Does anyone know of any good site to learn how to tune your own motor properly? through piggy backs ( like greddys emanage ) just some tuning basics and stuff like that? im just cuirous to learn. thanks!

 

There are a few books out that will give you enough information to be dangerous with, but experience is still the best way to learn how to tune. It rarely works like the books explain it.

Alot of people believe you just make it a certain A/F ratio and play with the timing to keep it from blowing up and call it done. A good tuner does a lot more than that. However they are few and far between.

Here's the a list of books if your interested.
For starters:
Maximum Boost
21st Century Performance

Mid level
How to tune and modify engine mangement systems

Advanced
Engineering Fundamentals of the Internal Combustion Engine
The Internal Combustion Engine in Theroy and Practice

The best way to learn is get a cheap low output car and play with it. They with forgive mistakes alot more than a higher output car ever will.
There are classes for tuning now. The AEM one they give their dealers is a joke. If you read the 1st 3 books listed you will know more then the class wil ever teach you.

The EFI university classes are supposed to be better but I have yet to attend one of these.

The emange group on yahoo is a good source of information for that system but it's mainly for the blue system right now.
Best of luck,
Gary

 

Thanks gary i appreciate the response, i thinking im going to check that out a good emanage forum should be pretty useful, BTW can i get these books at any book store?

 

I've been doing it for a while... I didn't really have a place to learn other than forums and experience. I blew up a lot of my own stuff for a while. My father tuned a lot of 410 Outlaw cars that won a lot of races, so I picked up quite a bit of timing vs. fueling stuff, but nothing will help you be good tuner other than practice. It's actually pretty easy with good software. Safe fuel, safe timing, and give hte car what it wants.

 

Seems like the really expert tuners arent in the business of sharing their secrets. Most books I have thumbed through speak in very general terms, and really never provided anything more than some basic theory, rather than practicle technique. Also keep in mind that there are a lot of different tuning strategies, much like engine building, piston design: everyone has their own opinion, and there is no absolute truth...just rules of thumbs and general guidelines.

You could actually learn a decent amount, by watching someone tune your car on the dyno...and ask a bunch of questions.

Practice makes perfect.

 

Really an mechanical or fluid dynamics engineering degree would probably give you a good base. To me this would give you a greater understanding of wtf is actually happening.

 

www.efi101.com

Ben teaches courses in tuning. Start w/ the basic class and work your way up from there. After taking the courses try to find someone who knows what there are doing and try to work for them. Becoming a tuner takes alot of time, skill and practice. It jsut doesn't happen overnight.

 

IMO tuning is easy, the software is a *****.