Background:
In a previous post, I discussed how this claim made by Equilibrium Tuning is unsubstantiated.
EQT did not respond to an inquiry I sent the business about their claims.
The owner of EQT, Ed Susman, responded to my post about his business’s claims by spreading bullshit aimed at discrediting me while dodging the subject of the claim altogether, detailed in this post.
After making the post Matt from Equilibrium Tuning also responded, piling on more bullshit to what Ed Susman spread, which will be the topic of this post.
Matt’s entire reply is a Red Herring – a deliberate diversion of attention with the intention of trying to abandon the original argument. This avoidance tactic was also used by Ed Susman in his reponse, showing a pattern of behavior from the business members at EQT.
I’m still going to review what Matt said because the information provides helpful insight into how Equilibrum Tuning conducts their business.
Matt’s entire reply is presented at the bottom of this page. I will go through the content of the reply incrementally.
Statement one:
An employee at a company profiting from the sale of a product expresses they have no desire to be involved with substantiating the claims their company makes to consumers about the product.
Understandably it might be annoying for an employee to have to explain the lack of substantiation the business has for its claims.
Statement two:
This first sentence from Matt at EQT is worth focusing on and considering what it tells us.
We tested the Blaze V2 intake back-to-back against one of the intakes that you claim out-flows it.
Matt At EQT, Equilibrium Tuning INC employee
We tested –
Matt starts with “We tested the Blaze V2…“, while the advertisement for the product EQT is selling states “verified by independent testing“.
At best the EQT advertisement is misleading, but this misleading advertisement was brought to the attention of the business owner seven months ago, to which he responded by saying he laughed at the concern and deleted the communication.
The owner also later acknowledged they’re aware the wording has the potential to be misleading:
Purposefully failing to correct a potentially misleading statement makes the advertisement deceptive.
One intake-
Continuing to review Matt’s statement “We tested the Blaze V2 intake back-to-back against one of the intakes…”
One?
EQT claims the Blaze intake is “one of the best-performing and flowing options on the market“, a conclusion they reached by comparing it with one other intake on the market.
Ed Susman also indicated the extent of the testing EQT performed was limited:
Testing the Blaze intake against one other and collecting limited data falls well short of having a sound basis for concluding it is one of the best performing of the 40+ options available “on the market“.
Publishing this conclusion in an advertisement is either deception or incompetence.
You claim –
There is still more to this one sentence:
Matt’s sentence continues with “… back-to-back against one of the intakes you claim out-flows it“.
“you claim out-flows it” is a false statement. Matt is attributing a claim to me that I did not make.
Matt references a test I conducted four years ago using the IE V1 intake with the first-generation CTS turbo inlet elbow through a simulated stock turbocharger compressor inlet.
According to the customer of EQT’s who was assisting with the “test”, they used an IE intake and IE inlet elbow with a Vortex (hybrid turbocharger).
Note: This would have been an IE V2 intake since the IE V1 works with a stock inlet size TIP and the IE TIP has a 3″ inlet.
The baseline intake configuration EQT used during tuning had no parts in common with the test I performed.
Such an error in comparing the systems under test can be due to carelessness, (not a good trait for a tester), incompetence, or deception on the part of the person making the comparison statement.
EQTs tester:
The “we“ part of Matt’s statement that “We tested the Blaze V2” and Mason’s statement that “I was the test car…” raises the question of who this Mason person is, and how confident can we be that they knew what they were doing when “testing” these intakes?
What can be deduced from Ed’s statement is that Mason is a customer of EQT who was having their ECU tuned. Prior information indicated that Mason is located in Colorado. Therefore this would have been remote tuning, with Mason likely being the person overseeing the physical part of the “test”.
I’d trust –
The test was Mason swapping intake setups and EQT re-tuning with the new intake.
Mason’s statement that “I know serval people that have had real world results I’d trust that before you hooking it up to a shop table” gives some insight.
It’s poor practice to blindly “trust” one particular method of measurement over another as Mason is doing. Information about how accurate, repeatable, and resistant to conditions the measurement method is would be needed to gauge how credible the results are, along with the competence of the process conductor.
Expressing blind “trust” in one particular method suggests Mason is unfamiliar with the considerations that are part of performing testing.
Mason also describes using a flow bench as “hooking it up to a shop table“, indicating he possesses little knowledge about a flow bench. A lack of knowledge about the options for making airflow measurements is another bad sign from somebody conducting a test to measure airflow.
Here EQT’s tester reinforces the suspicion that they are uninformed about the qualities of a flow bench device.
Huge gains –
Here EQT’s tester says that “Brett Harrison saw a huge gain.“
The comparison Brett made was the subject of a previous post I made. In short, Brett stated the Blaze intake flowed at least 50% more than a Racingline R600 intake, which was found to be a severely flawed conclusion.
