Ok i know this will sound dumb, but is the trifecta tune, the gm tune?, that you can get from gmpp? and trifecta is what everybody calls it? or is it a totally different tune altogether? thanks for any info

 

A Trifecta tune is a tune provided by Clear Image Automotive located in Washington State. It is not affiliated with GM and most likely will void your warranty. But,it will beef up your cars speed dramatically. You will not be disappointed!

 

^^Amen

 

The Trifecta tune is allegedly "invisible", meaning the guys at the dealer will not see when you take it in for warranty work.

 

Or you can put the trifecta tune on a seperate ecu and swap in the stock one for service!

 

ok then, i also see other tunes floating around? HP tune? among others? are these just ecu upgrades on the stock ecu? or a separate one altogether? where can i purchace them or is it that i have to go to the specific shop and get some tune? Im just looking for the best way to go and preferably with the warranty intact lol. what do you all think of the GM upgrade?wasnt it something like 280hp? 3xx tq i have read a little on them on the gm website and am really considering that one. and would i be correct in saying that ppl call it the gm stage 1 for the ss tc? just want to know if others have it yet and what they think of it?

 

GM upgrade in my opinion is not worth it, over $600 for like 20hp. Trifecta's or other's are like 55-65whp. HP tuners is a software that you can purchase and tune yourself or pay someone else to do. Trifecta sends you the tune through either a email (in which you download to your car with the provided cable) or with a gt tuner which is kinda like a PDA, and then you download it to your car via diagnostic port. Both of these are applied to your cars' ECM or your spare ecu if you choose to purchase another. Trifecta's is undetectable by GM technicians and you can turn it on and off. Either way you go is gonna bring you way more power than stage one. Hope this short story helps you.

 

Just go to Clear Image website and buy the Trifecta Tune. It IS invisible to dealers and thus shouldn't void warranty and it will be far cheaper than GM and make more power. Good Luck!

 

How is it invisible if they drive the car and notice it makes more than stock boost?

 

They would have to put it in comp mode to activate the tune. Most dealers aren't likely to do that when driving one to see what's wrong....

 

Until they read this and start doing just that on all TC's

 

Exactly, The dealer may not but GM I'm sure will and will tell dealers what they need to do to check for aftermarket tunes. Esp if you end up with engine or tranny problems.

 

If they put it in comp mode they mean to race it. There should be NO reason what so ever for a dealer to put a car into racing mode unless the customer states that the problem occurs while in that mode. Dealership could get into a LOT of trouble for doing so.

 

^^^That would be correct. If you take your car in for let's say...turbo not working, they aren't gonna think to themselves, "Well, we better put it in Comp mode to make sure we get full power." That thought wouldn't even come to mind.

 

No they would not but when the GM rep or someone from GM Techline tells the tech to check for a aftermarket tune they can and will. And if found bye bye powertrain warranty. Just be ready if it happens.

 

Lol ouch I hope they never find out about mine. Powertrain is what 100k? Guess we're all keepin them fingers crossed.

 

Yeah, warranty is 5yr/100k and that's correct, if GM went through the trouble to send off the ECM to be disected than I believe the tune will show. What Vince does to the tune is when the GM tech reads the ECM it shows same settings as stock, or something to that affect.

 

i remember reading something on the gm tune where ppl complained that the tune only gave you like 20-30 more hp. but they had a dyno graph and it turns out that you get 54% more power throughout the whole powerband, supposedly? cant find the website at the moment. it may have been a thread but i remember it was about comparing the stage kits from the sc and their gains compaired to the new upgrade for the tc cobalts. they were saying that it was better b/c of the total powerband increase?? gotta find that damn page so i can compare these things!

 

Finding a tune seems simple enough.

They know what the stock dump should look like. If they command a full dump of the PCM and do a quick compare, boom... game over. IE: If I do a read entire with my HPT tuned car and compared it hex-to-hex, obviously it differs. I ASSume he's just teling the PCM to return to the scan tools what its expecting to see. Kinda like what a lot of tuners to do avoid OBDII readyness tests and such.

Unless Vince has stuffed his tune into some non-addressable piece of FLASH (non-addressable to GM scan tools that is). Seems unlikely most dealers would go through all that, but who knows. Never looked at his work yet, but I assume he plays jump games like we do on Honda's to hide our work from the masses.

The fact a couple GMPP engineers and other GM employes troll this site doesnt help either I can tell you that for the Syclones back in the day, they had a VIDEO and a whole check list of things to check for denying warranty claims. One of them was inspecting the tune on the MEMCAL.

 

are the tunes invisible for the ss/sc line up??? we dont have competition mode... and if we do the hell if i knew about it???