Ok so I've heard a lot of steam blown around over ECM remapping.

First off is chipping your car and remapping your ECM the same thing?

Secondly is this even worth it? Like how much power has anyone gained from doing this?

 

hptuners - yes it's worth- no such thing as a chip in our cars. pcm reprogramming...

 

Gotcha, I'll see who does such around Edmonton then. I read up on their site, it supports up to 07 cobalts, I have an 08. I doubt theres any huge changes so would it still be compatable? And this program seems complicated, does it help you through with the tune or is it expected you know what your doing, and in such case I should just take it to a shop?

What kinda gains can you expect out of a tune and is this going to trash my warrenty?

 

to quote my brother "Oh my god what did they do when they tuned your car it feels like a new car it dosent do that bog down thing any more and it feels a good 30 hp stronger".

in actuality its probably more like 17 hp to the wheels but its a huge change i highly recomend the vector tune Esp if its an auto.

 

Yes, you need to know what you are doing or learn. Your best bet is to find someone who does tuning in your area. Either that or buy the stuff, read a ton and teach yourself how to tune (taking baby steps).

Oh, and stay away from canned tunes uness your capable of dialing them in yourself.

As far as gains, you can get from "this car is kinda fun" to **** eating grin.

 

hptuners is great i just got it last sunday a huge difference in torque the car pulls hard definitely worth the money

 

GM definitly left a lot of room to play with their crappy stock tune. It's not unheard of to get a 15 fwhp gain from a good tune, which is extremely good for a 4 cylinder.

 

I love my vector tune

 

No such thing as a chip....true. But Jet Performance makes a module (around $240 - $250 w/shipping). I know posters will come on saying a tune is better but at this time I would trust Jet Chip more then any local tuner that has never touched a 2.4L w/VVT. Plus the idea of sending my ECM to someone for a tune is not giving me a warm fuzzy -- if I need to go back to stock programming what do I do then? At least with the Jet module I can take it back off if I have problems with it. I have read a few 2.4L owners that had problems with tunes and had to take it back to the dealer for reprogramming -- and you notice there is not much info out there on how to tune it properly -- other then: "get a tune".

Jet module 10708 stage 1 (2007/8 2.4L)
Jet module 10708S stage 2 (2007/8 2.4L)

 

Except that all the Jet module does is "trick" the computer into thinking something else which can cause problems sometimes.......pretty damn hokey if you ask me.

 

i wouldnt trust jet. hp tune gives you all the control you could ever need. anyone thats familiar with gm's will be able to tune it. vvt is not a big deal.

 

Hmm.. Well there's a guy I meet at the chiropractor all the time who I just sarted talking too recently who I belive uses the same program on his civic. Different cars yes but, at least he could teach me the basics.

And whats this on their stie about credits, saying you can tune a couple cars on the credits it has. So basically every time I change the tuning in my car, it eats up credits? Or just once to unlock it so I can change the tune as many times as I want?

 

hpt does not work on a civic.

 

If you have no idea what your dooing you may as well spend on a canned tune from VMS despite what the hptuner people are saying, because they have tons of experience tuning. While it might not be dialed in 100% its gonna be damn close assuming you gave them the list of mods. Ide be willing to bet the VMS tune is better than 90% of all the HPTuner tunes done on these cars granted if you had hptuners you could theoretically change your tune down the line but read around there are tons of threads about how their hpt tune is not working right.

 

once you buy the credit for your car you can change the tune as many times as you want on one credit

 

Vms?

 

vector motorsports

 

Not only that, but how do you log what the Jet is doing to your car so that you can optimize it for your needs? HPTuners isn't much more than the jet chip and gives you full logging and retunability.

 

I guess VCM would work if I lived there. I think AFI does that kinda stuff here.

 

They ship to Canada. I know a few people in Canada that have a VMS tune and they're very happy with it. I have one on order for my G5.

 

Oh cool I thought you took your car in to them to get it tuned...

I'm guessing it would come with installation instructions? The only problem is that it wants you to use premium all the time. I'm sure it would work fine without it, but it might be sketchy.

 

Id be willng to bet that alot of the people who bought HPT started out loke myself with little to no tuning knowledge but have learned y reading and alot of trial an error. It's not impossable to learn but you have to be willing to try and do your research.
I had the plessure of meeting up with a local cobalt owner that had a Vector tune, and while the car was faster then stock the tune was far from being perfect. He was seeing alot of KR, and his fuel trims where way out of wack. He had to send his ECM to vector three times to get it close to right. But it still was not dialed in perfect.
Having HPT allows you to redo your tune if you make any changes to your car and gives you the abilty to tune your car for anything you amy due to it in the future.

 

AMEN! Now we have some folks making some sense! Dude, I bought HPTuners less than a year ago. While I would not consider myself fantastic, by any means, I do some pretty good tunes. A damn site better than ANY tune you can get via email.

 

Anon/Steve can do it for you, go in the Canadian midwest forums for our area.

 

While I agree with you guys that a well done tune would be the best there still is an alternative.....I just got back from driving after installing the Jet Performance Module -- and it is a performance upgrade. The first thing I noticed after firing up the Cobalt in the garage was that it is running richer -- fumes are richer than without the Jet Module. The seat-of-the-pants difference isn't earth-shattering, but the wheel spin (auto) is greater, to begin with, and the throttle response feels and sounds quicker.

It's an alternative if tuning is not available to you.