, gearing and tyres work together so the power actually gets used.

That’s why you’ll sometimes see a car with less dyno power run a quicker time than a car making more.

Peak kW gets attention. Usable power gets the time slip.

20/08/2026

This is Alex’s YouTube channel, guys — go over and give it a look! He’s documenting the VY build, the changes he’s making and the results along the way.

We’re doing the remote tuning side of the car, so it’ll be good to see the whole build come together and see what this thing can run as the combination gets sorted.

Go give Alex a sub and follow along — should be a good one! 🔥

The VY SS is heading back to the drag strip, and this time we've ma...

20/08/2026

WHY FUEL TRIMS TELL YOU MORE THAN JUST AFR

One of the easiest ways to tell whether an LS is actually calibrated properly is to stop staring at one AFR number and look at what the ECU is doing to correct the fuelling.

The wideband tells you what the engine is actually seeing.

The fuel trims tell you what the ECU is having to do about it.

STFT is the PCM making an immediate correction. If the mixture goes lean, it adds fuel. If it goes rich, it pulls fuel.

LTFT is where it gets interesting. The ECU sees a repeatable error and starts carrying that correction forward.

So if you’ve got a heap of positive LTFT, the PCM is constantly having to add fuel. That can point towards an airflow model that’s wrong, injector data that’s wrong, unmetered air, fuel delivery issues or a combination of things.

Negative trims tell you the opposite — the ECU is having to pull fuel because the base calibration is delivering more fuel than the engine actually needs.

And this is why just saying “AFR is 14.7, the tune is perfect” is bulls**t.

You can have an AFR that looks spot-on in one operating area while the ECU is working its arse off correcting the underlying calibration.

We want to see how the trims behave across RPM, load, airflow and operating conditions, not just one number on a screen.

And you’ve got to know when the trims are actually active too. Closed-loop fuel control, PE/WOT operation and different operating conditions all change what those numbers mean.

A proper tune isn’t about making the correction disappear blindly either.

If the ECU is consistently adding or removing fuel, we want to find out why and correct the underlying calibration where appropriate.

That’s the difference between looking at an AFR gauge and actually tuning the ECU.

The wideband tells you what happened. The trims can help tell you why.

20/08/2026

WHAT ACTUALLY MAKES A GOOD LS TUNE?

It’s not just making the AFR look good at WOT and chucking 3 degrees of timing in it.

There’s a lot more going on in an LS calibration.

First thing is getting the airflow model right. MAF calibration, VE/virtual VE, MAP, injector data and the actual airflow through the engine all need to agree. If the airflow model is wrong, you’re basically tuning fuel on top of a bad foundation.

Then you’ve got fuelling. We’re looking at commanded lambda versus actual lambda, STFT/LTFT behaviour, injector pulse width, PE operation and whether the calibration is actually delivering what we’re commanding across the load range. Fuel trims are useful feedback, but they’re not a substitute for proper wideband data when you’re calibrating WOT.

Then comes spark.

You don’t just keep adding timing until the dyno stops gaining power. The LS PCM is constantly working between the High and Low Octane spark tables through the knock strategy, and actual knock re**rd needs to be understood rather than simply zeroing the knock system and calling it tuned.

Then there’s torque management — and this is where a heap of s**t tunes fall apart.

Torque management isn’t just some annoying limiter you delete. On GM controllers it can control engine torque through spark, throttle and other strategies, including during transmission operation. You need to understand what the ECU thinks the engine is making and what torque the transmission actually needs, rather than just zeroing every torque table because you want the car to feel harder.

Then we get into throttle and drivability.

A good LS tune should start, idle, cruise and transition cleanly. Tip-in shouldn’t fall on its face. It shouldn’t surge through a car park. It shouldn’t hang RPM, hunt at idle or feel like you’ve got an on/off switch for a throttle.

And if it’s an automatic, the gearbox calibration is part of the tune. Shift timing, shift pressure, TCC operation and torque reduction all need to work with the engine calibration, converter, diff gears and power curve.

Then you verify the whole bloody thing with data.

RPM, airflow, MAP, lambda, fuel trims, injector data, spark, knock re**rd, throttle, temperatures, torque intervention and transmission parameters — whatever is relevant to that particular combination. The parameters we log should change depending on what we’re actually diagnosing.

That’s what makes a good LS tune.

Not a magic AFR number.

Not a copy-and-paste cam file.

Not “it feels fu***ng quick.”

The ECU needs to understand the engine, the engine needs to get what it’s asking for, the transmission needs to work with it, and the data needs to prove it.

That’s a proper calibration.

20/08/2026

WHEN SHOULD YOU ACTUALLY GO MAFLESS?

This gets overcomplicated as f**k.

If you’ve got a fairly normal naturally aspirated LS1 with an OTR, headers and exhaust, there’s usually no reason to rip the MAF out just because someone on Facebook said MAFless is better.

A properly calibrated MAF setup drives bloody well.

