adampousson

i am currently in the process of doing a 305 to 350 vortec tbi swap in my 91 firebird.my block is bored .060 over.i believe the cr is going to be 9.5 - 1.headers, exhaust,open element with power flo lid,bored throttle body from xtremefi,police injectors,and of coarse vortec heads with 2.02 & 1.60 valves.what i am wanting to know is that if a custom chip from tbichips.com will get me by until i can afford the prom burning equipment.i would also like to take a 7 hour road trip to louisiana as soon as the swap is complete.(with the tbichips.com chip).is this at all possible or will i be asking for trouble?

azvolfan

It will get you by. But it will not run right until you learn to do it yourself. I speak from personal experience.

adampousson

so do you think i will be ok taking my road trip?

BMmonteSS

I give it a 50/50 chance of getting out of the drive way.


Way too far from stock to get it running decently with one shot at a chip.

Ohh and burning equipment can be had for around 150$ if you have a cheap laptop. So I don't really see the money savings going with the mail order chip.

I hope you know what your doing with the 2.02 1.6 valves in the vortecs. 9 times out of 10 you'll hurt performance if they aren't ported to match the bigger valves. Even then it's been considered iffy if all the work is worth it over a slight pocket port on stock vortecs. You never mentioned what cam your going with, that will decide how much power this combo makes. With a mild cam the cop car injectors will due at high pressure (20-25 psi). With a bigger cam you could be pushing 400 hp and that will require 80 lb'ers at high pressure. This combo won't be for the tuning newbie. You may want to get the burning equipment now and start learning. Either that or sell a liver to pay someone else to do it locally. Good luck and keep the questions coming, knowledge is power.

adampousson

my cam is a comp 08-52-8.dur. at .050 is intake 218 exhaust 224
lift .495 .503 .lobe seperation is 112.also do i have to have a laptop?i have a regular pc.apoligize for changing topic.i bought the heads completely modified.bowls have been blended to match the bigger valves.im in too deep right now to turn back from this swap.i have everything i need right now except the chip.just need to assemble motor and slap it in my car.

p.s. i only have one liver.cant get rid of it.

FreeLoader

I could be wrong, but I believe you could use a pc to program the burned chip, but that won't really help you as you'd absolutely have to have a laptop to do the neccessary datalogging to burn a proper chip, unless there's something out there that could simply record the aldl cable feedback to and could bring it inside to the pc to read.

or, you know, you could always grab 2-3 extension cords, bring out a picnic table, and hook up your pc outside, as close to the car as possible and connect the aldl cable to your com/usb port(depending on the aldl cable you buy/build), just hope to *** it doesn't rain .

this all also depends highly on whether or not you intend to use the original uv chips, or modify your ecm to accept flash eeproms.

adampousson

well i just realized my sister in law has a laptop so i will be able to use that.would you recommend that i go ahead and get the tbichips.com chip as a good base to start off with since i have never attempted to tune my own ecm.there i go again veering off the tbi subject.let me shut up.

will the police injectors be sufficient for my cam setup?

BMmonteSS

I'll give you my base bin from my last 350, I had a 218/226 dur. cam with a 110 lobe sep. It'll be a WAG, but it should be better than a stock bin. I'm running a 747' ecm while you have a 746'. I'll just swap over my VE and spark tables for you to start from, it'll be as close as the mailorder crap.

I seriously suggest you find some 80 or 90 lb injectors. I was maxing out 70 lb'ers at 22 psi, and your combo will make a good 30-60 hp more than mine. Like I mentioned earlier, it would be best to get the hang of things now before the swap. This will be the best way to avoid down time. You can barrow the laptop to get started, but you really need your own. Tuning is never really done, you always find some other aspect of your motor that you will want to tweak and make better. Just so you know how long it can take for a newbie, I spent the better part of 6 months learning and tweaking. My car ran as good as stock and made tons of power when I was done, you just won't get that with a mail order guess. All you need is a 20-100$ cheapy laptop. An old 133mgz machine will do everything you need it to. There is a guy in the classified selling some laptops that are perfect for tuning.

adampousson

man you guys are really helping me out.im starting to realize how deep im getting but its kinda exciting to learn all this new stuff.im all for it.the downtime is no issue for me i have two other cars to drive.heck,its been sittin for three weeks with the motor pulled out.im about $2400 deep in the motor so far and i just went completely broke.so it will be a month before i can buy the chip burning equipment.and thanks for the laptop info.i didnt realize they went down that cheap for a used one.this is great...i love this site.

p.s. what does WAG stand for?

BMmonteSS

WAG: Wild @SS Guess

Cadillac

You have no idea how cool this offer is. The DIYer's on this board (and many others) are downright guarded with their BINs.

My experience with the TBIchips.com PROM was that it removed the speed limiter and threw twice the gas into the fule tables as the stocker did. I got rid of it.

