Ok as the title says, how does this program work and how hard is it to do this myself being i have no expierience with this sorta stuff at all?

go on to the forums and once you get it start playing with it, you deff need someone to teach you the basics then you know how to play with it. Its not easy as many of us are still leaning new things everyday. There always something to be learned on this system.

http://www.hptuners.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2936

There is a lot of info there. But it would be nice to get a COBALT specific tutorial, or How-to on our Site.

Yeah, someone should do a how to - hptuners for cobalts :)....well not a how to but basic info

How it works is actually fairly simply. How to use it is very complex.

The program uses a standard OBD-2 interface in order to communicate with the cars computer. HP Tuners then develops software that has the ability to read and write data to and from the car's computer. That is biggest part of their software. With each new computer that GM (or any other manufacturer for that matter) puts in a car, HP Tuners has to write new software to communicate with it.

Once you can do that, you can change the software on the car's computer. The car's computer controls two main things, ignition and fuel. Modern computers do a lot more as well, but that's the basic function. With HP Tuner's you can modify the way it controls those things. But it's not easy.

Every ignition and fuel event is based on some other event. You can't just change one thing and expect a result. There are simple things like that, but those things don't improve the tune of the engine. For instance, you can remove the speed limiter fairly easily. HP Tuners even has a how-to on their forum about that. It has nothing to do with the engine.

Let's say now that you want to do a 2-bar operating system. Half of the people reading this just went "What? What's a 2-bar OS?" Well, HP Tuners can do that for you too, but now you have a lot of work to do.

If anyone wants to do a how to for I4's feel free http://www.hptuners.com/help/vcm_editor_tuning_how_to_user.htm we do accept user submitted how to writeups to put into our help file.

bump

Halfcent pretty much covered what you'll need to know.