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[QUOTE=chrisbalich;10856509
....get the calibration sorted so I can drive it on the road more confidently. Anyone who street-tunes by themselves is a madman. IDK how you do it. I need to phone a friend, or look into logging and then tuning offline. (probably the latter over the former)
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You're expressing a sense of frustration that I am sure is felt by most DIYers besides myself -- the tuning obstacle.
We are able to perform EVERY aspect of car building, from engine building to even reconstructing gauges to painting and wheel alignment.
BUT we're stuck having to go to a tuner to get the car running correctly.
We scrimp and save, for instance like your reticence about buying the $100 shift knob (which, BTW, was absolutely highway robbery, unless that $9 item was made of precious metals, and which you know YOU could have fabricated a more than adequate alternative, and probably better) but then have to plunk down $1000 for someone to tune the car.
When will tuning become a commonplace DIY project? When will there be a technological breakthrough that allows this?
I'll give a few historical parallels that illustrate the kind of breakthrough I'm looking for.
1. Welding. Up until about 20 or more years ago, this was an arcane skill that required hiring a welder to do the job. Now, anyone with the desire has a MIG welder in their garage . Welding is now considered a necessary (and basically simple) skill to pick up....at least for entry level work. Furthermore, even the car industry is using high speed epoxies in place of welding, pointing to a further bigger impending breakthrough in technology.
The paradigm, and exclusive realm of welders and welding, is breaking down.
2. Taxes. Used to be that one was forced to use a CPA to do one's taxes. Nowadays, if you're not using a tax program and doing your own taxes, you're either a multimillionaire or you're not too bright (or you're not filing).
3. Access to information. Back up only to the 1980s, there were only 3 kinds of people: those who had gifted memories and who knew almost everything. Two, those who had gathered EXPERIENCE on subjects, and therefore knew "stuff" gathered by experiencing the subject. And 3, those who had easy access to libraries where they could research and find the information (very restricted access to libraries back in the day).
Then came the world of computers and the internet, and the world of information is open to everyone! There is almost no limit to finding information on almost ANY subject, regardless how obscure.
So, when are we going to have the tuning breakthrough? I see that there are now fuel injection systems (Holley, Edelbrock, FITech, etc) that self-learn...but only for American cars. Although they still have some limitations presently, they will only improve.
Maybe the breakthrough will be in the instrumentation for tuning, or maybe it will be in the car's equipment.
Maybe VEMS is presently the closest to DOY tuning (I speak out of ignorance, just based on what I read from RaceBoy).
MegaSquirt is a partial answer, but the learning curve is much too steep for most DIYers...again, from what I read from Pelican posters.
Come on, someone, let's put the dyno guys out of business!
Anyone remember the $250 4-funtion calculators of 1968? Now full function trig calculators on your wristwatch are trade show giveaways.
I'm wanting a similar DIY idiot-operated tuning mechanism, retrograded to work on old cars.
It's coming, bro's.
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