Stevenson tune

[bpo]

Anyone had any good or bad experience with a Stevenson tune ?

My experience to say the least has not been a good one !!
I bought my tune and delete (2015 Jetta TDI) on 11/25/2021, received my hardware on 12/13/2021 minus the coolant bypass kit which I had paid for, Jeff did get it sent out a few days later.

I sent my stock file back the same day I received the hardware on 12/13/2021, I never received my tuned file until 1/13/2022 and then I had to email them as a reminder.

I completed my tune and delete the weekend 1/15/2022 in which I had asked Jeff if he had any instructions to do the delete, his reply to me was to visit the Rawtek site they have a good tutorial ( why didn't I just buy a Rawtek kit ).

1/16/2022 the job is complete and this was definitely not my first delete that I have done.
Started the car up and sure enough CEL light on and glow plug light is blinking, emailed Jeff ( which is the only way he responds to you) to trouble shoot , he indicated that he needs VCDS codes, so I purchase one, on 1/21/2022 I had codes for him, no response.
1/22/2022 I emailed again, no response.
As of 1/30/2022 No response !!.
Maybe I should ask Rawtek for help !!!

Brian

 

[DivineChaos]

Anyone had any good or bad experience with a Stevenson tune ?

My experience to say the least has not been a good one !!
I bought my tune and delete (2015 Jetta TDI) on 11/25/2021, received my hardware on 12/13/2021 minus the coolant bypass kit which I had paid for, Jeff did get it sent out a few days later.

I sent my stock file back the same day I received the hardware on 12/13/2021, I never received my tuned file until 1/13/2022 and then I had to email them as a reminder.

I completed my tune and delete the weekend 1/15/2022 in which I had asked Jeff if he had any instructions to do the delete, his reply to me was to visit the Rawtek site they have a good tutorial ( why didn't I just buy a Rawtek kit ).

1/16/2022 the job is complete and this was definitely not my first delete that I have done.
Started the car up and sure enough CEL light on and glow plug light is blinking, emailed Jeff ( which is the only way he responds to you) to trouble shoot , he indicated that he needs VCDS codes, so I purchase one, on 1/21/2022 I had codes for him, no response.
1/22/2022 I emailed again, no response.
As of 1/30/2022 No response !!.
Maybe I should ask Rawtek for help !!!

Brian

Yeah I was going to buy a cp3 kit from him. I had asked a few questions and it took 3 days to respond. Maybe you can get your money back from the tune and tuner and go with someone else? I went with Malone.

 

[bpo]

Yeah he is definitely not very timely with his responses.

I also have a friend who recently bought a Rawtek kit and overall it just seems like the better way to go .

 

[Mozambiquer]

That's a lot of the feedback I've heard about him. I don't recommend him at all.
He's got some shady things that go on.

 

[dhangejr]

First, I have NEVER bought a thing from Jeff and I don't know him personally, and have zero reasons to lick his buttttt....
but try facebook messenger...
if thats an inconvenience I understand , #****zuck I feel you.

I digress...

I have used him as a resource for more than 5 years. He responds very quickly. I almost wanna go message him right now with some dumb question like can I delete the MAF and still get good MPG lol just to see when he replies...

I had a dumb tuning question a few weeks ago, he responded in like 10 min...I think it was a Friday night too.

All that and I have NEVER given jeff a single dime of my money! How is that for customer satisfaction!

Jeff was the person who first showed me how to tune a car. I still won't do it cuz it will probably blow up...I
Sadly, back then he was not tuning professionally he just wanted to teach me to tune. COOL DUDE!

I ended up getting a Kerma tune...Yea, their customer support is pretty poor, dude is rude. And im a facebook jail vet so you know im not the nicest little @55 hole myself!

Any way, I would pay no one other than Malone or Jeff to tune my car, but he Stevenson Don't do mk4's any more. I would pay Rocekt Chip to...

 

[calimustang]

Hello everyone,

This is for my 2015 Passat CVCA engine.

I would like to share my experience with Jeff Stevenson.... How it started was Diesel DNA posting a package deal... it was too good to be true. It was $1500 for exhaust and tune with flash zilla back on Nov 2019... I thought was decent as Jeff Stevenson, he had good reputation in the MK4 community. little I know at that time, Common Rail and MK4's ecu and sensors and so forth are totally different. The CR's are much more advanced and requires far more complex tuning, as for MK4 a caveman can do it!

