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Pfadt ATS tune review

18K views 28 replies 15 participants last post by  Hoosier Daddy 
#1 · (Edited)
After looking around for more power and some other parts for my Cadillac ATS 2.0T Turbo, I discovered Pfadt Racing, a forum sponsor, and their comprehensive line of aftermarket power adders, their EFR turbo kit, their tuning portfolio, and their comprehensive line of suspension components. I decided to give them a call and then found out that not only do their parts power the fastest ATS in the world, but they also had an install shop that is fairly close to where I am, so after checking out their local install shop, Late Model Racecraft and their dyno facilities, I placed an order for the Pfadt Racing tune for my ATS.

Pfadt Racing is the industry leader in the corvette world for the best parts money can buy. Parts and tech from Pfadt racing power the fastest racers within the corvette racing world, and even GM's own look to the expertise of Pfadt racing for their power and suspension needs. I had previously only have heard of Pfadt's successful motorsport program within the corvette world, but then found out that they have dealers and install facilities located across the united states and other countries that are established corvette and Cadillac CTS-V specialists.

Pfadt Racing is also an independent entity that manufacturers 100 percent of what they sell in the united states. Proudly Made in the USA.

The Pfadt sales rep who answered my call was very professional, courteous, and I felt very comfortable placing an order from them. The Pfadt guy was very knowledgeable about just about everything I could have asked him on my car, and was never pushy and very pleasant altogether to talk to. Pfadt Racing is known in the corvette world as having the best customer service and feedback in the industry.

When asked about the Pfadt tuning program, Pfadt Racing has a very strict and comprehensive quality assurance program that stipulates that each and every part must pass not only dimensional checks but also functionality checks for any deviation in workmanship, material, and even aesthetics, each part must even fall within the smallest fractions of weight deviation in order to pass Pfadt Racing's standards before being shipped to the customer.


Despite having been testing the developed Pfadt Racing tune since January of this year, the Pfadt engineers felt that having tested their tune on no less than a dozen vehicle for a combined total of 200,000 miles were they then able to confidently sign off on releasing their tune, and despite having sold a lot of ATS tunes already, their customers are primarily corvette or cadillac customers that have an ATS as a second car, and usually not as active on the forums.

I am reviewing this ATS tune from Pfadt with Pfadt team confident of their product and without prejudice either towards or against them, and my ATS is my daily driver. The Pfadt sales guy did ask me if I could find a dyno facility of my choice and then post on the forums what I thought of the tune, be it positive or negative.

After seeing one of Pfadt Racing's ATS's claim the title of the world's fastest ATS I was ready to order and after a few days of waiting, UPS dropped off a Pfadt labeled box.


I ended up picking Late Model Racecraft for their dyno facilities, not only because they are an industry leader in very high powered GM car builds, with most of their customers happily driving away with over 1000 horsepower, and even a few dodge vipers with 2800+ horsepower and sub 6 second quarter mile street cars, when I arrived at their shop, they had a line of Lamborghini Gallardo's, Dodge Vipers, CTS-V's, and ZL1 camaro's parked in front of their shop, what a sight!

Jay the operations manager at LMR personally dynoed my car personally.



The Pfadt Racing ATS tune was very easy to install and took no longer than 2 minutes total on a windows computer with a USB port. I would say that loading the tune was very straightforward and easy to use, even for the computer illiterate. The Pfadt Racing tune comes with a loader cable that allows you to return the vehicle to stock at any time.


The car was run on the dyno without cooling off prior and only two runs were made with a total of 2 min between the two runs, the time it took for the tune to install.




The dyno video and dyno graph are attached below.

The dyno at LMR is a dynojet 248 that Late Model Racecraft calibrates every month, and in Houston the weather was a cool 94 F, and the dyno room was not air conditioned, it must have been 105 F + in there when we dynoed the car. No additional airflow was generated over the vehicle, what was in the dyno room was what it got, not even a large fan blowing towards the front of the vehicle, there were no fancy air feed system supplying cold air to the car.