Where I start looking at MAFless is when the combination actually warrants it — big cam with a heap of overlap, turbo or supercharged setups, or an engine moving enough air that the MAF system becomes a limitation.

And there’s another side people forget — a big cam can make the MAP signal pretty ugly at idle and low RPM. That’s where you need to understand what the ECU is actually doing rather than just switching the MAF off and calling it a tune.

MAFless gives you control through the VE model, but it still has to be calibrated properly across the whole load and RPM range.

So no, MAFless isn’t automatically better.

The right answer depends on the engine, the hardware and what the car is actually being used for.

Don’t remove the MAF because it sounds race car. Remove it when the combination actually needs it.

20/08/2026

“Mate, this is way better.”

That’s normally the first thing we hear once we’ve got into a car and started sorting the calibration.

And you can tell straight away. The idle cleans up, throttle response comes alive, it stops hunting around and the whole car just feels sharper.

That’s not magic and it’s not just throwing more timing at it.

We’re going through the actual data from the car and fixing what needs fixing — airflow, fuel trims, commanded lambda, spark, knock, throttle, torque management, idle and gearbox behaviour.

Every car responds differently. Same cam, same OTR, same exhaust, whatever — doesn’t mean the tune is going to be the same.

We make the changes, log it again, see what it’s doing and keep going until it’s right.

That’s the good part about remote tuning. The car doesn’t need to be sitting next to us. We just need good data and someone behind the wheel who can follow the process.

And when the owner says “f**k me, this is way better” before we’ve even finished?

Job’s heading in the right direction.

20/08/2026

Alex’s VY SS is one we’re currently remote tuning.

Before we even touched it, he managed a 13.4 pass completely on his own — so we’re pretty keen to see what it runs once everything is properly dialled in.

Stock-power LS1, now with extractors and full exhaust, OTR intake, diff gears and a 3500 stall — a simple combination on paper, but one that can completely change the way the car launches and drives.

We’re now tuning it MAFless, which lets us properly optimise airflow and calibration for the setup.

We’ve also gone through and tuned the gearbox as part of the package, refining shift behaviour and how it works with the stall and diff gearing so the whole drivetrain is working together instead of fighting itself.

The big question is how much quicker we can get it with the new combination properly dialled in.

That’s where the calibration matters. We’re tuning both the ECU and transmission around the actual combination, getting the fuelling, spark, throttle, torque management, shift strategy and idle all working with the converter and gearing.

No copy-and-paste tune. No generic settings. Alex’s car gets tuned around Alex’s car.

Let’s see what this VY SS can do. 🔥

20/08/2026

One of the most divisive mods I’ve done to the VY so far.

Can a stock-power LS1 with the stock airbox and stock exhaust actually go quicker with nothing more than diff gears and a 3500 stall?

Plenty of people said yes.

A surprising amount said the stall would actually make it slower.

Tonight we finally find out.

New video is live now.

OnStreet

18/08/2026

WHY THE BEST LS TUNES ARE BUILT FROM DATA, NOT GUESSWORK

There’s a massive difference between changing a few tables until the car feels better and actually calibrating an LS.

You can sit there looking at a spark table, fuel table or torque table and make it look exactly how you reckon it should. Doesn’t mean the engine agrees with you.

The PCM is giving you a s**tload of information while the engine is running. MAF frequency, calculated airflow, cylinder airmass, MAP, RPM, throttle angle, commanded EQ ratio, measured lambda, fuel trims, spark advance, knock re**rd, IAT, coolant temp and calculated torque are all telling you something about what the engine is actually doing.

That’s where the tune gets built.

Take the MAF. We don’t just change the curve because another LS had a different number in it. We look at the MAF frequency against the calculated airflow and compare that with the actual fueling result. If the numbers don’t line up, we find out why instead of just throwing fuel at it.

Same with spark. We don’t add timing because some bloke on the internet says an LS “likes 28 degrees”. We look at the engine’s torque response, knock activity, operating conditions and fueling and work out what the engine actually wants.

Fueling is the same. A wideband showing the target lambda is useful, but we want to know why the PCM delivered that amount of fuel. If the MAF or airflow model is wrong and you’ve simply corrected the fuel somewhere else, the gauge might look perfect while the underlying calibration is still wrong.

Then there’s torque modelling. If the PCM is calculating the wrong airmass, it’s potentially calculating the wrong torque as well. That can flow into throttle control and torque management, which is why blindly zeroing tables isn’t a substitute for getting the underlying calibration right.

And this is why data logging matters so fu***ng much.

One pull gives you a snapshot.

Multiple logs give you a pattern.

That’s when you can see whether the calibration is actually behaving consistently across RPM, load, airflow and temperature.

We don’t tune an LS based on what we think it should be doing.

We make a change. Log it. Analyse it. Verify it. Then make the next change.

That’s how you separate an actual calibration from a guess.

Anyone can change numbers.

The hard part is knowing which number needs changing, why it needs changing, and proving the change actually worked.

UP AND GO TUNING