99 cobra tune

[Ralphh911]

Hello everyone! I just had a quick question about tuning. I own a 99 cobra with 56k miles. Doing some basic mods to it and just curious if a tune like a sct 93 would suffice and make the car run happy. The mods are bbk long tubes, jlt cai, bbk o/r x pipe along w magnaflow cat back and Steeda pulleys. I think gears are in the near future also. Ty in advance for your input!


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[01yellercobra]

I wouldn't bother. Wait until you get the gears and get a custom tune for the car.

 

[blownstang4.6]

You'll need to get the fuel trims adjusted with the longtubes since the 02 sensors are placed further back. Find a tuner that can send you an Xcal with a tune for your mods. Don't use Bama.

 

[Ralphh911]

Ty for the replies. Mechanically i understand what you are saying with the o2’s. But being newer to actually doing things on a vehicle that could require a tune and or tuner I’m really new and lost when you say “xcal”. Now the only reason i have heard of the 93 tune is because you see a lot of them. So without insulting me to much lol. Can you break down and explain just a little better for me


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[01yellercobra]

When you install long tube headers the O2 sensors are moved further from the engine. This causes the sensors to take longer to heat up. So a tuner needs to lengthen the time for the sensors to heat up before the ECU thinks they're bad and throws a code. The tuner usually will increase the duty cycle for the sensor heaters as well. At least I did when I ran headers in my 01. The fuel trims might need some tweaking to bring them back to optimal due to the better flow of the headers.

The Xcal is the hand held device that transfers the tune from the computer to the car. The device used doesn't matter as much as the person writing the tunes.

The "93 tune" you see thrown around is a tune written for 93 octane. But generally if it's a tune that comes with a hand held (called a canned tune) it's so generic it's not worth running. What I mean by that is if you buy a tuner directly from SCT it'll have some generic tune on it. That's different than if you buy a tune from someone like Lund. They will send the tune on some kind of hand held device, but the tune is much better. You'll also see terms like "pump gas vs race gas". Which I'm sure you can figure out.

 

[Brutal Metal]

your not gonna see any significant RWHP gain with your mods from a tune. I'd pick up a used Diablo Predator, load the 93 tune, increase spark advance to 26-28 at WOT over 4K. Throw it on a dyno to see the A/F ratio and adjust fuel with the Predator accordingly. This will be within 10 HP of a $500-$600 custom tune.

 

[scottydsntknow]

RWHP gain no, driveability yes. And I'll also say don't use any of the "tunes for life" bullshit that way too many lazy ppl run. Take the time to send datalogs and revised tunes back and forth with your tuner until they are satisfied with the stuff you are sending them. Make sure you install a wideband and hook up the analog output to your SCT device because you need to to get any sort of worthwhile datalogs. So before you put the longtubes in, have another sensor bung welded to the driver's side header for the wideband.

 

[THark88]

i'm pretty confused here. i'd assume you'd get a decent little gain if you're doing the mods and tune at the same time .... intake, full exhaust and a tune should make the car feel alot better than stock !

 

[01yellercobra]

i'm pretty confused here. i'd assume you'd get a decent little gain if you're doing the mods and tune at the same time .... intake, full exhaust and a tune should make the car feel alot better than stock !

Yes, there will be some bump in power. The reason for my initial reply was since he was planning on getting gears to wait until those are done. I've seen all the other mods installed and not need a tune on other vehicles. Granted each vehicle is different. I ran a JLT, Bassani catted X, and a Mac catback on my 01 and never touched the tune. I had it checked on a dyno and it was fine. But at that point I also wasn't trying to get every last horsepower out of it.