Only two runs were made because dyno runs are expensive and I did not want to pay for a bunch of dyno runs, what is shown is what I documented, stock vs tuned.

My car is completely stock and has an automatic transmission, and therefore dyno numbers are going to be slightly lower than those of cars with manual transmissions.

The Pfadt Racing ATS tune picked up power across the board, and picked up 55+ ft/lbs of torque at the wheels mostly in the area under the curve and gained me 32.21 peak horsepower at the wheels. At around 3750 RPM, the Pfadt Racing ATS tune picked up an astonishing 70+ HP at the wheels vs the car stock. No power was lost in vs stock even at higher RPMs with the Pfadt ATS tune, showing Pfadt's technical superiority vs all the others. I'm sure if the temperature was not as hot or that if the vehicle was allowed to cool between the runs for a longer duration, the tune would have picked up far more power to show for on the dyno sheet.

On the street, the car feels like it is a totally vehicle, where as stock the car would occasionally hesitate and just not feel all that powerful, after the tune my car seriously feels like its a V8; with the Pfadt Racing ATS tune, the car is eager to please and always attentive to any throttle inputs, all the previous hesitation that the stock car felt is gone completely. The transmission shifts very crisp and very fast but never uncomfortable, almost like a dual clutch transmission with the Pfadt tune installed. I am absolutely happy with the results and would gladly recommend this tune to everyone.

Interestingly, the Pfadt ATS tune looks like it runs slightly richer than the stock tune.












http://i40.tinypic.com/10x7txs.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GxybkysWzM
 
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#3 ·
I have their dp sitting in my house and their c-f intake arriving Monday, 7/22. I am going to wait to install the dp until I pick a turbo upgrade to do at the same time. Also want one of Pfadt's I-C's to really cool off the charged air. Not available for 1-2 months according to Pfadt.
 
#10 ·
this dyno graph looks pretty impressive, regardless of whether you think the OP's post is contrived or not. the aftermarket tune is pulling way less timing up top than OEM. then it appears that there isn't even a fan on the car for the pulls AND is hot in there; which is even more impressive.

i hope the OP will give us some updates as the miles rack up - i want to know how the tranny deals with the extra torque.

edit: and why is the video taking hours to be ready for viewing? i've been getting "This video is currently being processed." for a bit now.
 
#15 ·
they're not that bad at all. that being said, i have no clue what the drivetrain loss is supposed to be, but if it's 20%: 218whp/0.80 = ~272 crank, and 234wtq/0.80 = ~292 crank. add in some negatives like the conditions(ambient temp) and octane(91 vs 93) and you've got a few more missing hp.

overall a pretty good stock result i believe.
 
#20 ·
great review! where did get the dyno done? I am suppose to go to 21st Century next weekend after I get my tune updated. It will be fun to see the difference between what I did with just the tune compared to the Pfadt intake and downpipe I have on now. I can say for sure the car runs a ton better with the two pieces!
 
#24 ·
is there any new information regarding this tune FROM Pfadt? how much more boost over OEM is this tune? what is AFR? what is the manufacturer's claim at rwhp/tq? come on guys, you're paying to advertise on this forum; let's get some information.

i apologize in advance if i've missed this information being posted.
 
#25 · (Edited)
One of the other users on the forums, Hoosier Daddy, asked some great questions in another thread, and I thought that I'd copy them here:


http://www.cadillacforums.com/forum...-forum/349522-best-company-ecu-tune-2-0l.html


Like always, his questions were insightful, and this particular question was regarding why the Pfadt tune does not lose any power over stock on the top end or over 6500 RPM:


Hi, can you explain why the run started at over 3500 RPM? Also what gear were they done in?
Great questions as always, the dyno pulls were all done on 4th gear. The 3500 RPM was LateModelRacecraft's choice as Jay@LMR operated the dyno.

