Quote:

Originally Posted by PikeBoy

Just picked up a 92 with automatic. Can anyone recommend a chip I can use? The car is stock base. I see Hypertech and Jet a lot.

Lots of misinformation spread across the internet on tunes....... I am just going to take your time and mine to talk about a few.
When your 92 vette was engineered, GM built the motor, and no doubt dyno tuned the combo. Many things were considered in the design, fuel economy, emissions, drivability, life of engine, etc. Then this tune was used across the board on all 92's.... Sure, there were some revisions along the line, but in no way, shape or form was each car dyno tuned.
In the same way, a good tuner, such as Alvin at PCMofNC.com can dyno tune one stock 92, make changes to enhance parts of the tune that may be more performance oriented and that same tune will work well on other stock 92 corvettes.

To make a statement that a dyno tune is always the best is simply incorrect.
First off, and most important is, who is tuning?
Tuners are just like mechanics, computer programmers etc. A lot of so called experts, dont have a clue what they are doing, and in fact can do more damage then good.
There has been many a motors blown up on a dyno due to the so called dyno tuner not knowing what he is doing.
Many people, (including myself) have been told their tune is fine, its another problem with the car. And latter find that not to be the case.

Another consideration that has to be taken in is. Where do you live?
I am 30 miles outside of Washington DC.
For a Dyno tune, I had two choices.
4 hrs to Ed Hutchens in Va. beach or 6+ hrs to Alvin in Moorehead NC.
Dozens of dynos in the DC area, but try finding one that will tune your OBD1 corvette, much less one you could trust.

Back to your car.
In short, changing the factory thermostat (180F) to a 160F along with a tune will make a small difference in how it runs. When I did mine, the motor seemed to rev a little quicker, and it was about .10 sec. quicker and 1 mph faster at my local 1/8 mile track.
Thermostat will cost you about $20.00 and a tune, is $149.00
Also, the torque converter lock up is controlled in the tune and can be changed to whatever you want.

Here is a link to Alvin and to his tune for your car.

https://www.pcmofnc.com/

https://www.pcmofnc.com/product/1986...rder-tuning-3/

 

Correct. GM makes sure to keep things conservative so that what variation may exist from engine to engine won't blow anything up and give them warranty headaches down the line. No way did they dyno-test every single car. In fact, they state that in the owner's VHS tape. Only a handful of each batch got pulled aside for chassis dyno testing. Just how conservative the stock calibration is depends on your particular build.

Also correct. A dyno is a great way to control the variables safely, but it's not strictly necessary. If you want to hit all the load cells reliably it certainly makes it easier (and doesn't require dealing with traffic!). There are definitely a lot of "toonerz" out there who blow up cars with shitty changes despite having a dyno, then blame it on some mechanical failure or whatever. Totally a real thing, I've seen it plenty myself as well.

But while you are correct that it all depends on who's actually doing the tuning, that also extends to how that person does the best job. If a competent tuner makes a generic chip, it's not going to be as good a result as that exact same competent tuner getting actual data from the car in question and making adjustments based on that data. Not all cars are the same.

That all being said, $150 for a competent chip honestly isn't bad if it comes ready to plug in without needing a G1 adapter. At that price, sure, why not. At the $400 tag that other user was quoting I'd rather invest in something else, but $150 is cheap enough to just shrug and toss it in for ***** and giggles.

 

In my 20 years or so of various mods to my vette, I have used 4 different tuners. All 4 did mail order tunes and 2 actually dyno tuned the car.
Of those, 3 were good and 1 was a con. Let me tell you a brief story.
I had purchased a set of hand ported heads, hot cam, long tube headers......
Purchased 2 tunes, one was for preformance, and one for emissions.....
Car ran pig rich at idle and part throttle.......
Tuner told me to log, I did, and I got a local shop to run some pulls for me. It had a fuel ratio of low 10's
Over a 1 year period, Mailed chips back and forth to tuner, dyno pulls, etc...... He ended up saying it was a car problem, his tune was fine. And keeping my $400.00

At the time Alvin was traveling state to state tuning at different shops.
I set up an appointment to get him to dyno tune my car in PA.
At the time, his practice was, he would send a mail order tune, have you to drive it, note concerns etc. and then he would make further adjustments on the dyno.
Put his tune in and the car immediately smoothed out. Could not believe how much better it ran.
A few months latter, he dyno tuned and it only gained 5 hp. That is how close his mail order tune was on his first go around.
Car made 365 hp and 370 tq, (from memory) but it ran a best qtr. of 11.71 at 117.3 mph.

At the time, I never mentioned to him that I had tried another tuner before him.
I sent the bin file to two other tuners on this forum, and they verified, his tunes were not tunes at all. He had changed tc lock up, fan settings, and rev limiter. All the tables that control spark, fuel, VE etc were never touched. And the only difference in his performance tune and emission tune was fan setting. Which by the way, I learned is bogus.

Alvin's tune ran great, passed emissions.... it was all I could ask for.

As we have talked before, there are not many places that will dyno tune these older vettes.
And if you have to travel (as in my case) 4 to 6+ hrs one way, it may not even be possible.

One last thing. Mine is a 93 speed density. With the stock tune, at wide open throttle it ran better then I would have expected..... The tuning was mainly needed at idle and part throttle.
With the stock tune it ran (from memory) 11.9x at 114.xx mph.
But we both know low 10 to 1 AFR will in time take the rings out .....

 

Who is this guy anyways? There are quite a few people who are tuners but anyone who tunes is a tuner. Doesn't make them good. I could learn a few tricks and call myself a tuner. He sounds like a crook.

The power is one thing. I had that same issue on my diesel truck. First offering was ok but wasn't good when you compared to the changes. WOT was what they seem to be good at doing on the first run. After that it was the mid range throttle response and smoothness when hitting it and decel.

 

That is one of the perils of having that old a car that nobody wants to support. Sure, from an enthusiast's viewpoint, that car is priceless and no amount of support is too much. From a shop perspective, they might want to chase the low hanging fruit. Even mechanical stuff, it is hard to get anyone who wants to work on it. If you want to own old stuff, you are going to have to pay that price and cart it or even ship it where it needs to be or be BOTH able AND willing to work on it. No different than anything else, I suppose. We have to realize that our old (insert item here) is OUR enthusiasm and nobody else's. As I run out of body to do it, I have to either find someone who will and possibly pay a huge price since it isn't popular or let it go. Think of it this way, the ugly girl or guy has to dump more liquor into the other person to get lucky. A hot girl has no issues and neither does Fabio. Either that or the 2 ugly people have to settle for each other.