whats up guys. quick question.

tunning are waters i have not tested yet. i know that it requires skills, practice, hard work, and dedication to be a good tuner.

i plan on running a street tune, but now that i have a laptop i was thinking if maybe buying software and cable would be a cool way to start to learn, for sure start off with a mail order tune; from there read up and learn how to make tweaks fine tunning for my car.

would this be very pricy? probably the same price as a dyno tune isnt it? lol.

i just dont want to drive 3hours away for a decent tune. i have a bud that went to school in florida for tunning. he will hook me up for 299. im more of the do it myself type of person. yet tunning is a key element to these setups working properly.

mine isnt to crazy.

stock hand ported 799 heads
ls6 intake
232/235 .595 .644 112lsa trak cam.

looking at a yank 4000 stall 2.5 str right now. pretty sure its mine.

what you guys think. any and all help/insights are greatly appreciated.

 

HPtuners, wideband, and fuel will cost you more than the dyno tune probly... youll want to make final adjustments on the chassis dyno anyway which cost rented roller time..... but its up to you on what youd like to do. If your looking to make money with your knowledge be prepared as "joe public" can be rough!

 

IMO if you want your car to be perfect and you have a basic understanding of the motor/ sensors its the best option. Nobody will spend the same amount of time and effort on your car as you will. Once you have the program/wb set up it really a matter of using the data logged to build your tune. I will say that common sense and not randomly changing things based on Internet advice is crucial

 

no. not looking to make
profit. just would be bad *** to learn, and see how my car is doing first hand.

defenatly is not the cost efficient way lol. do people email tunes or send in a cd? ill still need hp tuners correct to load it? maybe hp tuners is for a hobby later on. wouldnt be suprised if all together ended up costing me another grand to try and perfect a tune myself. or is that to far fettched?

any northern california shop owner/tuners chime in please. if i was in texas id already be at a shop. lol. lethal performance in schertz always took care of me with my old camaro.

 

If you are at all interested in tuning, which you sound like you are, and if you are willing to learn, then buy either HP Tuner (which I use) or EFI Live. It will take some time and alot of frustration at first but it is definatly nice to be able to do your own work. I personaly do not recomend to go the mail order route. Also I agree no one else will spend the time required to get your car right like you will.

That said, if you are the kind of guy who only does some basic cam head mods and nothing else, it might be a waist of your time and patience to go through the trouble of learning to tune a EFI car. If you are like me and your mods never end and your HP goals never end, then you will be money ahead learning to do it yourself.

The more radical your car the more time it will take to get it tuned right. Mail order tunes are good for minor changes, not radical changes. Not that the guys here that tune cannot do it, they can and it helps if you have one of the two software to tune with so you can log the car and they can then see what is going on.

So to me it comes down to two things.

Are you really interested in tuning, have the time and patience to learn it.

How modded out do you expect your car to be? If it will only be a symple upgrade car then it might not be worth your time to learn.

Last is almost everyone who has thier car tuned will second guess the tuner at some point, usually when they run up against a car that they cannot beet. If you are the kind of guy that really does not trust anyone else then you need to buy the software, take the time to learn it, go through the pain to learn it, and then do your own tuning. It sounds hard but it really is not and it is alot of fun, not to mention the amount of personal pride you have when you do it yourself.

Good luck

 

I agree with WS6 100%. I'm traveling down this same road. After going to two tuners I decided to just buy the software and teach myself.

 

i think it is something i will pursue. but i will need to start with a basic tune. i cannot afford 500 right now for the software. i do plan to build off a tune that i get, and eventually make my own fresh tune. defenatly true what you guys say about time invested in the tune. someone will only do a couple of hours max. i can do endless improvements with software.