HP Tuners Tutorials

[MDPotter]

Gregski, keep the posts coming. These are awesome. I'm getting dangerously close to ordering HPTuners.

I hate to say it, but I got a mail order tune in my truck right now. I've probably only put about 5 miles on it so far but I want to get into the PCM and see what's going on. It runs great, but I want to be able to see what the tuner did and to make sure nothing bad is happening. Are there some areas that I can check once I get in to see if I have a bad tune or if there are things I need to change right away?

I got the tune put on it as a base tune and they have a good rep, but I know it can never match tuning here where the truck is driven.

[Gregski]

Originally Posted by MDPotter

Gregski, keep the posts coming. These are awesome. I'm getting dangerously close to ordering HPTuners.

I hate to say it, but I got a mail order tune in my truck right now. I've probably only put about 5 miles on it so far but I want to get into the PCM and see what's going on. It runs great, but I want to be able to see what the tuner did and to make sure nothing bad is happening. Are there some areas that I can check once I get in to see if I have a bad tune or if there are things I need to change right away?

I got the tune put on it as a base tune and they have a good rep, but I know it can never match tuning here where the truck is driven.

Thanks and this is an excellent question, lets see if I can help you out, from having recently worked with someone in the same boat.

0. Are you throwing any codes. Did you wire up your MIL check engine light, is it on? You can read your codes with some cheap OBDII Code reader before you even buy HP Tuners so please check for any codes.

1. After you buy your HP Tuners the first thing you should do is simply read your mail order PCM to see if you got what you paid for, more specifically is it really the Year, Make and Model that you thought you were getting. This is important for a variety of reasons not just to see if your mail order shop was honest.

For example if you wanted a 2000 Camaro tune and got a 2001 tune back, things will not match. There are certain break point years where GM changed things: EGR to no EGR, cable vs drive by wire, returnless vs return style fuel rail, size of injectors, intake manifold design, etc.

2. In terms of performance I put Safety first, and by safety I mean engine safety, so check your Fuel Trims to see how lean your vehicle is currently running.

3. Engine Knock. If you are worried about engine knock, the easiest thing to do is to run high octane gasoline 91+ until you learn more about tuning.

4. Do a general stare and compare using the Compare feature in HP Tuners, I mentioned this feature earlier in my posts, but it's worth going over again. I doubt the mail order came with a stock tune file so you will have to now go and try to download one off of the HP Tuners website and hope somebody uploaded it there for you, this is yet another reason to roll your own, cause the first step is to save that precious unaltered tune file and never ever mess with it.

These are the high level points, I will dive deeper in the following posts to show how you can do this in detail.