I live in Grand Rapids Michigan, does anyone know of a dyno shop relatively close that would be able to tune my 96 z28. It has a mail order PCM and i just want to make sure that the car is running correct because i just bought it and dont want to blow it up form running to lean or having detonation issues. It has a recent rebuild with some mods and no egr, no air pump, no cats.

 

Sometimes these mail order PCM tuners lock the PCM from any more changes. You need to find out wheather a dyno shop can access the PCM and tune it.

At a minimum, you can get on the dyno and find out your RWHp, torque and AFR.
Then you will know if the mail order PCM is a good tune for you.

It is my opinion that you can NOT tune a car thru the mail. You need to have the whole car and be able to do the part throotle tune first (and idle) then address the WOT tuning.

 

thats what i think too, i just dont think that is an accurate way because every car even with the same mods is going to respond a little different. I have the stock computer also, couldnt they use that instead and just work off the stock tune?

 

Well, I cant answer you last question.

Its best to do the tuning yourself, second best is to have a local shop tune it. Either way here, you know that the tune was done on the whole car.

Tuning it yourself is really not difficult. I am tuning my '99 with LS1Edit and my 395 cu.in '87 car with TunerCat. Also, in order to tune it yourself, you must be able to data log. So it does become expense, but that is all up front cost. You can tune your setup forever and as many times as you like. So next year if you change one major item, you can re-tune your car. The following year the same thing. I burned over 30 Eproms for my '87 car. In the last 8-9 years, I have burned maybe 50 Eproms. Total investment $400,,, divide by 50 and we get $8 per tune.

 

How far are you from Cleveland? We are doing a dyno tuning day there this May.

 

you wouldn't mean cleveland TN would you? im lookin to get a tune too, and am pretty close to there. only place i know around here that tunes doesnt have a dyno

 

No I meant ohio. I suck at spelling.. I have no idea if I spelled it right or not.

How far are you from Charlotte and what type of vehicle do you have?

 

What shop in Cleveland are you visiting? Dynotech?

Come by www.bigshotdyno.com and visit us

 

We are doing it at a place called Powerhouse Performance.

We will go wherever the work is though

 

Not true, I have custom tuned several 100 Y and Y bodies via the mail.

Its interesting people will spend the big bucks for a few minutes on a chassis dyno but cannot understand how a full startup to WOT tune can be done.

It makes zero difference if the car is next to you or if its 5,000 miles away for its the tuning method and obtaining a testrun with a PCM scanner recording all the data for about a 10 miles and the car owner emails that to me to analyze

Means zip if the car then is local or not, it is to understand the PCM OBD-II scanner data and tuning ALL engine functions and not some narrow engine operating window tune on a dyno.

Gotta laugh for 95% of the cars I have tuned had been to a local tuner or dyno tuned 1st and end up coming to me for a tune to correct what was not tuned when the tuner was next to the car

 

If you do so much tuning and your so good why don't you support this site?

 

Team ZR1 = delusional

Name some shops that you had fix the tune?

 

Why have you not paid to support my forum ?

What has that to do with tuning process ?
None, getting personal is the only way you have to defend your viewpoint ?

FACT : on a dyno only about 5 of the 23 fuel trims are used, so tell us how then a dyno tune can give a total tune customers are paying for ?

Answer, a static dynojet cannot, so if you have to use street/track data then might as well save the money on those high dollar dyno tunes and just tune off the real world PCM data.

 

Let's see I was one of the few orginal BETA testers for LS1edit 3 plus years ago.
My sole income is from custom tuning, so in your mind in 100's of tunes
all the cars were 1st time tunes ?

Fact: 95 percent of the tunes I do had been tuned elsewhere 1st.
70% of those had been dyno tuned 1st.

Problem is if people cannot do something then in their mind no one else can.

You should know as to manners names are not used.

Under no cases can a car be totally tuned for all engine conditions on a static non load bearing chassis dyno, in fact it cannot even tune for race conditions where PE mode is non stop for minutes for a dynojet is a 30 second quickie where engine never maintains 100% engine load and the PCM adjusts long term values only once per 10 minutes.

 

Team ZR1,
Overall, I think you do a great job. My point is that mail order tunes typically just tune the WOT, car unseen. Even if you know whats been installed on the car, the tune will not get the best out of the engine. You said that you study data log files. Well that is what I mean about a good tune. I go out and data log idle, part throotle and WOT runs. From examing these files, I tune the Eprom or PCM. Without good data log files, nobody can tune a car to its best potential.

I have visited your site several times, its a good site. Sometime that I get out to the West Coast, I would like to stop by your shop and meet you. Hey, we can have a beer and talk about tuning cars. I'll buy the first pitcher.