The ATS-V in stock form is one hell of a car. But, Scott working his magic, makes this car a completely different animal. Scott assisted with my intercooler issues (highly recommend the bleeder kit), and of course explaining the preparation to increase the boost (spark plugs, intercooler health, etc.). He is very professional and educated about the ATS-V platform. I would highly recommend getting a tune for any stock ATS-V owner.

I recently bought downpipes, throttle body, wideband sensors, spark plugs, intercooler fill/bleed kit, BOOSTane, HP Tuners with Pro Link and a remote tune from Tapout. Scott had zero problems answering my questions and pointing me in the right direction from the start. Once he had my money this didn’t change unlike some other vendors I have dealt with.

The downpipes sound fantastic. They are loud when you want them to be, however not obnoxious if you keep your foot out of it. Really woke up the turbo sounds as well. Fit was perfect. I went with the catless downpipes and installed widebands in place of the rear O2 sensors as I no longer needed them. I really can’t get over how great they sound, with zero rasp and zero drone.

The intercooler fill and bleed kit is a game changer. I didn’t realize at the time my intercooler wasn’t up to the task. When we got to our initial scan of the car it was apparent to Scott that my intercooler was not working properly. My manifold air temps were way too high to be safe. I then purchased this kit. It was very simple to install and made the job easy. Best part is I can now see if any air bubbles creep back in and remove them easily.

Now let’s get to the fun stuff the tuning… wow just wow…. single best thing you can do to this car hands down. We started by tuning my car before any mods and this really woke the car up. It became a whole different car completely. Scott has a methodical approach where we tune and scan, scan, scan multiple times to make sure we are not doing any damage to the car. Really put my mind at ease. Each iteration would add a bit more and every time he sent a new tune I had a smile on my face. My favorite was the last tune where he simply said “scan looks good, here have some more power”. My car now chirps the tires through 1st, 2nd and 3rd gear. Performance aside Scott was awesome to deal with and often answered emails or worked on my tune outside of business hours. Often I would send a scan after dinner time expecting not to hear from him until the next day, often one hour later there was a new tune in my email before bed, if not it was there when I woke up. I’m not sure that he sleeps. I can tell he is passionate not only about these cars but his business and his reputation in this small community. If every business conducted themselves like Tapout Tuning does life would be simple.

TLDR: Tapout Tuning is awesome, Scott is awesome, if you do nothing else to your car but get a tune you won’t regret it!

My car was tuned already with a different tuner.  Still have the same FBO, just changed the tuner and tried Tapout.  Didn’t regret it at all, as the car became more powerful, more reliable and smooth in shifting.

Scott Cook of Tapout Tuning, a long-time acquaintance since my 3800 days when I was a young 20-something, has delivered to me something extremely enjoyable for my ’17 Cadillac ATS-V. I utilized his tuning and performance-parts recommendation for my daily driver after I was unsatisfied with the near-end result I was arriving at with my prior tuner/speed shop. Before the Cadillac ATS-V, Scott tuned and fabricated parts for the Grand Prix that acquired him many “firsts” in the group. He was praised and despised for that fame. I happened to be, at first, on that ‘other’ side. After my experiences with this current platform, I can now attest to Scott’s commitment and passion toward the LF4 and ATS-V.

I had been enjoying my ATS-V as a daily driver thru the winter and then as also a summer-time HPDE car (my first HPDE experience). My previous tuner gave me a monster tune which had huge peak numbers…but was quite rough and difficult to handle on the track. Lots of hiccups and stumbles amid giant gushes or power than would upset the car in turns and hiccup in high gears at wide-open throttle. It was a riot, granted, and I was so overwhelmed by the power that I was near-fearful of the unpredictably and suspicious of some desensitizations that would allow such power. On top of that, these issues remained issues because I was paid slow attention.

Scott re-entered my automotive enthusiast scene. A few phone calls with him convinced me to give his services a try. They were not without effort and commitment, however. He recommended extra items (wideband O2 addition, fuel pump & spark plug modifications) that added expense on top of my existing modifications. On the flip side, he did not “over-sell” me on any unnecessary parts. In fact, he harped that many OEM components on this car are far superior to other company’s aftermarket performance parts. After a few very educational and enjoyable conversations, I was sold on his ability to improve the aspects of my car that I was concerned about. I obliged with the extra items. As a surgeon, I equate it to “getting few extra tests” before your surgery. The wideband O2 sensor is like “bloodwork” for your combustion. It allows him to perform the necessary sequential tuning updates needed to safely maximize and optimize the performance of your LF4. Without these types of enhancements, he would otherwise be tuning blind.

We began with data collection and a baseline dyno run to see where we were starting at. After that, I collected a series of street-scans using HP Tuners. He would then email me updated tunes to safely bump up the power and work on drivability issues, such as shift timing. We arrived at a decent, safe spot to return to the dyno. This time, we spent about 3 hours with the car on the Dyno where I would email him the data scans and power charts for him to study and then modify the tune. Remotely, he would work his magic and email me back the updated tune that my local speed shop would then help me flash to my car and run another dyno pull. After achieving as much safe power as we could, I checked his work with a street run. The car pulled insanely hard, however was very controllable and extremely confident. It is of course subjective to say, but I could instantly tell that this new Tapout Tune was what I was looking for.

**It should be noted, Scott does not prefer to sell and deliver a “one-and-done” canned tune. Nor is that method the most enjoyable with this platform. After going through his method, I had so much fun and learned so much!**

I formerly (still have it available) had a tune from a top tuning company for our platform.  I was happy and it performed well.  I had always respected Scott’s work but having had many tunes on many cars I knew that from one top tuner to another there really isn’t that much difference once a car is figured out.  I was wrong.  The difference is Scott really takes each car he tunes personal.  He dedicates time toward getting a particular car dialed in.  He’s not tuning 100 cars, he’s tuning “your” car.  My car is pretty much stock other than running BOOSTane for 98 octane, Brisk RR12YS plugs, and a Borla Cat back.  The first thing he did was look at my previous tune log and right away he noticed irregularities and things that just didn’t make sense.  The nice part is he doesn’t just say “I fixed your issues”.  He actually connected with me on Zoom and shared his screen so he could walk me through what he was seeing.  Everything from AFR’s a little too lean, timing issues, and KR showing up a lot.  He then looked at logs from my factory tune and started working from there.  He painstakingly raised power over multiple tune versions so that we could work out any issues and verify drivability.

I’m currently on the best tune I’m going to see until I resolve a couple of things holding me back like aging catalytic converters (83,000 miles), my plugs being on the edge for the current power level, and lack of a wideband.  These will come in the future and we’ll revisit then.  As it stands I have solid power and I now have HP tuners so I can self diagnose a lot of issues that may creep up.

My recommendation: If you just want a tune you can dump in the car and then drive off, Tapout is not your tuner. They can give you that but Scott won’t like it and quite frankly, if you saw how that canned tune was performing you wouldn’t either.  As an example think of someone who has been in a cast for six months and then finally has it removed.  Just being able to remove the cast and move freely feels amazing.  That’s a canned tune. The problem is you’re walking better but still have a limp and there are some underlying issues that require x-rays, MRIs, and physical therapy in order to be back to 100%.  Tapout tuning is not just the surgeon but also the physical therapist and radiologist that looks at the underlying issues and addresses them one by one until he has you at 100% of your potential.