I am looking get a good relliable tune to run my new parts, but being new to HPT I don't really know a lot myself to start off from a stock calibration. I know a HP tuners tune dialed off of my car will be the best option, but for now I just want something that won't grenade the car or tun it into an unreliable POS when dropping pulley sizes. So I was thinking of just getting a HPT file from ZZP to match my upcoming mods.

Have any of you all had experience with their calibrations? Are they pretty safe and reliable, and within an acceptable AF ratio range? Or are there better canned options?

 

Have a zzp tune on mine with basically full bolt ons and 2.7 pulley and water meth. Car runs pretty strong I'm happy with their tune I know it's not gonna be as good as a accurate dyno tune but it works lol.

 

my zzp canned tune is at 10.9 afr =(

 

i did the same when i upgraded to 60lb and a 2.7. zzp promised they would e-mail tune me to get it right, after 3 or 4 exchanges of data logs and tunes turbo tim started ignoring my e-mails, customer service told me he was busy and would get to me, 6 months later im still waiting for my reply. i was left with a car that didnt idle due to timing tables being out of whack, and the car would set a p0171 code on deceleration. full throttle was on the rich side, thats not so bad, but i had knock retard up to 5 degrees.

i was quite new to hp tuners, ive tuned other cars with aftermarket systems, however tuning an oem computer is far more complex, instead of having a dozen or so tables, you have hundreds of tables. this is why i went with a canned tune, figured it would get me close then i could fine tune from there. i ended up putting the idle timing tables back to stock and it helped the idle problems. i ended up waiting a few months while i learned what i needed to do and jumped in head first. i had some help from a couple guys on hp tuners, one sent me his tune, i copied the injector tables along with a few others, and started from there. i spent a weekend and had the car figured out. pulls way harder than it did with the canned tune, idles better, doesnt set codes and gets better fuel economy.

i guess i can say that the canned tune got my car running and driving with 60s, gave me something to start with. if thats the route you choose to take, go for it, but in the end itll be a waste of money. what id recommend is do some tweaking with what you have now, if its a stock tune (or a gm stage tune) itll be far from optimized. tweak it till you get some results, and get comfortable with the program. also check out the hp tuners forum, lots of help there.

 

Is it overly rich to the point your car is blowing black smoke out every time you are a little hard on the throttle?

That's basically the same position I am in. I don't even know where to start where it comes to tuning. While I am not going to crazy over where I am at now, stock right now plan on going to 42s and a GM stage 3 sized pulley, I'd like to at least have some sort of starting point.

Are there any articles or writeups on LSJ tuning with HPT available that you used? What kind of articles did you read that gave you a better grasp on using the software? Just like the tuning, I don't know where to start reading at Once I start reading the right things, I am sure it will make more sense

 

if your planning on basing it around the gm stage 2 kit you can head over to the hp tuners site, go into the repository (under your log in on the main site) and grab a copy of a stock stage 2 tune. you will have to go through and copy the tables over into your tune, and boom, stage 2 tune. from there tweak the maf calibration to get the fuel trims dialed in, and using afr error (with your wideband) to tune wide open throttle maf calibrations. make sure you have no knock retard, tweak as needed, and thats the most of what you will need to do.

i learned how to change my injector settings and tune the ve table from the how to in the tuning section here. i later learned that with the cobalt the ve table does little, its mainly there for a failsafe, many dont even bother tuning it. i learned about maf tuning through reading forum posts on hp tuners forum. dont just read the 4 yl section, lots of good info on the basics of tuning in the v8 section.

 

custom tune>hpt guess tuning on your own>canned tunes lololol

 

No black smoke or anything outa the normal car seems to do very well with it.