Ok, this is a really noobish question, but please bear with me... I'm planning to boost my D16Z in the near future. All around the site I read about "tune" and how much it means to successfully turboing a car. So what exactly do you do when you tune?

 

a tune is a process in which you prepare your engine for a turbo...the stock ecu will not work with the new turbo probably resulting in bad engine damage

 

a tune is were you have some kind of fuel controller. you put your car on the dyno and measure your air to fuel ratio. the stock ecu will run lean because it cant cope with the forced air coming in so you have to richen up until you get the proper air to fuel ratio that is safe on any motor which around 12.5a/f vs an n/a car which runs around 14.7air/fuel

 

Dustin said it better then me[>:] lol

 

Even when you're boosted though you will have 14.7s (with a good tune) while cruising. But under boost, you should be between 11.7 - 12.1 IMO

 

Ok, so how do you adjust fuel? Is the ratio fixed on all cars/certain setups or does it vary from car to car? Also, what if a dyno is not available?

 

A tune is when timing, fuel, air, and all corosponding engine systems are fine tuned to run your engine reliably and/or to it's peak power. You can adjust your fuel a number of ways. Fuel Pressure Regulators(FPR), Fuel Management Unit(FMU), and bigger injectors are the cheapest but not the best way. There IMO is not a true way to tune without a wideband O2 sensor, some form of data logging, and the ability to change your ignition timing on the fly.

 

Word.

 

Basically it involves remapping your ECU for the new parameters it's going to be seeing. When you force more air into an engine it needs more fuel as well. The timing also needs to be adjusted so that you don't get detonation.

 

Ok, so basically I need to remap my ECU and get a wideband O2 Sensor... Does this mean I have to get one of those chips and get my ECU reprogrammed? What about FPR, FMU, bigger injectors? Do I need these things as well? Also, what if there is no dyno available? Would I be able to do the tune another way?