Hello!
Boy how the time has flown! It feels like just yesterday that we were trying to prepare ourselves for the Australian Time Attack in late June, and in a blink the rest of the year has completely vanished!
This year has been a bit of a tough one for everyone, as the “cost of living crisis” really took a hit on us all – as everyone’s rent and food bills went up. This has obviously flowed over into the online retail sector too, and most of the people that I’ve spoken to (suppliers and other shops) have said they’ve seen a pretty notable drop-off in order quantity. Regardless, we have pushed on, and have been working to be more efficient to make sure that we’re not hit quite so hard by these issues.
Speaking of changes, we’ve seen a few changes to our staff roster throughout the course of the past year. Around the middle of the year we added a new staff member to manage our warehouse – Shiv. Some of you would have interacted with him during his time here, and I think we can all agree that he’s the kind of bloke you’d want to spend your time with. While he was here, he really enjoyed getting involved on the social-media side, and you would have heard his voice in the background of basically all of our Facebook and Instagram stories (which we also produced a lot more of while he was here). Unfortunately, given the drop in order volumes throughout the year, we were finding it a bit of a struggle to keep him busy all the time, so we ultimately suggested that he may want to consider looking for alternative work – which he found very quickly and by all accounts he’s very happy with the position he’s moved to.
Another person who left our team around the middle of the year was our mechanic, Chris. This was definitely by way of a mutual understanding/agreement. Chris ultimately wanted to find work a little closer to home, and was getting a little tired of getting his hands dirty doing oil changes and parts installs every day. This is, given he originally interviewed with us for an office position (and instead became our mechanic) totally fair enough. He has now got himself a role as a manager at a tyre shop much closer to home, and is enjoying not spending hours in the car every day driving to-and-from work, and now he doesn’t have to get covered in oil/fuel/etc. anywhere near as often. We’re still good friends with Chris, and he stops past the shop frequently to say hello.
Having seen Chris move on, we obviously needed to find another mechanic. Even though I’m also a licenced mechanic, I already have too much on my plate with all the tuning work I’m doing, so we put the word out and found ourselves a new mechanic – Lachlan. Lachlan, came from doing FIFO (Fly-in, Fly-out) work in West Australia and was flying back and forth from Sydney ever week to do it. As much as it had its perks (mainly fiscal, to be fair) the work load and constant travel was wearing thin, and he wanted to settle into a more consistent role. Lachlan was actually already a customer of ours too, as he’s got a partially stripped and modified i20N (it’s even been engineered to be registered as a 2-seat vehicle so he can keep the roll-cage in the car full time). Lachlan has fit in well with the team and has a-class banter which is definitely appreciated by George, who can be frequently found in fits of laughter in reaction to something Lachlan has said.
In addition to putting Lachlan on, we were finding that we still had enough work coming through the workshop that we occasionally needed to outsource some labour to our neighbours. As it turns out, they weren’t as busy as they wanted to be, and we were a little too busy to handle, so after a couple of months of this constant back and forth, we asked one of the owners next door if he wanted to pick up a few days a week with us full time, which seemed to work well for all involved, and this is where we get to Mark. Mark is now with us 2 days a week helping to work on longer term jobs (or alternatively doing smaller jobs to free up, Lachlan for bigger projects). Mark obviously has his own workshop, and a long history of mechanical experience, so having him onboard has been very helpful when more difficult or complex jobs (like stripping/refitting an engine) are involved. Additionally, if employing Lachlan turned the banter up, Mark turns it up to 11. Any time we all get together (for a weekly lunch/meeting) you can be guaranteed that the banter game will be A-level.
As for the rest of us, we’ve shuffled roles a little, but we’re all still here:
- Jess is now, in addition to being our customer service manager, also managing the warehouse and has taken on-board some of our book-keeping work. All that in addition to still doing a Uni degree part time! I think everyone can agree that Jess is a complete powerhouse, and honestly Cherry Tuning wouldn’t be where it is without her.
- George has now taken on the roll of Operations Manager, putting him in charge of both businesses (Cherry Tuning and Cherry Mechanical) and ensuring the cross-flow of products and information is handled properly at all times. He’s also now the Workshop Controller, and is responsible for managing the workshop bookings and ensuring everything is allocated enough time and that parts are ready for installations.
- Talyssa has picked up a few extra days per week - now that our son is old enough to be spending a bit more time at day care. She continues to manage our marketing and communications side of the business and has taken over the majority of the Social Media management since Shiv left. She’s a fantastic mother, a very patient and understanding wife, and as much as having her back at work more often is exceptionally valuable – I’m just happy to get to spend a bit more time with her again at work!
