Thinking of giving up.

So talked to someone who went through the HPA courses to learn how to tune. He tuned his car himself and broke a world record for a sbe 4.8. And here I am trying to tune my buddy’s car after going through the courses, and I can’t get the car to do what it’s supposed to do. If others are coming out of the lessons and making cars go fast not even really following the exact steps even, not doing steady state tuning, not doing torque optimization tests etc, and I’ve done three full days of tuning in HP tuners worth at the track with 30 plus passes and I’ve only gotten him to go from 16s to a 9.8 and there’s so much more in the car, I think I’m not meant to do this or I’m just too stupid. I don’t know. It upsets me because I try looking at different softwares and the only thing I can do is timing and fuel tuning. I can’t make my own base map, I can’t even do a base calibration. And i want to be a tuner, what kind of tuner would I be if I can’t even configure a base file, for anything, reflashing or standalones. I don’t know maybe the courses explained it, but I’m too slow to be able to pick it up.

Maybe you’re being a little hard on yourself - personally I think going from 16 seconds to 9.8 seconds at the track is pretty amazing!

It was breaking up real bad. If you go to my IG you can see the videos there (wickedmotoyt). I mean it was good yes. It’s so weird that most of these tuners don’t do steady state tuning and go straight to full ramp runs. I’m not sure if high horsepower drag purpose cars are tuned differently, however I’m pretty much trying to follow the steps. I just don’t know where to learn the rest of it. Such as offsets, setting up calibrations, what this and that table or map means. I’ve been trying to research it and just cannot seem to find the information but everyone else can.

It is all in the Webinars

I'd agree with Matt - Stop being so hard on yourself, that's a great achievement! What you need to understand is that sometimes tuning goes very smoothly and the engine does everything that theory says it should. Sadly more often than not this isn't the case and it can be very frustrating. It is however more satisfying to work through a bunch of problems and come out the other side with a successful tuning job than it is when everything just goes right. You'll also learn more from the jobs that don't go to plan too.

Also, you only tune one car.. maybe the misfires or breaking up it's having is not related to the tune? Maybe it's a mechanical issue?

BTW You miss the whole point.. you did not break nothing.

Stop being so hard on yourself, you made a car go 9's !!

Stick with it Damien, sometimes you might find one small mechanical gremlin that explains the engines strange behaviour completely, and once you fix it, everything works as expected, and you realise you were doing it the right way all along.

No, i mean i worked the breaking up out of it just by adding 46% more fuel because he was in the 21:1s!!! but yes first pass ever and mind you this is a built 6.0L LS with twin 78 mm turbos on c16. And it's the first car im tuning. We went from a 2.0-60ft. 16.89 1/4. To a 1.29 60ft 6.2 1/8th, 9.8 @137 1/4 on 6lb launch and 11psi at full boost. Next time we hit the track we're going to turn it up and see if I can get this car into the 8's.

Make sure you post back here when you do - I have no doubt that you will meet your goals if you persist.

Going back to around 2001-2002, I was there when the GT-R drag racing craze took off in Australia. I remember quite clearly being at Eastern Creek for a Wednesday night street drag meeting. Willall Racing and Martin Donnon were there with Kier Wilson's Australian delivered R32 GT-R, which had been driven over from Adelaide. It was a fully built car, with a forged RB26, Trust TD05/TD06 turbos, Hollinger gearbox, MoTeC ECU, suspension all upgraded, and it wouldn't go any better than in the 10's at 130-140mph.

Fast forward another year or two and he was well and truly into the 8's at 160mph, with much the same setup - I think the biggest difference was upgrading to T67 turbos.

Point of the story is that everyone starts somewhere, and sometimes persistence is all it takes.