hey everyone new to the forum, i have a 97 monte carlo 3.1L. I was wondering if i could put a tuner in it to get any more performance, or what can i do to get some more performance?

 

this would be one of the places to talk about this.
i would think that there is a tuner but are you obdII or no?

 

ya 97 is obdII, I just would like to have a little more, maybe get a little more gas mileage.

 

first off dont buy a plug in chip...get an actually tuner, i suggest an hp tuner

 

well educate me, what is the difference?

 

A chip comes with pre determined settings. And in most cases cannot be changed. And a tuner will let you do just about anything. You can change almost anything electronically controlled on the engine. Its pretty nice. Although chips are a little cheaper than tuners, but you get a lot more use out of a tuner. Hope this helps

 

The HP Tuners will do it, but you are looking at a big chunk of change... 500-600 bucks. It might be better to find someone that is willing to help you do it but it will cost quite a bit for that too as they have to "buy" your vehicle info for the tuner to work for your car.

 

well i guess i wanna know exactly what kind of benefits i'm going to get from a tuner, and how great will they be?

 

www.hptuners.com

You can read what you can do with it there.

You can get more horsepower, better gas mileage, and adjust the car to better suit your needs (in terms of shift firmness and shift patterns).

One thing that really does need to be mentioned with a tuner though is that you're not going to go out the first week and add 20 hp- there is a very steep learning curve once you buy one to learn what to adjust, and what to monitor to know if your adjustments worked or not. There are some really good guides out there- but even after that there is still a good bit of trial and error.

IMO, a canned pcm from a reputable vendor can get you maybe 1/2 the gain for ~$100 and takes no time at all. If you don't have the time or desire to learn tuning, then that may be a better route- but the tuner is the better option by far if you have the time to actually learn what is going on.

 

okay, well i'm a technician so something like this i would love to learn