Im wanting to get a program/ tuner so I can watch live timing tables for my nitrous runs. I dont have the time to learn to program my car but would love to learn down the road and learn to tinker with things in the mean time. Im looking to change my stock gears and my stock wheels and tires and would love to be able to change the computer when I do this so I dont get ripped off at some shop just for those things. What is a good program that is not real expensive that can do these things? Is it easy to change gear ratios and tire sizes as well or a pain to learn to use the program all together?

 

search this forum and make a decision... (I'm listing the main tuning devices out there right now)

Basically for full blown the main choices are HP Tuners and EFI Live
For Handhelds the main choices are Predator and the Crane/Vinci Handheld

The full blown require a laptop to flash the car, but they offer tons more parameters over the others.

Keep in mind unless you are going to put the car up on a dyno w/wideband to tune yourself, you'll also want to look into a wideband controller (LC-1/LM-1 seem to be the most popular here, Dynojet also makes an excellent controller)

The Handhelds are easiest to learn since you don't really do anything other than answer questions... but they're the least powerful

The full blown versions have a steeper learning curve... but even they aren't that bad... if you read the stickies and browse the forums ... shouldn't be hard to understand.

For the full blown:

www.efilive.com
www.hptuners.com

Be sure to check out the forums on both as well....

For the full blown software you can't go wrong with either HP Tuners or EFI Live. My own preference is HP Tuners, but you won't be dissapointed with either.

Unfortuanetly good and not expensive don't seem to go along w/eachother... a used predator can be had for 150 or so... then another 75 or so to Diablo to have it reset for your car... it can change gears and such, not sure about timing... but I don't think the handhelds are a good choice if you're going to spray and want to tune for it...

The full blown packages both include excellent scanners (you can't tune w/out being able to scan the car to see what's going on)... on the full blown timing changes , fueling changes, gear changes, etc etc... are pretty simple and described in the manuals for each... there are also hundreds of other tables/values you have access to (most of which you'll never need... but just in case)


***Note: I am leaving this thread open despite the fact it's the 20 millionth time it's been asked and 90% of them turn into flamefests/sponsor bashing by certain individuals.... if there is any sponsor bashing or flamefests this will be locked as in the past... depending on the extent it may be cleaned up and warnings issued****

 

As Horist noted, you can't go wrong with either one. I use EFILive and love it.

When you are done with your search and still can't make up your mind, buy both and decide for yourself

 

I have a laptop and Im not looking for a crane or diablo scanner. Im pretty sure that would not work with what im needing since my car was dynotuned with LS1edit last november. How much is the hp tuner or efi live go for? I asked a similar question a while back about scanners and was told to check into proscan and autotap. Im not sure what would be best. Im pretty sure the only changes I will make will be the gear and tire changes but need to watch timing tables on the dyno to make sure my nitrous set-up is working correctly

 

Must have missed the links in Horist's post.

 

I have EFI live's flashscan and love it. black box logging and the autotune feature is the ****.