What drivability issues would there be without tuning? The guy I talked to about doing my install said I will not need to tune. Will the car shift right or am I gonna need to get a Predator or something like that? He quoted me a great price, but I want to make sure its getting done right. That and I don't really have the money to blow on a programmer right now.
And by "tuning" I mean raising shift points, firming up shifts and tweaking or deleting the torque management. I would think those would be included in the deal but correct me if I'm wrong.

 

To get the most out of it you'll want a tune as far as adjusting shift points and adjusting your torque managment settings. It will run pretty good without.

 

My car would not have been any fun to drive without tuning. It surged badly, even died a couple times, shifted at the wrong points, went in & out of lock-up, etc. And I have been tweaking the WOT shift points for a week now (found out at the track it shifted too early). So in my opinion, YES.

Note - I do have a cam & 4.11 gears, which makes things worse.....

 

The cam and gears make a huge difference. With my current set up on my 99 I had to do tuning with the 4400, FM11 cam and 3.73 gears, but had a 3200 in it before on stock gears and stock cam with no tuning and it ran very good. Also had an 01 before with an 02 LS6 cam and a 3500 stall with only edit to torque management, and it ran very well too.

 

On my car, I didn't really have any problems and everyone says 02s are bad. The only thing I noticed that I really liked was that some shifts before a tune felt like 2nd was slipping, I tuned it, bam, nice and snappy shifts.

 

4200 stall/3.73 gears .....only tuning was with hpIII to mess with shift ponts last year, which was with the stock stall.......it could possibly be optimized with a tune, but that can be said with a stock car too, it drives awsome as is....

 

Can the TM, idle shift points and that stuff be handled at my G.M. dealership? I'm in good with the guys there and they usually give me preferential treatment. It would save me from having to buy a programmer. What should the shift points be raised to, as I do alot of city driving?
Thanks for fielding all these questions guys, durability and reliabilty are the most important factors for me, I just want to make sure i'm doing this right!

 

How big a stall are you putting in? A low 3000s may not need anything.

A programming tool like HPT is a great investment for an A4, especially if you will be adding more mods down the road. If the GM guys will do it for free, that's one thing. Otherwise put the money toward buying a good programmer that will allow you to change part throttle shift points, lock-up, etc.