hey everyone, I really want to get into tuning and If possible, I'd like to "practice" it alittle bit during this upcoming semester so that when I come back to my car in the spring I can jump right in and have a little bit better idea of what I am doing. My car is currently in storage so I really don't have a way to access its ECM, nor do i have the software or hardware yet. I am wondering if it would be beneficial for me to download TunerPro and play around with other bins for awhile?

Any ideas of what I can do or should start doing would be excellent!

 

You can download tunerpro and get familar with how the program is setup. get some bins from online, which some come with the TP download.

open up the files and see what all is inside there. See what the tables look like and try and get an idea of what every table controls.

read read read all over this board and the tuning articles, you should have an idea of what to do

 

If you have your burning equipment do a read on your existing prom and save the file. Burn that file onto A new chip and put your original in the safe! If you ever get really jacked up you can burn another starter prom with your original file or pull out the original chip and back in business.

 

Start with the "free" stuff. Tuner Pro, yes.
Then, get the numbers off of YOUR ECM.
Then, look around ftp://ftp.diy-efi.org/pub/gmecm where you can likely download a copy of YOUR bin file. ( the four letter code, AXZN, AUJP, ASDZ, whatever YOUR code is )
Next you'll need an XDF file for tuner pro for THAT code. Possibly from the Tuner Pro site, maybe from moates.net. BE AWARE that some of them are incomplete, some have typos, but most are pretty good.
Then, you can browse around your bin, find and get a little familiar with the various tables and settings.
Read the stickies on this site. Read 'em again. Read 'em AGAIN.
Search everything you can think of on this site that may be relevant, particularly almost everything in the DIY-PROM forum.
Heed the advice by the late Grumpy. Not enough spark advance, or too much fuel, you buy spark plugs. Too much spark, or not enough fuel, you buy pistons, valves, and other expensive internal stuff.
Shouldn't take long to figure out whose scribbelings to pay attention to, and whose to ignore.
Enjoy......

 

We can't stress this enough, IMHO it's the best word of advice towards my success of PROM Burning.

- B

 

Have to say that Grumpy was a walking plethura of knowledge. I asked him several times for technical advise. He had me send my datamaster logs to him and he pm'ed me back with exactly what to correct and you know what,"""" He was 100% correct """". There are a few other people with that kinda of knowledge who can direct you in the right path.