Cars and engines have always been a passion of mine. In 2009 I built the world's first LS2 turbo swapped Nissan 350z that made the cover of Modified magazine and Motortrend in 2011. You can read the article here. l built this car on jack stands in my garage with a set of craftsman tools. Looking to further challenge myself, I purchased my first HP Tuners cable and learned how to tune the car. After a couple of years worth of learning, tuning, and setup changes, it ended up making 1,044hp/988tq through an engine and transmission I built and an 88mm turbo. The setup was changed a few more times before I ultimately decided to sell it.

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In 2013, I started my job at Infiniti as a c-tech. Within 4 years, I became a certified Infinti/Nissan master technician and ASE master certified with L1 advanced level diagnosis. I was eventually promoted to shop foreman and then again to service manager.​ Fast forward to March of 2020. I was given the opportunity to temporarily step away from my full time job due to world events. I also took this time to step back into tuning. Throughout the years since 2009, I had tuned many vehicles for friends and through word of mouth, including jet skies, motorcycles, and 7 of my brothers C6 and C7 GS and Z06s. During this time, I focused mainly on tuning motorcycles. I had a blue 2018 GSXR-1000 at the time. The Instagram name was @gixx_sonic. While at a racing event in Texas, I was asked, "Is that bike EJR Tuned?". Jokingly, I responded with, "No, it's Sonictuned!" and that is where the name came from. 

 

In September of 2020, I was asked to return back to work. I declined the request and decided to pursue tuning full time. My primary motivation for this was my dog Garrett (picture of him at the bottom). I did not want Garrett's last years to be spent home alone all day waiting for me. In order to ensure my success and continued ability to be with him, I would need to expand. A month later, I officially created SONICTUNED LLC.

 

Having owned a 2018 Q60 and being a master technician for the brand, I decided to get into the VR30 platform. I applied to ECUTEK and was accepted as a tuner/calibrator on their platform. With my 11 years in tuning experience as well as my mechanical background, I thought I could have a tune for the car ready to sell in a couple of weeks. I was quickly humbled and realized why there weren't many successful tuners for the VR30. What I thought would be two weeks turned out to be almost 6 months of tuning 7 days a week/12 hours a day falling asleep at random rest stops and sometimes not sleeping for days. I was finally ready for my first customer. At this point, I had somehow managed to NOT blow my car up and knew the software in and out. Over the next few months, people started taking notice of my informational writeups. I used these writeups as a segue into tuning to give people a chance to get to know me. During this time, I started tuning Q50/Q60's on a small scale and was advanced to "MASTER TUNER" through ECUTEK. In order to become a master tuner, a handful of tunes and logs need to be sent to their development team to review. In November of 2021, I was asked to do a YouTube interview with "Boost in Motion." The video can be found here. 

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Since then, I have tuned well over 1,000 VR30s Q50/Q60 and 23+ Z cars. I currently hold the record for fastest stock turbo VR30 1/4 mile and 60-130 as well as the hybrid turbo 1/4 mile record with an unmatched reliability record. My goal is to continue expanding, improving, and teaching people more about these cars while providing the best customer service possible.

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