Have had my car (98 Camaro Z28) with typical h/cam package (the works) retuned 5 times and it still isn't right by the shop who did all of the work. So haven't driven it for nearly 3 months since last tune. Pings bad when coming up an on/off ramp or when accelerating just a little (not hard). After last tune 3600 Vig TQ won't lockup in city until 50, still surges too. Cam is 224/228 114lsa.

Out of frustration have purchased my own laptop, EFL Live Pro and LS1Edit.

Am about to take it to another shop who says they can make the car driveable but they required I get my own copy of Edit. They also say I need to reflash back to stock. They don't want to fix what's broke on current tune, but start over from stock tune.

When I called the dealer was told I have to bring the car in because they can't reflash the PCM out of the car. Tuner said we could take it out and hand carry it to the dealer.

What concerns me is if I take it to the dealer and am not able to get the car started to drive it back to the tuner.

Is possible if the original tuner has my stock basic tune on the car and will give it to me that I can use it to reflash my PCM back to stock rather than going back to the dealer.

Same question for stock files I see on some threads on the LS1Edit forum. Can I reflash with them as long as the stock file is the same year, make, and transmission.

Who is right/correct concerning reflashing...PCM in the car or out of the car?

Lastly, I want to keep the version of Edit on my laptop with all of the files, but vendor says they will tune on their computer and give me the files. Does this mean I will still have full access to my copy of LSEdit and my files, or will be obligated to the tuner.

I'm still confused about how Edit works and being locked to just one VIN PCM. There aren't any insructions with Edit as to how the cables I received with EDit lock to my car, since I didn't have to provide a VIN # to Dave at LS1Edit when I purchased the kit.

Please help with answers.

 

In-car just makes it easy on the dealership, any of
them can do that. Out-of-car needs a bench harness
etc. and you can't expect a multimillion-dollar-a-year
business to have hundreds of dollars worth of gear
just sitting around, now, can you?

But some dealerships can deal with it... just the serious
ones. :p

If it's just part-throttle pinging you might just want to
use EFILive to log KR, RPM and MAP, find the trouble
spots; use KR to see how much spark is being pulled,
where, and then go into the high octane spark table
and subtract that amount (rounded to next highest
whole number) from the corresponding cell. Then
"stucco it smooth" (get all the neighbors the same,
and the more remote neighbors smoothly transitioning
from untouched values to what you have had to pull
back on).

If your EGR has been deleted then the cylinder charge
(esp. w/ headers and cam) is probably way more
"sporty" than the stock tune expects, and if the
performance tune didn't pull timing out in cells where
EGR would have been diluting the charge, you can
expect some ping potential.

It doesn't sound like the issues you have are so large
that they can't be solved on your own (with a little
help from your friends). I'm sure there are folks on
LS1Tuning.com and hereabouts who have gone down
this road before and can give you some more specific
advice. But if you get the spark adjusted to suppress
ping and misfire you may find a lot of the other
symptoms subside as well.

 

all the tuners said "turn up the lockup speed" to avoid surge. It's not the truth. I can sit at 35mph in 4th gear (3.42's) and cruise control perfectly. you do the math, thats about 900-1000rpm on the 224/226 112lsa .570/.571 all bolt ons, (see sig).

if you can't lockup at 40 in 4th then drop back to 35 (idle cruise no gas) and not surge, you got the wrong tuner.

or something.

man that drove me crazy cause the speed limit is 35 here and i got 9 pts already this year so i gotta stay at 35-40mph.

all in the tuning.

 

If you want to take it to the dealer, and still be able to drive home do this:

1. Download and save a copy of your current tune. Label this "Jacked up tune.LS1" or something similar
2. Drive to dealership
3. Allow dealer to flash a stock file to your PCM
4. Download and save a copy of your new, fresh stock tune. Label this "Bone stock.LS1" or something similar
5. Re-upload "Jacked up tune.LS1"
6. Drive to wherever/whoever is going to tune your car.
7. Re-upload "Bone Stock.LS1"
8. Start tuning away

 

ask someone on ls1edit.com for a stock tune 98 same trans and then copy the values by hand?

hell i bet theres a stock 98 file on ls1edit.com i found one for a 2000 z28 a4 to compare (i had no baseline)