for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

how was the first time when you tuned a car.. u blew it? ;D what EMS did you used? what car?.. just curious.. move this thread if this is in the wrong section..

Cya!

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

Well Ive been driving on my first tune for about two weeks now and the car drives really smooth and pulls I think better than stock . My motor is an f22a1 I used an f22b1 map I found on xenocrons bin depsitory, I only changed the injector size to 510cc and adjusted the fuel maps to get a real consistant A/f.

The timing wasn't hard at all. I noticed while I was doing a pull that the powerband had a few dead spots and once it got past them it pulled hard again. I was going to adjust timing up and down in those area's to see if I could tune it smoother, But I'm using crome so I looked at the time map in 2d view and saw that it was really jagged. So to start off I decided I would try smoothing the map and see what happened.
It worked great the power was smooth all the way though the pull after that, so Ive left it as it is. ;D

Crome and freelog work great together it makes tuning pretty easy. But tuning stock and NA is easy compared to tuning boost.
in another two weeks I'll be tackling tuning for my turbo. So we'll see how that goes. But honestly I'm not worried one bit. So far Ive loved tuning. It's so much fun and the first few weeks I was struggling with uberdata and I still liked it and believe me crome and freelog are way better than uber.

Give yourself some time to get everything sorted with using the software and hooking up the wideband and getting your voltage slopes set and things like that.
Your more intelligent then I am so you'll get through all that no sweat.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

cool! good luck with tuning your turbo car.. ;)

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

i still drive the first car i tuned, even after about 2yrs. have to say, the first tune was a hackjob. i had NO idea what i was doing, lol. learned as i went

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

Still driving my first car that I tuned, second engine.

The first engine I tuned (d15b7) ran great, I didn't have any problems tuning it with Uberdata and it ran very well. I never really blew it up but it developed a rod knock that I wasn't really comfortable driving around with, which I don't believe had to do with the tune. I swapped in a Z6/Y5 hybrid and am running the same turbo setup with a very similar tune for a year and a half now and it still runs great. For some odd reason I had to gap the plugs much smaller than the b7 (which were at .030") which confused me for quite a while until I figured it out (now a .025" gap), must be the Y5 head? ---- I don't know, it runs great now.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

first car i tuned is my accord this year in july. its NA, but tuning is tuning. I got the grasp for it now and im fairly confident.

i've tuned some high compression engines(11.5+) as well as some boosted engines since then. I've also e-tuned, lol.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

good ---- guys.. someone more?

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

First setup I tuned was for myself. Not really much of a tuning job, but it was about 4 years ago at least. A complete hackjob setup really, mostly cause I was broke as hell. It was a 91 crx dx, z6 swap, homemade obd1 conversion harness (taken from a 91 accord and an old dual-point ecu), dsm 450's controlled by a vafc, and a 14b with the carb spring wastegate setup. :P I had nothing really to tune it by, with the exception of how it sounded through the rpm's, and by checking the plugs after a hard pull. Amazingly, the motor lasted 6 months of solid abuse...never once gave me any beef. I ended up wrecking the crx, and sold the motor. Second time I tried tuning an afc that way didn't turn out too good, as evidenced by broken pistons and a broken rod. :P

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

after to see this.. there are little tuners here.. :1

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

indeed there are.

probably less than 20% of hmt users actually tune their own cars.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

yes.. that's what im seeing..

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

3.5 yrs ago, afc hack, techedge wideband, and long stretches of road. came out great, 169whp @ 7psi on y7 w/ 13t.

now...same engine and setup, but using cromepro @ 10psi pushing 206whp.

only one major catastrophe in 3 years on the dyno (shattered sleeve)...well two, but i don't take responsibility for the other since the person wrenching on the cams didn't realize each mark was 2* and moved them 6* instead of 3* after i suggested not to adjust the cams because we didn't know how much clearance there was before piston/valve contact. needless to say there was contact.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

I whipped up a crome basemap for my d15b7 with a t25. Let's just say a few negatives added up and it blew up.....way too soon.

My wg actuator ended up being frozen so i was hitting upwards of 12 psi

I forgot to put in colder plugs ( :1 :1 :1)

and I wish I would've done a better job adjusting my z6 map for a smoother transition to boost (because boost tools can only be imported from a p30 map in crome)

It would bog like a bitch when i'd tip into boost. There are my nuggets of wisdom.

Number one tuning tip!!!! When you first make a thread about your setup, post porn to please the hmt gods. Lack of this on my part has also been accredited as a cause of my motor failure.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

mm interest info...what happen if you tune a car and just blow it? u need to pay for it? :S

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

bahaha! What?????

