Tuning
 

Ive had my stillen exhaust for about a week now and i'm planning to purchase the stillen intake soon. I've noticed in some of the threads people tune the car to get the most out of each performance part install. What exactly do they do to tune the car? Is this something that you can do at home? If not where can I take the car to get tuned.:confused:

Im going to give you the short answer.

Tuning means changing the original values (settings) in the cars computer. The computer (ECU) controls all the vital operations of the engine. Things like valve timing, fuel injection, etc. By tuning it, you make these settings more aggressive, producing more power.

This can be done in several different ways, the most popular one is called a "reflash". All a reflash is, is using a tuning program to change and save the values. Tuning is not something I would recommend doing on your own because you can easily change the settings enough to blow up the motor. This is usually done by a tuner, which is someone who is an expert at maximizing the settings for your car without making it risky.

Ask in your local forum for good places for tuning around you...

Thanks for clearing that up! So do you recommend I get the car tuned after I get the intake or is there no need for tuning with just an exhaust and intake.

You can always get gains from tuning, even when stock. However you want to do it once you have the mods on so you can take advantage of them. If you do it before, you will have to get tuned again later. Tuning isn't usually cheap, so you want to do it once and do it right. Leave tuning for the end...