I do have to note that my car has an automatic transmission, which may have factored into the 3500 RPM start on the dyno. 4th gear on the 6L45 has a 1.16 ratio with 5th being 0.85, so its not a 1:1 like 5th gear on the manual. 5th gear would have hit ~180MPH on the dyno.


The reason I ask is that even with 70 MPH airflow, the temps in these engines at full throttle rises dramatically in a very few seconds and the power then falls off significantly. Making pulls starting at high RPMs like those gives results very different than ones beginning in the 2k range or in the real world.
You're absolutely right about the exhaust gas temperatures rising very rapidly in the LTG engine and then heat soaking the turbo as a few others on CF has found.

My car has an automatic transmission though, and if I were to floor the car the engine does tend to rev past 3500 if not start from 3500 RPM, corresponding with the real world results that are noticeable when driving my car.

From what I understand, the Pfadt tune is designed around the specific configuration of Pfadt hardware and the car that its going onto, and based on their comprehensive development procedures.


Someone can argue they will never give full throttle below 4K RPM but if their dynos runs are based on that concept, they are useless for comparison to any other full RPM range dyno pulls in a high gear.

I'm used to seeing some tuners doing things like that to make things look better than real world, but I have the impression you paid for the dyno runs at an independent shop and if so am curious if they informed you about that.

You're probably referring to the issue where past 6500 RPM tuned cars tend to lose power against their stock dyno runs due to heat soak. When I asked the Pfadt engineering team this question, they've stated that unlike most other tuners they do not just max the wastegate (maxing the turbo) and then applying timing based on what they find.

All turbochargers have a compressor map that when the compressor map efficiency has been exceeded, will heat soak exponentially for not a lot of airflow gains. Pfadt from what I understand have based their tune on the specific compressor map of the turbo by flowing the turbo in their in house flowbench and then have kept the turbo in its efficiency range and then adding additional timing at the edge of that map.

So from what it sounds like, with the Pfadt tune, not only will the turbo lifespan be longer, the engine will run cooler, and at higher RPM there will not be a significant power loss from the stock tune.


I'm used to seeing some tuners doing things like that to make things look better than real world, but I have the impression you paid for the dyno runs at an independent shop and if so am curious if they informed you about that.
On an unrelated topic, does your car also have an automatic transmission?


I think the question that you're alluding to is about why the Pfadt tune does not appear to lose power past 6500 RPM or so and if starting from a higher RPM has somehow negated that loss.

I've asked this exact question before to all of the tuners that I've found at the time when I was shopping around for a tune and Pfadt was the only tuner that had an answer for this scenario. From what I understand, they have tested comprehensively to account for the tradeoff between boost vs timing, and even with the power gains that they have, they're not always running the turbo at full boost.


There are only so many people on these forums that are capable of asking the right questions, and you are definitely one of them. I will try and answer any other questions with the exception about the AFR on my car, as I've been asked to not disclose that information. I can say that it is running slightly richer than stock though.

Update: I've since install have put almost another 3000 miles onto my ATS and the Pfadt tune has been pretty consistent despite the Texas heat.

I've got a P35 package now sitting in my garage and I'm just waiting for my appointment at LMR for the install. It includes a carbon fiber intake, stainless downpipe, and I've also got an intercooler on order from Pfadt.
 
#28 ·
No issues after 20,000 miles since Pfadt tuned

I've got the P35 Package installed now and it definitely picks power: my ATS has been absolutely reliable with the Pfadt tune no matter how hard I drive it. Its been a good 20,000 miles since I've had the tune and I've had no problems with the car.
 
#29 ·
I've removed the previous 3 posts that were off topic.

If a thread is about a specific vendor's products, do not go off on a tangent and do NOT post about how you feel a competitor you use is better. Keep those things in threads about that vendor's products. Also remember that the forum rules do not permit linking to vendors who are NOT registered with these forums. Thanks.
 
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