Typically yes you need a new motor.......is that what you're asking?

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

noo...if you tune an car of some guy.. and just u blow his engine... what would happen? in the case that engine be build and looks very good..

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

Well Walter it depends on what you the tuner and the owner of the car agreed upon before you tuned the car. Was their a contract made that said if you damage his property that you will replace it.
Or did you say look dude I don't have any experiance at this I can try to tune your car.

Fault not walters if blow engine :P

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

what i thought ... i c.. cya!

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

typically if you're tuning a car for someone it would be assumed you have experience. if you're at a dyno shop a tuner will/should have you sign a damage waiver stating you are the owner or owners agent and are aware that the car/motor will be put through stress while testing. signing the waiver acknowledges this and also releases the shop and tuner from any damage that may occur.

a damaged/blown motor can occur for a number of reasons and isn't always related to the tune, but a combination of things (mechanical, tune, etc) up to/including the tune.

some people call this the pop-it waiver. i won't tune a car w/o the owner signing a waiver. unfortuneately, too many honda/acura performance cars are put together on a shoestring budget and not always correctly (if you know what i mean).

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

first car i tuned is my current gsr runs great just took some practice for me to get the hang of it. i use uberdata and borrow a friends wideband when it needs to be retuned (im a poor bastard ;)). chipped my own ecu and read through way too much ---- on the forums to get the job done. done some minor tuning for some friends now as well. satiisfying when you get it done.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

ive tuned i think right around 10 motors, about half of them being my own.

only one of them blew up. my stock sleeve lsvtec cracked the #3 sleeve at like 15 psi, 8000 rpms in 4th gear pulling on my friends turbo s4 on a 20 degree night. i knew the setup had creep issues and i was only running 450's and a stock map sensor. the afrs were good for what the fuel system can handle, but the creep i had that night was enough to destroy the motor.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

first car i tuned was last year..i put a sohc vtec zc in my 93 civic, left it NA and tuned it, sold it to my cousin after that..cars still running strong..1st turbo motor i tuned was my crx..its been a month and it hasnt blown up yet..

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

First car I ever tuned was my Subaru Impreza 2.5RS with an Electromotive Tec2. That was back in 1999. The tune sucked and didn't make any more power than the stock ECU but I did learn a lot. The first customer tune I did was in 2000 on a turbo integra LS. The car ran for 5 years before the guy removed and sold his kit. It's still in this city running around somewhere.

As for popping an engine I've blown 2 customer engines in the last 7 years. One was from an SDS breaking the pickup trigger and firing the engine about 60 degrees btdc. The other was a turbo mustang and an owner who wouldn't listen when I said it wouldn't take 15psi. The block split from the lower intake to the oil pan. I tune anywhere from 10-50 setups per year.

All the jobs I do require the owner to sign something saying he understands that we're pushing an engine past what it was designed for an anything can happen. It's like taking your dog to the vet for an operation. No matter how careful the vet is sometimes they will die anyway. A tuner is seldom "responsible" for a blown engine even if it's his fault.

Many people can "successfully" tune a car with only basic knowledge. The reason you pay big bucks to have a good tuner map your car is that their basemaps have a lot of hours and in their tuning they know how far something can and should be pushed. I've even intentionally blown engines in my own cars just to see how much detonation they would take. A lot of it too is having the experience to know that funny noise was a misfire or a ping and to know and understand what's causing it and how to fix it.

-Michael

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

First car was my 280z, with MegaSquirt. I had it set up with fuel only at the time (stock Vac/mechanical advance). I was amazed at how simple it was and how well it ran, before and after tuning.

Second car I tuned was a BMW 318 running Motec (Amazing!) and then a Civic running a top of the line Hondata (shoot me). Both were on steady state dynos. That was at EFI University which I highly recommend.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

First tune was my Gsr. Tuned it N/a just to learn. Did ALOT of reading on pgmfi.org . Using crome with a innovative wide band and auxbox and a ostrich rtp. Cars pulls but has some flat spots.

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

first tune I did was on a friends semi built high compression turbo b18a1. having no experience other then reading tuning articles I think I did really well. Raced a couple low 13 sec. eclipses and pulled them by a good car. Later on in the night, the motor mount broke, oil pan kissed the road, piston cracked from all the vibration. Re-built the motor with same specs but never got to tuning it again. Just traded it off to someone for a car.

second tune I did was on my own d16z6 at 15 pounds of boost. Runs super strong and still runs strong. Dont drive it anymore since it's snowing but as soon as spring hits, I'll have it boosted beyond 20 pounds...

Re: for tuners.. i was wondering..
 

wow..u had good first experience tuning those cars..