street tuning
 

hey guys i been thinking alot about this and i cant decide if a street tune is really worth it i have been reading alot about tuning as of right now im running a d16z6 turbo on uberdata with a very rich tune. Now people tell theres not point in a street tune becasue its nto a good tune. Alot of people say only to tune on a dyno becasue its perfect. See i knwo how the ecu works i understand it i just never tuned a car before now is it worth me saving some money goin with the street tune or is it worth it just to put my car on the dyno and save tiem and money mayeb in the long run. Well i guess my real question is how close can you actually get a street tune to a dyno tune.

Re: street tuning
 

Dont listen to whoever is whispering in your ear...you can get VERY close on a street tune using a standard timing retard and just making sure you nail SAFE Air/Fuel Ratios

Timing wont net you a whole lot of gains on the dyno but it certainly will net you some.

My suggestion is always get a street tune quickly after getting everything set up and running nicely. Beat on it a little after, take it to the track, do some highway pulls. See what your motor and setup are made of...THEN, when every little piece that could be an issue is fixed...take it to the dyno with your tuner..in less than and hour of dyno time, timing should be tweaked air/fuel should be dead nuts on and you know you are extracting every bit of power you can from your setup.

I street tune mostly home made setups at this point...most have some little problems that would just make tuning on a dyno very counter productive and costly.

The only other positve for a dyno is safety and the fact you cant get pulled over doing 120mph 4th gear pulls on a dyno :)

Re: street tuning
 

i had always thought for a turbo car a street tune is a good tune. but if your gonna tune a NA car then the only way to go would be on the dyno because timing is more of a factor with differant cams.

Re: street tuning
 

a street tune isn't an accurate tune?

you drive it under street conditions right?

if you tune it under street conditions, and drive it under street conditions, then you've essentially tuned it the way its going to be driven right?

im lost, how is that not accurate?

sure the dyno has its advantages, im not saying they're useless by any means.

oh, and for the record, my roommates crx logged dead on air/fuel ratios in high rev's and full boost at 11.80-11.88:1 on the street. On the dyno, it was a dead match. like xenocron said though, hmt setups have problems, and its best to get those sorted on the street. dyno's cost alot more than freeway time.

Re: street tuning
 

xenocron is right on,

Unless your timing is way off, you won't net that much more power. A/F will get you much more power gains if you're rich. Even tuning for an hour is more time than I need if the street tune is pretty good.

Re: street tuning
 

street tuning has it's place, especially if you're doing it yourself or a friend is doing it for free. street tuning doesn't let you know if you have vtec place right, how much hp/tq you're making, and what timing changes are doing...the butt dyno is very inaccurate. if you're paying someone to street tune you're almost better off just taking it to a dyno depending on what you have to pay. it takes longer to street tune because you have to dodge traffic and pull off to view logs and make changes and you're also not risking a serious ticket or unsafe situation.

a street tune is almost as good and like xenocron said you're not going to gain a lot from timing, but you will enough to want to do it on the dyno. before i was connected to a shop i street tuned with good results and then went to a dyno to touch up timing, etc.

Re: street tuning
 

I also will have to chime in and agree here. I just recently dyno'd my "street tuned" setup and the AFR's were dead on and the power level surprized me. Granted I could have pulled more from it if I dyno tuned it but just seeing my results from street tuning were satisfying as well :y