I don't think I'd take one of these chips on a new engine on a long road trip... might cause more damage than anything else. I understand where you are coming from with the tuning thing though. It's nothing you (or anyone) can pick up overnight, that's for sure.

Fast355

iTrader: (2)

I think that we are gaurded with our BINs for a good reason. Every engine build is different. If you take a prom for one engine and slap it in another, you risk engine damage.

Cadillac

And that my friend, is the whole point of this thread. The same statement holds true with the TBIchips.com PROM and throwing it into any ole engine.

Fast355

iTrader: (2)

I agree, I was just stating why we tend to shy away from giving others, copies of our .BIN files.

BMmonteSS

And that is why I called my bin for his motor a WAG. It might save him 15 minutes or so...LOL If he's really smart he'll look at it as a learning tool not a way to get his motor started.

FreeLoader

keep in mind that if your chip is an eeprom, it won't even go into his car unless he modifies it to accept eeproms.

otherwise, well, ya.

BMmonteSS

I'm not giving him an actual physical chip, I'm giving him the .bin file that goes into the chip. This way he can at least look at the programing and see what I did with my motor. He'll still need a burner, chip/adapter, and laptop.

Just thought I would expand on my last post….(drags out soap box)

The reason I’m so critical of mail order chips is because I’ve tried to tune a vehicle from afar. I had a buddy in NC who was doing some bolt on mods to his LO3 camaro, basic stuff like headers, catback, injectors, and open element air cleaner. Nothing major but it was starting to lay over in the top end. He would send me data logs and I would try my best to give him something that would work. After about 5 tries and over a month of mailing chips back and forth we just decided to wait till he came in one weekend. We were able to get it in about 2 hours of driving around. There is just so much an engine will tell you by the way it sounds or the type of bog you experience. All the data in the world won’t teach you to listen and talk to your engine. It does help you to associate a sound or occurrence with what’s actually going on. I can tell if my car is lean or rich just by listening to it. I cringe when I hear the onset of detonation or the sound of injectors going static. Learning to tune will give you a heightened awareness of what’s going on with your engine.

You have to respect FI, it’s like a carb with 100 jets that automatically correct themselves for varying conditions, an idle circuit with auto rpm compensation, fuel correction and a stall saver built in. The pump shot is tunable in volume, duration and all referenced by rpm, try that with a holley. That was just the basics of the fuel side, timing is whole nother box of goodies. You get the same 100+ entry table of timing values that let you run your normal 30-36 deg at WOT and then run upwards of 45 deg at light throttle and low rpm situations for gas mileage, and still have it drop to 15 deg as soon as loads increase. All the while you have a nifty little knock sensor routine that watches for the onset of knock, senses it and retards timing automatically all before the human ear can even hear the knock. Then the whole shebang is compensated for temperature and barometric pressure.

This may sound like way too much to even think about, and in a way it is. You have to just start slow. Don’t even look at your timing tables till you get a good idle and the fuel in the ball park. Then go visit timing, after that’s better, go back and fine tune your fuel tables some more, then maybe play with your idle some more and get the TCC stuff worked out nice. Then maybe clean up your pump shot (AE) some and get that wicked snap that FI allows you to have. Then when you finally go that all done, go back and do it again because it was so much fun and you learned so much that you think you can do it better now. It’s like crack really, you get a small taste then all you want is more. When I started tuning, I put TBI in a car that never had FI, the motor had a big for FI cam and a combo that no factory motor ever had. The thing wouldn’t even idle, it blew so much fuel into the motor I unhooked the injectors and ran it for 2 minutes with no fuel. This was on Sunday night, I was driving it to school on Wednesday. I quite praying for my life when I pulled into traffic the next week. Six months later I was running high 13’s and beating up on LT1 F-bodies and 4.6 mustangs. I can do the same now in about 3 to 4 weeks, and in ¼ the time with one of moates’ nifty emulators that allow you to make changes on the fly, and using my wide band O2 sensor.

Sorry for the small novel, I just wanted to give you the “real reason” hands on tuning is the only way to go. Knowledge is power, and learning to burn your own proms is the perfect way to learn about internal combustion engines and the theories that govern them. DIY tuning isn’t for everyone, and neither is modifying cars in general (although that doesn’t stop some people). If you’re serious about your hobby and want to become a better, smarter, and faster car guy then this is the way to do it.

Cadillac

I'd say that was the second point of this thread.

Aptly put (as usual) BM.

adampousson

well it looks like i have tons of reasearch ahead of me,which is ok because i need to learn more about how an engine works.this is my first engine swap project and im not all that educated on how an engine works.i can pull it out and take it apart but i go blank when i hear spark and timing and fuel curves.i am a fast learner and i think once its right here in my face i will pick it up fairly quickly..i must say since i started this project my most powerful tool;more so than any wrench,socket,a-frame....has been my computer.without this computer i would be lost.

my buddy said he would give me an ibm type 2625 laptop.will this unit be enough?i think the hard drive is only 1 gig.and it dosent have a cd drive.just a floopy.

