So I've been thinking on it awhile now and I've watched a lot of videos and read a lot of reviews and I can't really decide on what's better. To buy a tuned PCM, which I've seen some on milzy motorsports and I'm not sure if those actually have a worthwhile performance and HP gain without turning my car into a pile, or if I should go the flash tuner route and have the same fear of my Monte becoming a pile. I have an 02 Monte 3.4 LS with CAI, and a muffler/res delete and needless to say Its a quick car and it sounds beasty. But its not what I want entirely. I don't want to spend big bucks on a l67 l36 swap, or a top swap, (at least not a top swap for now), and the PCM/tuner seems the only route for a 3.4 since they don't !make many if not any superchargers/turbos for that motor. Any advice on what to do? What would be the best bang for my buck 100$ plus refundable core charge tuned pcm from milzy or spend like 3-500$ on a flash tuner from hypertech, superchips, etc? Any advice would help and don't be a dick and say spend like 6k on a turbo/supercharger cause I don't have that kind of money. Just want to get a good and noticeable raise in HP, response, without selling my kidney for the mods lol

 

IMO at the level you're at now, a vendor's canned tune would be a better option.

Buying a tuner and trying to do a custom tune could get you a tiny bit more power by being able to dial it in to your specific car, but they're a lot more money and require learning what to change. I'm also not really a fan of those handheld tuners anyways because you don't have nearly the access to tables like you would with hp tuners or a dhp pt.

Regardless, just don't expect big power gains since the money invested is pretty low.

 

I mean I don't expect to crank out like 100+ HP with the pcm or tuner but I'd like atleast like a decent 25 and (if possible) 50. Because I'm not trying to blow anything up. Been there done that.😂 haha. But if you know of any good brands for tuners, I don't know if there's anybody near me who does tuning but I do live near a summit racing and I don't know if they do either

 

Summit does not do tunes. Hp tuners is the best software but requires a lot of learning or you will mess stuff up. Don't waste your money on a hand held tuner like hypertech etc as they don't really do anything. Your best bet is buying a tune from a vendor, they will send you a new PCM that's tuned and all you do is swap them, do a security relearn then send your stock pcm back to them for the core charge. Overkill, intense, zzp, etc does this.

Side note I have a hypertech tuner if you really wanna go that route I'll sell cheap.

 

Well my original plan is to get a tuned pcm but just asking did that hyper tech actually work?

 

I didn't mess with the hypertech much but for what I did I didn't really notice much. Up side to it is is reads codes and can calibrate for different size tires

 

Well what settings did it allow I kept seeing that they had like stock tune, 91, 93 octane, mostly I want to get rid of my limiter and adjust my shift points, and add some HP so I'm not sure really what I want to do

 

You're certainly not going to ever gain 50 hp from a tune on these engines. I'd even go as far as to say 25 whp peak gain is impossible on a stockish engine.

The only times you'll see gains like that from a tune are on heavily modified engines that had a crappy tune to start with.

IMO, you're looking more at 5-10 whp for just a tune on these engines.

 

Well I've had 3.8engines before and I like them and I just don't have the time or money to do a swap for one, so I wanna get as much as I vcan out of this motor, I saw somewhere the 3.4 supercharger off a grand am can be fitted with little to no fabrication/modding it

 

If you really want a 3.8, another option would be to sell your car and buy one with a 3.8 already in it. With how much these cars have depreciated, I can't imagine a full swap being drastically cheaper than just selling your car and buying another. You've got lots of options for years in the 6th gen body style with a 3.8.