Anyway, exhaust and tune was installed at trusty local TDI guru's shop, Dark Side developments' exhaust, itself was very nice quality but missed 1 or 2 things, which I bought from Diesel DNA..... unfortunately. Anyway lucky for the guru he had backup part and slapped it on and problem solved.

the flashzilla from Jeff.... was scrambled. little difficult to see but took us a while to get it tuned and completed. He took it for a test drive..... came back with dismayed face and said "she is gutless."

That flipped my world upside down, CEL was thrown almost instantly after firing her up. I contacted Jeff and he sent a new tune next day and uploaded it, CEL went off but still gutless. I told him, he sent me another one promising that he will add power to her. almost no improvement. MPG did indeed jump 5-7 MPG more since delete/tune but gutless as hell. Barely can go uphill with a lot of hesitations and turbo wont spin up right until I press halfway of the pedal, finally she goes! only solution to go uphill is put her in sport mode. That was too much. only 5 to 10 degree uphill, still struggled. That made us very nervous..... because we have 3 children and 2 adults to think of. almost got t-boned and rear ended once too many times..... got fed up and scanned VCDS on her recently and it came out with improper torque rating from the tune. so I cleared it, finally she accelerates a tad better. we decided, no more bs. I did contact Jeff immediately, he replied back saying he will get back to me on Tuesday. That was on the weekend of Aug 16th, as of today Sept 25th, several messages to him. He never READ IT! WE ARE DONE!

The MPG started to drop after few weeks into 20’s…. Yep 20’s! Best we made was 32!

So I immediately contacted Malone, got their flashzilla and tried to use Jeff's Flash Zilla to flash her to stock, no success. screen was too scrambled then it broke. So Malone and I decided to mail the ECU to Malone, it costed me a arm and leg! I swallowed the big pill. within 1-2 days, they sent it back to me. plugged it in, she wont fire up. we figured Jeff's tune is still stuck in the ecu. mailed it back on their penny. Then they mailed it back to me, arrived yesterday. plugged it on. Finally she fired up to life! it's been 2 long hell-ish experience with the ecu. not Malone's fault. now she hauls ASS! The second I started her up, CEL came on instantly, scanned it. It was EGT and took it out and it was burnt badly from Jeff’s tune.

Anyway his claims of Stage 1 tune that equals to Malone stage 2 by Jeff? HA! It's worse than emission mandated fix by EPA/VW. steer CLEAR of them at all costs!

 

[cuban11182]

On my previous Jetta I went with him first. I paid for three tunes I believe, and still have them. This was before he started using loaders and would send them to you, and you'd flash with a cloned cable. The tunes made power, but were very smokey and the EGTs were decently high. I tried Malone, Kerma, and MRTuning on that car, and they were all better. All of them had their pros and cons. I purchased a MAF-less version of the tune, as I planned to pull that motor and put a GT1856 and 260 injectors and put it into my CJ7. He asked for my old tune, which I sent to him, he made his adjustments and sent it back. You can use free software online and compare the tables. He made no adjustments to fueling to compensate from the 230s to the 260s. I sold the car and built another motor that I'm running now in my CJ7.

He's been accused of stealing other vendors tunes in the past (when I sent Malone my tune, they confirmed it was there's that was modified). Some tuners put IDs in the software and you can see who made it this way. I know he sold some South African tunes off as his own, and was caught. He was unable to figure out some issues with his red Jetta when tuning with his 2260, went to another tuner and they was able to get it fixed (albeit he denies this). He doesn't like competition, so he bans/blocks people from his FB group(s) because he doesn't want to deal with it and says that they're used cloned versions of legitimate software, even though on his FB groups he had videos of him using it himself.

My two cents are this: choose a HP and TQ goal. Build the motor and supply it with the hardware needed to get you to that. Get it tuned to what you want. Don't waste money on Staged tunes, rather get one tune that meets your goal. Stay away from the first generation GT turbos and go with a GTB, GTC or GTD if you want VNT.

Best of luck