It was learned that Brett used a CTS inlet elbow designed for a stock turbo with a larger hybrid turbocharger, and he replaced the Blaze turbo inlet flange with a larger custom flange. The air intake temperatures were also 30 degrees Fahrenheit higher during the R600 test. All of which contribute to the conclusion being suspect.
That Mason did not recognize the importance of maintaining test conditions and correctly identifying the parts under test adds more evidence that Mason is a poor choice for performing a test that product advertising is based upon.
Get rid of it –
In another example, Mason advises another owner to get rid of their IE V2 intake and DBV2 TIP, implying that the Blaze intake is a better product.
Previously (in this post) I went into detail on why this advice was flawed.
Briefly, Mason used an IE TIP in his “test” which is made for a stock IHI turbo, with a Vortex hybrid turbo, and saw gains when swapping to the Blaze hybrid optimized flange.
The DBV2 is optimized for a hybrid, which suggests there will be little to no gain for the recipient of Mason’s advice in following the recommendation.
Again, Mason is failing to account for changes to the parts in the systems that are likely to significantly affect system performance.
Statement two continued:
By every metric in the logs the Blaze was moving more air….
Matt At EQT, Equilibrium Tuning INC employee
EVERY metric showed the Blaze flowing more air…
Mason changed setups from the Vortex hybrid turbo using an IS20/IS38-optimized turbo inlet elbow to the Vortex hybrid turbo with an inlet flange designed for a hybrid turbo and saw improvement, this is consistent with the flow test results.
What is notable about Matt’s statement is what it omits. EQT claims it is “one of the best-performing and flowing options“, indicating that the Blaze is one of the best in other characteristics in addition to airflow rate.
Matt never addresses any other performance characteristic besides airflow. This suggests the “best-performing” claim is baseless.
Likely scenario:
All of this evidence points to a likely scenario of a car owner with no specialized testing knowledge having their Vortex turbo-equipped car remotely tuned by EQT. The owner swapped from the original IE intake and sub-optimal IE TIP (stock turbo optimized) to the Blaze ATOM V2 intake with a hybrid optimized inlet flange.
After the change, the tuner discovered some further adjustments could be made to the software and once complete with tuning they compared the two results and proclaimed that a test had been conducted.
Neither the people at EQT nor the owner went into this with the intention of conducting a test. Evidence points to neither party having sufficient knowledge of the subject of testing to conduct a test that generates decision-quality data.
Conclusions:
EQT participated in the test of the Blaze intake that is advertised as having been “by independent testing“. I believe the claim of independent testing is misleading.
The Blaze intake was compared with a single intake which became the basis for the “one of the best-performing and flowing options on the market” claim. I believe EQT fails to present a sufficient basis to support the claim.
Matt at EQT compares the test EQT participated in with a flow test I conducted but fails to recognize the parts he is comparing are different. This renders the comparison meaningless, other than to highlight Matt’s inability to assess essential elements of a comparison of test results.
EQT relied upon a customer to handle a portion of their test, but the customer shows no signs of being suitable for reliably conducting a test.
The people at Equilibrium Tuning have failed to demonstrate they are capable of conducting a test that generates data of a sufficient quality to substantiate the claims they make about the Blaze intake.
Next:
The remainder of Matt at EQTs comments will be analyzed in a future post.
Matt at EQT reply screenshot:
At this point it seems like literally every word in the English language s being used to explain your request away lol. Funny how the independent testing turned into them testing it themselves
It’s very clear how eqt does business now. These folks who thump for them probably feel dumb and frankly the silence now means something.
Did you hear back from the FTC? I was following the MQB Platform before I got into and watched EQT and they always seemed shifty.
I received an acknowledgement from the FTC of the complaint being submitted. It’s more likely that the California Attorney General’s office would take enforcement action, if enough complaints were received. The CA AG also acknowledged receiving my complaint.
I feel like all of this stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what your testing does/doesn’t show and the fact that the Blaze has an integrated TIP that is optimized for the hybrid turbo vs. normal OE turbo. Folks really struggle to understand variable control in tests. “Real world” testing would show the same thing here…Blaze on hybrid turbo with normal TIP vs. other with normal TIP…likely v. little difference between intakes in the logs b/c as your bench testing shows…the flow rates are similar. Blaze with hybrid-optimized TIP vs. other with hybrid-optimized TIP, v. little difference between logs for the same reason….bench flows are similar. So on one hand..yes…the Blaze did provide gains but the detail is the TIP that is being left out as being the source of the gains and the flow bench testing/data matches/predicts these results.
The core issue is that a claim was made by EQT that is unsubstantiated.
Confusion amongst many people about test results from different methods is a result of Ed Susman’s efforts to discredit the flow bench tool and my testing in general.
These two things are unrelated, other than the first being the catalyst for exposing the extent of the manipulation that Ed and others at EQT will go to in pursuit of financial profit.