O.k...So the last of my mods will be comming in this week, and it's almost go time. But, what I need to know is should I put all my mods on, and load my truck up on the roll off, and take it somewhere and get it dynoed? Will they dyno it with no chip? Or should I just order a chip, install everything including the chip, and then go get it tuned like a couple weeks later? Also, who is good around nothern Ohio? Let me know boys.

Deep Pockets

 

I chose to go with a programmer/tuner (Predator) for greater flexibility plus other diagnostic uses (cannot be done with a chip). With that said, I did all my mods before going to a shop for dyno/tune. Of course, I took it easy on the way over to play it safe.
Sorry, no firsthand experience with a chip. Best of luck!

 

ANY ONE ELSE WANNA CHIME IN! What do guys say...help a brother out.

 

What he said ^^^^^

GOTO a TUNER, you can get your programmer from them or bring one with you and have them tune it. Forget the chip.

Or make it easy and call up Tim at Chickenears or one of the supporting vendors. His tuner is damn good from what I hear and you may not even be able to improve upon the tune he'll give you even with a dyno tune! (Mike is his tuner I believe, over 18 years experience)

 

Thanks For The Input Falcon11

 

I rarely drive my Lightning, so I could install all the mods at once and not have any down time transportation wise.

I put all the mods on it, called up a local tuner and then drove it to him to dyno tune. He yelled at me, because my '99 had a 80mm maf, and I installed a 90mm MAF, and I guess I was running really really lean. But luckily I didn't get on it on the trip there.

I bought a ton of other parts, called up Sal at PSP, told him what I installed, he sent me a tune, I went to the local Dyno to thave the a/f ratio checked, sent the info to Sal, He adjusted the tune. A week later I drove to NY to have Sal dyno tune it.

If I were you, Call a reputable tuner, tell them what you have, get a tune. Install all the parts, take it to a local dyno and have the a/f checked, and send the info to the tuner so the tune can be tweaked.

 

Call your local tuner first - be sure that his shop supports whatever hand held tuner you want to buy. In other words, if you buy a Predator, make sure he can tune with the Predator software.

 

If I was starting from scratch I'd first buy a hand-held tuner and datalogging wide band. From there I'd pick someone to write a custom tune for the mods I installed if the canned tunes weren't enough. I'd want to be able to adjust some parameters in the custom tune also. So the tuner you choose needs to support the hand-held and have the ability to supply user-adjustable custom tunes. This way you can mod safely without running to a dyno after every mod.