TGiuliante

I am planning to have my car tuned for the track. It will not be registered for at least a month thanks to CA DMV (long story). My shop will dyno tune the car for me, does it really need to be street tuned? What is the difference - under load as to no load?

96CollectorSport

Just find a shop that has a load bearing dyno, this way they tune it under a load on the dyno. I would much rather have someone tune the car on the dyno that way instead of trying to drive and keep an eye on a computer. Even if there's a driver and a tuner think about someone driving your car hard in 3rd and 4th gear on the street JMHO

davidfarmer

Make sure they know it is for Road Racing, NOT drag racing. You will be operating at high temperatures ALL the time, and so they need to be conservative with spark tables and keep the mixture richer than they might on a drag/street car. You will be running to redline thousands of times per day at the track, not a few dozen like you might at the street/drags. Power isn't everything for a track-day car.

Second, they can be more aggressive if you plan on running higher octane fuel, ie 98-104octane unleaded. I would not advise this unless you enjoy paying $8/gallon for fuel. Racers often make this choice since they need the extra power, unless you have money to burn I would not do it otherwise.

In our 2006 Z06, we were able to make some good power gains by correcting the VE tables and slightly leaning out the fuel, HOWEVER we actually reduced timing slightly (compared to stock) for durability with no power loss.