That brings us on to me…
First of all, allow me to apologise for the delayed responses to any/all tuning related questions. In truth, I’ve been having a hard time with my time management, trying to juggle all the different cars that we get through our shop, as well as event preparation and consolidation from World Time Attack and the Hyundai N-Festival. Additionally, I’ve been devoting a lot of my time to tuning and tune-related product development. We’re working on a possible plug-in aftermarket ECU option that’s going to be a more cost-effective alternative to some of the existing products on the market. Obviously, that has required a lot of research, development, and testing regarding CANbus data – and we’re still only in the early stages. In addition to this, I’ve also been teaching myself how to decompile the ECU operating system language to not only improve my own tunes and tuning ability, but also so that we can work towards custom operating system options. My initial hope on this front is to find, and fix, the air-flow limiter that’s built into the i20N ECU that’s currently stopping the car from making more boost higher in the RPM range.
On top of that, I’ve been working on more E85 testing and development for the 2.0T platform. We’ve been working with some suppliers for upgraded parts and have been putting time into fine tuning the ECU operation to work with these. As it stands, we’re still waiting for some injectors to arrive, as we are finding that the fuel system still really struggles to maintain good pressure once we start to turn the boost up past 24psi with one of our hybrid G30 turbos. That said, George has been driving his sedan around with E85 in it for the last several weeks, and it did the trip up to QLD and back (an 1800km round trip) and hasn’t had any issues at all. The E85 has given the car a lot more power throughout the whole rev-range, however being boost limited means that we’re still ultimately making more-or-less the same peak power that we can already achieve with 98RON and a higher boost target. The race car on the other hand, with its additional port injectors (and completely stock engine), isn’t having this issue – and we’re currently at 340kW at the wheels on our roller dyno and have now fitted larger pressure sensors so that we can push the boost past the 29psi sensor limit... I just ran out of time to actually get it back on the dyno for a final retune. But I’m hopeful of setting numbers similar to what a few other people have been posting recently, however it’s still being done on the factory ECU (with a Haltech being used purely for injector management). Honestly, it continues to impress me how capable the 2.0T motor is, especially given it’s open-deck and has cast pistons from the factory. 15 years ago, when I was more of a “Subaru guy” if you suggested running 30psi and over 300kW on a stock open-deck motor I would have laughed.
On the topic of tuning, there has also been a few changes to the EK1 tuning platform that basically stopped my EK1 tuning for a couple of weeks, and we’re still fighting it a little in terms of minor teething issues since moving to the new backend. For all my EK1 customers, keep an eye out for a follow-up email after this one, which will detail the changes and provide steps to help get you an updated tune.
Additionally, and finally good news for all you Stinger owners out there, we’re going to be spending some time this holiday break rebuilding our dyno room to rotate the dyno and allow us to finally dyno RWD cars. To date, all my stinger tunes have either been on rented dynos (here or interstate) or done on the street. This will mean we can finally give the Stinger community the love it deserves, and we’ll be on the hunt for a couple of development cars in the early parts of next year. It also means that our next dyno day will be open to a lot more cars, so you can all bring your mates along with their RWD cars and we can see what they’re making too!
As a final point - and on the topic of making changes - I might mention about a few other general business/direction changes. Obviously, the lack of stock-level transparency on our website is as frustrating for us as it is for you. We’ve attempted, several times, to implement software packages that have promised to fix it, but ultimately, we’ve never found something that fits the job. Regardless, we’re still making it a priority to move towards adding stock information to the website, and we’re continuing to work on providing that in the near future. Secondly, you may notice a couple of brands disappear from our website. This is not necessarily because we dislike any of those brands, but more so that trying to keep on 4 different brands of intercooler for one car is not feasible for a small business like ours. So, we’re going to consolidate our supplier list a little bit moving forward, however as always, if there’s something that you want - that we don’t have – you’re always encouraged to reach out and ask us for our help. The business was started to help people, and that’s still our primary goal today.
Well, I think that’s enough from me for now – as I write this, it’s only a few days before Christmas, and I have an i30N sitting on the dyno with a custom manifold and a big 6262 turbo setup that needs me to finish the tune (Update: we made 310kW on 98RON and a massive 363kW with the water/methanol system turned on!!).
Thank you all so much for your support, understanding, and patience throughout this year. I know that there have been some people who have been frustrated by our seeming lack of communication or the inability to get in touch with one of us – however we are still a small team, and we’re all doing multiple jobs to try and keep the business running as best we can. All I can ask is that you continue to be patient with us, and don’t feel bad for reaching out to us several times if you haven’t heard back. To this point, I would also recommend calling us if there is something you need an update on, or if you haven’t heard back from us about something. The phones are generally the first thing to get prioritized, however there’s only so many of us here that can be on the phone at any one time, so I’ll pre-emptively apologize if you can’t get through.
I hope you all have a fantastic holiday, and I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!
Lots of love,
Tristan