Ok guys. I spend a lot of time reading about mustangs and the things you can do to them.

But I'm still slightly lost on this whole tuning thing...

Can someone PLEASE explain to me when/why you would have to buy a custom tuner? Also what happens when you do some bigger mods to your engine and you don't tune it? ~

Be nice and use minimal sarcasm...

 

Tuners are very a good starting mod if your an automatic. It re-calibrates the engine with the preset tune in it and adds roughly 5-10hp on a stock or slightly stock engine. With it you can adjust timing, your a/f ration, remove the speed limiter, adjust the rpm limiter and adjust the shift points and firmness and possibly a few other things I'm forgetting. They really help with the shifting on an automatic by making the shifts firmer, which is one of the reasons they do not do as much for manuals. It will really wake up your car and it will pull harder from 0 all the way to 120. Also if you start doing more serious mods like heads/intake/cams I personally thing you should get a dyno-tune which can be done through your tuner, and tuning software at a shop that works with it. Justin from vmptuing.com will also set you up with a custom tune for your mods for $60 if you use an SCT, which is probably good for a few more hp than a canned tune (the ones that come pre-programmed) not positive though. Also if you give him your a/f (air/fuel) ratio and some other information throughout the entire rpm range from a dyno pull he could probably go a lot more in-depth with the tuning and give you a more precise tune. Thats about the extent of my knowledge lol.

 

Thanks that helped me too

 

No problem. Maybe someone can chime in and go a little more indepth for you guys. If you have any more specific questions let me know, I'll see if I can help haha.

 

That was a good first reply; thank you.

 

Just a few additions: tuners are absolutely REQUIRED when putting in new gears, cams, superchargers/turbos, and any other engine/drivetrain mod you can think of that costs more than about $200. I've been driving with 3.73 gears now and no tune for about 3 months (because I was too cheap to get one at the same time as the rest of my parts). My speedometer is completely incorrect, and I'll be getting the M112 supercharger eventually. When I do that, I will have no choice.

 

Any Differences between SCT tuners and Diablosport tuners? Pros or Cons to either or both of them?

 

Thats not entirely true. I don't want people to take that too literally because there are multiple $200-300 engine/drivetrain mods I can think of that don't require a tune. Its more when you get into the engine or f/i that it requires a tuner so you can have the engine tuned properly. And they also sell a speedo corrector for certain years for like $100 so it saves you $300 over a tuner. But yeah you will need a dyno tune when you get the M112 no doubt.

SCT has a faster load time, trust me I have a diablo and its slow as hell. Plus with the new 4.0's I'm pretty sure breenspeed is popular because they sell good custom tunes. Not as popular for our cars. Once again, check the 4.0 tech section for more help.

 

SCT has more companys who provide good e-mail tunes.

 

im the black sheep i prefer my delta force tuning sniper kit.