please, teach a luddite how to tune

[dusterbd13]

So with the changes in employment and income that I am facing in the next few months, I've realized that I need to scale back my plans for the duster. I can't afford to pay the man to tune it.

I'll be running a gm ecm from a 1991 corvette. On a solid roller mopar small block. Full mpfi build.

I had planned to pay the man after my attempts to teach myself how to tune years ago on something a lot less radical. I still have all my datalogging/chip burning/prom editing stuff. But I never really learned how to use it.

I guess what im looking for is a good step by step guide of first this, then this, and this does this. Something that takes me from a faily broad but basic understanding of the parts of the program, and teaches me what they do and what to do with them.
Any ideas?

[blue68deville]

Read all the tuning tutorial info here first. Most of us started out with varying levels of a clue, and most have gotten good results. Then you can ask good questions, and get good help. There's a definite learning curve to this and you have to put in the time.
Know all your info also, ECU numbers, mask ids, etc.
If you're running tuned port, third gen is a good site also.

[BigBanks78]

I am new and uneducated in this area and 1 of the most annoying thing I run into is the info given or available assumes you know the more basic stuff. For me to understand the info I find I need to take computer engineering classes then come back and read a tutorial or something!! I have been reading books by Greg banish, it's pretty good stuff.

[1project2many]

If you have books by Banish then you might have a better grasp on ecm tuning than when I started. I came up through the dealership side and I knew my service manuals and many GM circuits inside and out. That knowledge often did more to help understand what was going on than anything I was seeing from the ecm side. I did a lot of tuning and it wasn't until I needed to get much better at reading and modifying code that I ended up in engineering courses, and code wasn't the primary motivator for that experience.

What are you having trouble with?

[BigBanks78]

I haven't read much, I have 2 kids :-) but what I've read is good!! I'm just trying to figure all this tuning computer with a computer stuff out. My main problem is lack of back ground knowledge in computers. The info I read here if good stuff after I figure out what they r saying :-). Terminology wise. And what the parameters in bin file do. I know spark, fuel, ae, pe, basic stuff but I ran into a problem when weather changed from hot as hell to near freezing, that messed tune all the way up!! I just don't know what does what. There r 3 or 4 parameters that have mat info and others that say cold afr x coolant temp. I'm sure mat was really hot in summer sucking 100 deg f plus humid then asphalt temps. I have been playing with that stuff and may have been moving in right direction lately so really just my lack of knowledge and working with something not complete and not being able to tell its not complete......I THINK?? :-) I feel like a 7th grade student sitting in on a masters degree math class

[BigBanks78]

But all the frustration is so worth it when you push throttle down and feel how hard it pulls!!!!!!! LOVE IT!!! Ur hands shaking when you get out of car is cool to 8-)

[dusterbd13]

where are how-tos?

and im currently watching the moates videoseries on youtube. learning a fair bit there, but what I guess that im running into the hardest is that the names of the tables don't make sense. im running $8d on a 7727 ecm on a mopar small block. was planning to try firing the car on a stock 91 corvette 6 speed .bin, and tune from there. but then I found the super $8d, which seems like it would be more along the lines of what I need, but its a lot more daunting looking at it for some reason.

car is not put together yet, but im trying to get a grasp on what im doing with the code while im still putting together.

[BigBanks78]

Look for "tutorials" on page u find all the different threads , I suck at directions :-).

I I started by looking at tutorials on "tuning with Blm data" and I think it's using 7747 as example. It's talking about tuning V.E. Table which is fuel first then move to spark table. You'll find tables and graphs that u can select points and pull up or down. There is a fuel injection terminology dictionary thread here that I needed to memorize. I don't know what everything in bin file does but am doing research to find out, Greg banish books explain stuff pretty well like tables but tutorial here I find closer to what I am doing. I also needed to know my way around a laptop. Changing com ports and what-not, I didn't know what a com port was, that's what the emulation or data logging tool uses to talk to program on laptop.

i went straight to tuning ve table which I should have flattened other parameters first but not sure which ones. Oh and accel enrich and power enrich tables are like accelorator pump on a carburetor. I am playing with ae and pe right now or was until I found some problems with a dtc. Tuning the ae and pe r fun because you can feel the changes you make. Anyway the learning curve is steep as hell!!! But so worth it !!!!

There are are guys here that can give u links to things you will need but I'm not computer savvy enough to do that yet :-).

Info is here u just gotta have loads of patients and dig!!

here is a ve table and spark advance table and some data log stuff from mine....may help??