I was checking out this hand held tuner program made by diablo, do these things really work? are they worth the money? let me know what you think.

 

OH HELL YES!!! But If I had it to do over again, I'd go with the SCT tuner. They preload it with 3 diferent levels of performance based on your mods among other things.

 

Yea they really work, OH Harv, SCT won't give you any more HP, but it is a little easier and quicker to use.

 

DUH!! But they have 3 levels of tune. So you ain't necessarilly stuck with 92 octane gas.

 

All depends on who you get your tune from...but it is nice to go back to 87 oct and keep the shifting.

 

Actually, read the diablo manual over again, you only "HAVE" to use 93 octane if you adjust the spark advace or the air/fuel mixture, if you don't tamper with those two, you can use whatever you want.

 

Gee, once again Jeremy, you state the obvious. But what you fail to mention is, if you go running round and adjusting the air/fuel ratio, and spark advance without the proper meters, you chance damaging your engine. PLEASE stop trying to give advice unless you actually know what you are talking about. Seriously, you're gonna end up telling someone how to blow up thier engine someday.

 

Now before I start thinking about buying a tuner I have a few questions.

1) Is a tuner something anyone can use to tune their car, or is it something that you need someone who knows exactly what theyre doing and what setting to change?
2) Can you just plug the tuner in and select a preset tune or create your own?
3) Is there something where you can chose between a simple tune setting (for novices) that covers the basics and an expert tune setting for tweaking?

 

A tuner is a device that you use to put a tune on to your car. These tunes come from certified tuners! They make tunes specific to your MODEL not actually to your individual vehicle. That is why they are somewhat "light" tunes so that they work with almost all 3.8L mustangs. Even though on mine, I had to try 3 different tunes on mine before I found one that worked right. Even then I think they just "weakened" down the tune so the problem would just go away.
As far tuning your own car with it...you shouldn't do it unless you know what you're doing and as Harve say, you have the right meters. You can, however make simple changes before you finalize the tune such as rear end gearing...

 

So you have a few pre-set tunes to chose from and you can do your own tuning if you know what your doing right? Is it easy to select different tunes?

I would just use a pre-set tune and I could make the changes to rear end gearing and tire size if I needed to?