Sports cat

I’ve used both albeit for different cars. Chris at efi I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Did my s2000 with supercharger conversion twice. Rs did my megane and although I wasn’t there when it was been mapped the one on one from efi and time spent i would personally go for.

I live 10miles from rs btw

 

That's him
http://www.efi-parts.co.uk/

 

I dont want to start world war 3 here... but Im going to say what I think sorry cant help myself....

Ive said most of this before and going to say it again... and once again im not trying to teach egg sucking but its better to help people understand even if its basic. Im hoping it at least gives somebody help or lets them go in with a open mind.

Im going to point out the first and most important step in getting your calibration set up and realistically the reason you need to, so firstly you are picking and paying somebody to do it for you, 99 / 100 because you either have no idea what you are doing, or you are not confident you can do the work yourself to a reasonable standard. And the 1/100 is probably usually a crafty mapper trying to nick somebodies file or watch them at work

Thats key here in determining who is the "best", as 99/100 also do not know what a mapper is actually doing or what control they have over the file. It will be a rare case the mapper will share that kind of information with you as that is how they make a living. However, if anyone thinks they do not share it with each other - you are wrong. I am almost certain the top two in question have traded information - absolutely nothing wrong with it.

What you are paying for (ideally) is their knowledge and time, like any other trade, some people can do the job, some people have bad days / wish they called in sick that day, some people want to be the best at what they do etc etc... these will all come into play.

Now another huge point I need to make here, is the calibration can only work with what you have, so if there is something not running correctly mechanically or electrically your results will be effected. Now I appreciate some people dont have a blank checkbook when it comes to tuning, but lets face it, the "better" tuners are the most expensive (excluding ktec, I know you are thinking it ) and if somebody is willing to pay top book price for mapping I would wager their car is in fairly good shape most of the time too. So they may be more likely to gain reputation simply by that as the cars they work on may generally be more healthy.

The main work is quite simple, slap on more target boost, and adjust the timing and fueling to suit it. But the time that they spend fine tuning, smoothing the figures out etc is what you are seeing in the results.
The graph above posted by @Dale1uk showing two tunes, the first looks like a roller coaster, so they either hired Stevie Wonder to tune for the day or more likely Chris at EFI knows a table that they dont whether it be fueling, boost solenoid duty etc etc. That is a great example of good and bad work. Or lack of knowledge on the firsts part, to be honest I would be impressed if they knew any more than drivers wish

I am a little confused about what people think is a "safe tune"? What is a safe tune? Because somebody told you it is? I have never seen anybody check their car for knock with a stethoscope following mapping? how do you know what AFR you are running? Timing? Injector duty? I can go on and on... maybe its gauged on how many throw a rod or burn a hole through a piston following mapping? Which I will add in the case it happens most of the time it is down to poor parts or poor maintenance, not the cal file.
There is no such thing as a safe map, when you start adding torque, you are adding stress on everything, and that is down to you to spec parts supposibly designed to resist that stress. Not to mention increase of accelleration of moving parts i.e hp under load, and temperature increases. Ultimately by increasing any of the above you are decreasing the longevity. End of.

There is no black magic voodoo kung fu lost hidden art here, and dont be fooled by thinking there is. Mapping theory is incredibly simple - burn as much fuel efficiently as possible.
The big turbo that some think adds loads of power is just there to supply air mass to burn more fuel. How they go about doing that is shown in the graph.

As I have said before I would not only gauge their skill on ability (and lets face it you cant really as most would not tell you what they know) if you do know a bit you can fire some test questions, and see what reaction or reply you get.
I cant help but looking at is as if I was looking to employ them, what traits do they have? Do they listen to you, do they explain themself, are they keen, are they bigheaded, do they walk off for two hours for no apparent reason, are they rude.... etc. I dont do business with people that display some of the above, so why would I want somebody with qualities I dislike working on my car?
I have visited to all three of the above tuners. Two of have tuned my cars.

What I am also going to say about Chris at EFI is, he is an extremely polite and well mannered chap, he listens to what you have to say and will spend time talking with you. At the end of the day this information gathering is helping him do what you are paying him to do and decide what he needs to do.
His knowledge is quite impressive and on my visits we talked about topics regarding the file and ecu that I would not expect a tuner to let out on.
And proof in the pudding, yes I have seen more power from other F4R engines, no doubt, but have I seen one with lines like this and area under - no.