Resetting the ECU

[Jeff Chambers]

Idle tuning via mail order is a tough call. It may take some patience on your part while your tuner gets it right since he doesn't have the car directly in front of him to assess how it responds to the tuning changes. I've done 4-program chips with four different idle tunes, let the owner drive each program for a while, return the chip with feedback on the programs and take another shot at it. As you can see, you've got to have some patience going about it this way. Otherwise, if I've got the car in my shop, the idle/part throttle can usually be nailed within an hour, assuming there are no underlying mechanical issues.

Realize though that there is no way for a tuner to 'back out' the tuning that is on your chip. So any idle tuning done on your chip will overwrite the performance tuning. There's no way to merge the two from two different tuners. Now if you can get your old tuner to send the actual files to your new tuner, then it can be picked up from there.