Best tutorial for newbie?

[JST1970]

Hey guys - learning this as a hobby - own the hardware and have been reading and learning as much as possible. What are some of the more popular tutorials for learning the features? The notes in the software are helpful, read lots of stuff online, but want to make sure I am not missing the HPTuners 101 series or something. thanks in advance.

[5FDP]

I kinda just did the same, read and read and mess around with it myself. Though certain things I'm sure I had to research for threads or instructions on how to do something though.

Anything that you want to know about or have questions on?

[schpenxel]

Greg Banish DVD's are a pretty good starting point. In hindsight they were a bit overly simplified.. but can get you going

[eficalibrator]

Greg Banish DVD's are a pretty good starting point. In hindsight they were a bit overly simplified.. but can get you going

You might be surprised just how many people miss on the basics, then go on to try and figure out why something else (that uses the basics show in the DVDs) isn't working. Heck, there are "trainers" out there who don't really understand it either, but are happy to take your money and make you feel good. I find that nailing down the fundamentals never seems to fail me as an OEM calibration engineer.

[schpenxel]

I don't disagree.. it's easy to look back and say that, though at the time I think I studied every minute of the video to figure out what the heck I was supposed to do!

I actually watched your DVD's while waiting on some books from someone else and was glad I saw yours first. Yours explained a lot of the "why's", theirs said "do this, now do that", no explanations at all. In hindsight I disagree with a lot of what they were teaching. I'll refrain from naming names.

[rpturbo]

There really is a lot of stuff in here to learn. Before I bought my own HPT, I had my truck tuned, "Professionally". My tach was off, and I asked him to fix it, he quickly told me my wiring harness was junk, and told me that was my issue. I explained I had heard there was a setting he could change. He told me, "I have been doing this since HP Tuners came out, and I don't know of any settings!" I called the guy who built my harness on speaker phone, and he said in 3 steps where and what to set it to. Tuner then back pedaled, and said, well, that must be something new. LOL
He was just a crappy local tuner, who raped my maf, had my PE tables all wrong, and the injector data wrong. needless to say, that $400 tune, ran great.......NOT!

I will see if I can send you some links I have saved.

[mowton]

So I agree with all...when I first started at this I was overwhelmed by the amount of information that was needed to figure out even how to operate the software, let alone tune a car. And that was when there was only Gen III platforms. Today we have E40, E38, E67 and the latest E92 PCM's to contend with as well as other software packages such as EFI Live to stay competitive. The best idea is to find someone or someplace that can take years of trial and error and provide a clean, concise, one on one, interactive learning experience....I may be biased, but think our way of mentoring the process is a step above. How about 2 hours of setup/training with your cable purchase....we have that as well. I too learned most of my skills from Gregs books and DVD's and find them to be great learning tools. Add in side-by-side proctoring on your computer and you have the best of both worlds....and whats neat, it usually is for about the same price as a good Tune...only now you can do it!!!!

Ed M