BMmonteSS

My laptop actually had a floppy drive.....I'm talking about the 5 1/2" floppy floppies....LOL If it'll run windows 95 it'll run tunerpro and winALDL. The only time I've had problems is with crunching huge 25 meg excell files I made to anylize huge datalogs, which you won't have to worry about.

adampousson

i downloaded win bin and some bin files from the internet just to get a taste of what im getting myself into and all these numbers make no sense to me.will this be easier to make sense of once i actually have the laptop and tunerpro and actually start data logging?

BMmonteSS

Winbin has seen it’s time, you need to get a copy of tunerpro, it’s free as well and MUCH MUCH better in terms of being able to view the data. The other thing to make sure you understand is that you need the proper .ecu or .xdf file to be able to view a .bin file correctly. Think of the .ecu/.xdf as a roadmap as to where everything is located in the chip, and the .bin file as the actual data in the chip. Data logging will help, but the hardest part of chip tuning is learning the lingo. There are some good threads that hash this out pretty completely. Don’t worry about knowing what all those tables do, that takes time. Start with something easy like the VE table or the timing table. You’ll quickly learn that what you see in the table isn’t what the ECM spits out in the end. There are adders and offsets that modify the table. Check the stickies in the DIY prom board, most if not all the info you need is in those stickies. Rbob wrote up some very good articles on fueling and timing that will pretty much lay it all out for you. They are based on the ‘747 ecm which is very close to your ‘746, so they directly relate.

Keep reading, searching and asking questions. Preferably in that order, you’ll start picking it up pretty quick.

adampousson

thanks alot.i think im going to leave this thread alone since ive put in under the wrong topic.ill keep researching and if i have anymore questions ill ask in the appropiate place.

Ronny

iTrader: (1)

Montes quote: I give it a 50/50 chance of getting out of the drive way.

that is pretty accurrate (a.k.a right on). i took a couple bins off CF forum to get car to start with 7747 instal. stock and slight mod. burned 2 chips. FP was stock. fuel tables stock. car had terrible bog. threw lean codes. now knowing what i now know and what any competent tuner would do is set the BPW for increased FP beyond stock, add fuel in VE as engine more efficient , add pumpshot especially if it has added intake plenum volume over stock(this is the hard part). it was easier for me to go over the curve to rich and work back. but discovered that after i has a WB. driving a lean burn is a difficult learning curve. as a side note a good underlying VE gave me an accurrate commanded PE. for an accomplished burner it may take 25-100 burns?????

mail order is a start but you may never know what is missing in tune.

Dewey316

Not only that, but we don't want someone starting up a buisness and selling our bin to people (it HAS happened before).

I have sent my bins to a few people, but they were other tuners, and I sent them to them, so they could look at how I did a couple of things. I know DM91RS, started out with my spark table on his car. I sent it over to him, as he was having a tough time getting the spark worked out. But, for the most part, many of us keep our bins pretty guarded.

Ronny

iTrader: (1)

something tells me the "for hire" tuners will set up bin very conservatively so as not to damage motor and have a nasty situation develop. kinda like the OEM 2 strokes aare set up ubber rich so as not to see a lean burn down warrenty claim.

i recall only on problem in that regard on the corvette forum where that damage was aledged but was probable negligence on for hire burner.

in my case the CE showed a lean condiition when cruising at city speeds. that was for a week of driving before i parked it and ordered a 7747 and the associated equiptment.

DM91RS

He sure did and it opened up my eyes to most of my misunderstanding of the timing table. IF back 4 years ago I could have looked at a table from a combo similar to mine I would have been light years ahead.

SO......a big thanks again to John and Jim

BUT........one thing to remember is that our cars are "almost" the same. Biggest diff is the heads but now after Johns head change they are closer. The cars react in similar ways due to almost the same rear gearing, same driveshafts, same flywheels, better exh, intakes, cams, same tb, same injectors.

adampousson

hey i decided to go with carb so im selling a new throttle body from xtremefi 50 mm.injector spacer and 2 9c1 injectors.200 bucks can get you these fine products.message me if interested.

Cadillac

You guys scared him!

adampousson

didnt really scare me..im just in a situation where i need my car up and running reliably as soon as possible.i have a baby on the way and im kinda on a budget and figured carb will give me good results with my set up.ill just have to swap cams for a bigger one.

BMmonteSS

Here's a suggestion, if you can still hack the burning equipment, just run a timing only setup. This will allow you to still get some of the benefits of FI but with the quick startup of carb. Then later on if you want to, you can switch back to TBI easily. This is how I started out with my car. It was still a hurdle doing the fuel side though.

Gunny Highway

iTrader: (1)

He got me running. Was it perfect? No. But he got me running and daily driving wasn't a PIA at all.