Issues with Palm Beach Dyno HP Tuner RTD

Super frustrated with an issue with my HPTuner RTD that I recieved from Palm Beach Dyno. Went and registered and synched my RTD on the HP Tuner website as instructed.

I attach the RTD to the OBD port, and hook it up to my laptop, via USB and bring up RTD Flasher. I then select "Read". when I select "read" and the following message appears (as pictured below). Yes, I'm connected to WiFi. The RTD is lit up green when plugged into the OBD port and then it's plugged into the lap top. Laptop has better than Windows 7.

I'll admit I'm pretty spoiled. My last two vehicles, a 2011 Mazdaspeed 3 and 2014 Fiesta ST used the Cobb Accessport and it's so user friendly and easy a toddler could use it. It's easy to datalog and upload maps too.

After reaching out to PBD twice via email and twice by phone and never receiving a call back by their tuner, I'm feeling like the neglected red headed step child who just blew $811 on something that isn't working. Yes, it's possible it could be "user error" (I've never used any HP Tuner products before), but you'd think it could be figured out fairly quickly with a little help from who I bought it from. I was told I'd get a call from one of their tuners yesterday and no phone call came, not yesterday or today it's very frustrating. I realize these companies are busy with business but do I have to purchase a gold or platnimum tuner package to get help? Should my RTD already show the pre purchased license credits, or not?

Does anyone have any ideas? Please advise.

I see a lot of people here ranting and raving about Palm Beach Dyno but I'm not impressed at all. They don't return phone calls, they tell me a tuner (James) will call me back in a couple hours and two days later nothing (all I hear is crickets). Then I was told today in an email (and I quote) "Just asked James about your credits, give him a few"..... then silence the rest of the day. Is this just normal customer service I should just expect and be patient or have I fallen between the cracks? I could understand if I could write my vehicles stock map, sent it to them and I'd have to wait a few days or even a week but I can't even get the RTD to recognize my vehicle or log my VIN.

Meanwhile, I have $800 (RTD, licensing fees and tune) worth of crap sitting on my desk that does absolutely nothing and since they already have my money, they seem to be in no hurry to figure out what is wrong with it.

Maybe they are just back logged because of covid, I don't know but in my honest opinion this would not be considered "good customer service". I take no pleasure complaining but by monday we will be starting week 2 of this and I'm losing my patience.

Sorry you have to run into this but I do appreciate the insight. Maybe they shouldn’t be on the Top 40 List. Hard list to attain, easy to lose.

Not to let PBD off the hook for customer support, but have you been over to the HP Tuners forum?

Might be worth 10 minutes to go over there and join up and throw a post up because to me this looks like an HP Tuners issue and not necessarily something PBD has caused... So MAYBE somebody on the HP Tuners forum can guide you to get everything talking.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will take a look tomorrow.

I could also be the usb port not being fast enough to process the data. Some of these OBD to usb are very fussy with port speed/connectivity.

I submitted a support ticket with HP Tuner. I ended up buying a new laptop and finally got the RTD read my vehicle. Just waiting now to get an email back from PBD. They said a tuner will email me back.in 24-48 hours.

keep at it man. squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Having this same issue can’t figure it out for the life of me. Fairly new laptop too. Driving me nuts

Contact HP Tuner through their support and submit a ticket. I got it figured out pretty quickly through them and then PBD got me my maps fairly quickly. It appears that $800 only gets you an RTD, 4 credits and 4 "canned" maps with no revisions. For a custom tune I think you have to upgrade upgrade your tuning plan.

EDIT: (7/27/21)

PBD has been very very good with supplying revisions as my modifications have been added. When you spend the $800 on the RTD, for the credits and for four tunes, you also get revisions. My only quip is that they are canned tunes (off the shelf) but they work really well.

Thanks I submitted a ticket. I figured this would be 1 2 3 done. I might just drive down to pbd it’s only a few mins south of me. I thought the 800 bucks came with everything I needed.

This is why I don't want to do it myself

Ended figure it it out. Didn’t realize the mpvi 2 software is what I also needed to download for the drivers. Stock file pulled and emailed should have the tune by tomorrow

After I figured out I needed to download the mpvi2 software and the rtd software it was smooth sailing very simple. I almost took an hour drive to pbd

Hey Ice, you're a level-headed guy, if you decide you want to do it all yourself, let me know and I'll take you through it all real-time on the phone. Facetime too if you have iPhone.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Let me continue the research, see if it raises or lowers my anxiety and go from there.

Again, thank you.

Oh, "Level headed guy?"

LOL....sucker

Get the feeling no one here is really level headed

Relatively speaking, of course...!

Of course


Level headed people do not drive 400HP SUV's 140 mph

Got the tune today uploaded it to the vehicle. Honestly made a noticeable difference kinda of surprised me. Very happy palm beach dyno was on top of it. Also hp tuners answered me about 4 hours too even though I had already figured it out it made me happy that they actually got back to me.

And idk of every pbd tune is like this but I noticed that the auto start/stop has been deactivated and that was a huge plus for me!

100% recommend these guys