This week's feature article comes from Louis Ott, one of our dealers in the US, who did an installation on a Toyota 4 Runner.  His comment to us was:  "It's not too exciting. No blown engines. No wiring fires. No software glitches. Soon as we got the global settings figured out, they just worked."  For us it is quite exciting, it just goes to show that the SMT 6 is not only small and lightweight, but, with a little help from the dealers, also easy to install. 

Here is Louis' full article: 

"My work in selling Perfect Power products is focused on selling to customers who do not have a Perfect Power dealer or installer nearby. This means that I do a lot of email and telephone instruction to customers on installation, configuration, and tuning techniques. When a Toyota 4 Runner owner contacted me with questions about installing a SMT on his almost stock 1998 4 Runner, I was pleased because he lived only about an hour and a half away, and could come to my shop. I also found out that he was technicall y competent, computer experienced, already knew a lot about his vehicle and had the wiring diagrams. How much luckier could I get? He brought his vehicle over to my shop and he did the installation without needing much help from me. We had some trouble figuring out the proper global settings for the SMT-6, and tried a SMT-5. The 5 worked perfectly. Later, we tried a SMT-6 on his 4 Runner with correct global settings and it worked as well.

The SMT logging function which records the oxygen sensor voltage, along with other parameters, is a big help to get the mixture set and an acceleration measuring device such as the "Road Dyno" or "On Track" helps get the ignition timing optimized. The 4 Runner owner found the SMT particularly helpful in getting the most out of his ride. Toyota has apparently detuned the 4 Runner a bit and there is noticeably more available from the 3.4 litre V6 that can be tapped by leaning the mixture and advancing the spark timing in the right places. 

Since that first installation, I've sold 5 more SMT-5 and SMT-6 units to other 4 Runner owners based mostly on that first owner's recommendation on a 4 Runner email list. The wildest SMT-6 tuned 4 Runner has a larger MAF from Toyota Supra, higher flow (370cc) injectors, and a supercharger. Without the SMT, it wouldn't run above a very rough idle speed. With the SMT, the owner has a big smile."