How hard is it to learn to tune your own truck. I'm pretty knowledgeable about engines. From watching the guy tune my truck the hp Tuner looks pretty user friendly. How much is invovled in getting started?

 

I would recommend either one of these books to get you started

The MASPORT Speeds GM EFI Master Tuner
or
The Tuning Schools Beginner course.

They are both really good quality and give you a good starting point with HP Tuners to work from. We offer both, as well as HP Tuners and can get a good price on them to your door! Just let us know!

 

How hard it is depends on how well you learn new things.

If you understand things like injection timing, valve events, camshaft specs, injector data, how a MAF works, spark timing, etc etc etc and you know what happens when you change them one way or the other then you will have a head start. If not, then I suggest you learn that stuff first (engine mechanicals) then read up on tuning. Then start digging into it.

 

What none of these books really seem to do well, is give
you the "gut feel" for how a motor works and what the scan
tool is trying to tell you. Everybody's all about jumping in
and making the numbers. Diagnostic skills are harder to
come by. But knowing which of the many possibilities, is
the real problem, that's the nut of it. The rest is simply
scraping away the stupid until it shines.

But if you can tune something shade tree style, the laptop
is just a replacement for a pack of jets and rods and springs,
and a curve kit for the distributor. And you have tools like
a wideband meter and maybe an accelerometer (if you don't
want to be tethered to the dyno or track) that Cletus
doesn't. But who knows, maybe Cletus is on the internets
too. I've used my wideband to pick rods for my Edelbrock
carb.

 

I'm not an expert in tuning, but I was good enough with an SBC that I was completely comfortable applying what I knew to others distributors, carbs, etc, and didn't hesitate.

Been messing with HP Tuners in Gen3 world for about a week. I feel completely hopeless at this point, but I don't plan on giving up.

I also used my wideband to dial in my Qjet. At this point, carburetor tuning seems a lot easier than this EFI stuff! I thought it was supposed to be the other way around???

Certainly is nice though to just fudge the numbers a little here and there, plug it in upload and see what happens.

 

Thanks for all the helpful advice!!! I hope to get my tuning software soon so I can tune all my new mods and my procharger. Just got to decide on EFI Live or hp tuner. My truck is already tuned with hp Tune. But I'll have to do some more research.

 

For user interface, I have heard that HPT works the best. For ease of everything. We sell HPT also, and I use it on a nearly daily basis. Alot of books out there and seminars are geared towards HPT.

 

about 650 bucks, another 250 for a wideband and a cool calm comprehensive mind. jimmys right on the money if you can tune a sbc with success you can use the software to tune your truck. it can be overwhelming but the scanner is the real star of the show (with a wide band of course) and it beats sniffin' the tail pipe. in the past 6 months i have been at it i can't think of anything more interesting or entertaining that i have done in years.