I am a DIY tuner. Well a DIY tinkerer. I like to play with circuits, build pic projects, and I really enjoy the challenge of making control systems. Not an expert, but i'm happy with things like multimeters and assembly programming. This led me onto playing with my own tunes on my rover sdi, fairly simplistic msa11 ecu.
This was actually rather succesful. I didn't have the right turbo at the time, but i'm fixing it, and hopefully i can make a decent tune when that's all bolted up and sorted. Would I do it for other people with rovers? Can't say I wouldn't. I'm happy with what I know so far, and i've chewed my way through most books on the subject that I can find (including a few with a yellow 'theme).
At the same time though, you have to respect the industry. There is absolutely little benefit to anyone, for someone selling remaps at say, £50. Okay, someone gets a cheap remap, and someone else potentially makes £40 profit out of it. I'm not here to say every diy remap is crap, nor am I here to say that you'l 'kill' an ecu, but even then the damage is being done to the industry.
The tools take considerable expertise to make, okay, clones are cheap but what if there were nothing to clone? The people with the brains have to be paid, do they not deserve a fair wage? Undercutting the industry may work, but is it the responsible thing to do in the current economical climate?
The way out of this hole, is by all accounts do things properly. Make a fair product, make a fair service, and sell at a fair price. And that doesn't always mean bargain basement. Skill has to be rewarded. The world cannot thrive without this concept.
When I'm not tuning cars, I'm helping run a road maintenance company. In the last year many companies have launched themselves undercutting our prices. Our customer base is still satisfactory, despite the hard times because despite having a year of hell, we have kept standards up, and most of our clients would prefer the consistent service. I beleive good business can be built around a fair price, and i think anyone trying to make 'bargain basement business' has real potential to inflict damage to other businesses aswell as their own profit margin. This isn't about individuals, it's about being responsible for ourselves and others.
It might be a strange attitude to take, but I think every single road maintenance company that tried to undercut us would have been better off standing firm and in line with our own prices. Tuning isn't all about money of course, and I do apologise if i've gone off on a tangent, but it is a concern that gets raised a lot in conjunction with people doing their own and others remapping.