im thinking about getting a mail order tune. i have the mods in my sig, and i plan to send my tb to get ported while i have the computer out to get tuned. and will be getting the ls6 intake faily soon as well.

for those of you that have a mail order tune how did you like it? was it worth the 125?

the reason i dont want a dyno tune is because i dont plan on putting a cam in the car until its time to put some new lifters in or something because the car only has 36k miles.

 

i have one from tsp, did mail order until i can get to Lubbock and put it on the rollers. it seems to work really well, did it mainly to tune for the converter and gears and it drives great the mileage on the highway stayed about the same and street manners are still good. my mods are about the same as yours and even at 225 for the mail order i think it's well worth it with the free retunes and the ability to pay the difference and get a dyno tune later

 

yeah, thats true. i was looking at lsxtune.com who does them for 125 and is basically what you stated that tsp did for you. only difference is that they dont have a retune for free and i dont think they allow you to pay the difference if you want a dyno tune.

any other input?

 

Blackbear performance gets excellent reviews on the truck boards. He does car tunes as well. Might be worth researching.

 

it doesn't matter if you have a cam or not, the reason you want a dyno tune is so that the tuner can see what kind of difference the adjustments that he's making are actually making on the car. the hands down BEST way to tune our cars is on a dyno with the wideband hooked up. I know a really good tuner if you're interested in going that route, I can PM you his info

also, it's always good to find a tuner who has lifetime retunes, that way when you do put in the cam, it won't cost you anything to get it retuned

 

EXACTLY what i was about to say,You can not tell what your car likes unless it is on a dyno.....

 

Blackbear does a cable tune. He sends you the equipment to collect data from your driving habits and then creates a tune based on that. This is better for someone who is looking for a drivable tune VS. highest HP numbers.

 

yeah. im not really after squeezing the most out of my car, i dont care how much hp i have or how fast i run the 1/4 in. i just want the tune to make sure that im not running too rich and loosing gas mileage. the time i plan on getting a dyno tune is if i decide to do a cam. i just cant justify the ~500 on a lifetime tune right now with bolt ons. i dont plan on putting a cam in my car for a few years most likely. i just want to finish off my bolt ons and then try not to spend anymore money on my car. lol.

 

You will be spending more money this way, for less of a tune. A dyno tune is 1000x better than a mail order tune and i think you can figure out why. Going to a shop you will pay about 500, then about 75 for every tune there after. So in the long run it's 575 for a good tune for YOUR car versus 625 for a generic tune that you will have for a couple years then finally a dyno good tune... Just one way to look at it, unless you just don't have the 500 right now. WHere are you located in texas? That's another factor of course.

 

i live in houston, so there are like 5 different shops for me to choose from if i wanted to go that route. but i want to hear from people that have mail order tunes. it seems like everyone that has posted has a dyno tune. i just want to get some views on them.

I already know its better, i realize that. I just want to hear some real world results, not just a "i heard they suck, just get a dyno tune." there are a lot of things on this site that float around that arent always true. thats all.

 

most mail order tunes are going to be on the conservative side of things, there also going to give you a tune from a similar car that they had on the dyno and then back down the timeing some, there also going to leave most of the tq managment in it to be care full of not know your car or how its reacts to the tune.

For the price your getting quoted for it sounds like a good deal, you could allways find a pirate tuner close by lol

 

I had a lsx tune in my car. it made a difference for mine.
I had, i believe steve, get me a tune for running dry nitrous.
I never blew anything up. I was very pleased.

Then one of my buddies got HP Tuners and when we dialed it in, there
was not much changing.. other then the fact I went up from the original tune
being for 125 dry shot, and moving up the shot size.

So overall I was happy for not having to put too much money out for a tune.
then seeing that it was pretty close once we started messing around at the track.