TRANSCRIPT:

Hey guys, it's Bob Morreale here with The Tuning School and I'm going to give you five tips to help you when you're tuning so let's go ahead and get started.

Number one, best tip I can give you is going to be, know your customer. So what does that really mean? When the customer comes in with the vehicle, do a good job of looking it over and putting it to paper. So ,when students come through our classes one of the biggest things I teach them is always write down what the customer tells you so is it a built.  Is it high compression? What spark plugs are in it?  What fuels are in it? What's the build look like? Is it something that sounds like it's going to work well together? Or is it something like maybe a really high compression engine with a supercharger on pump gas? 

If you're a good tuner you're going to look for that and go uh hang on a minute I got to pay some particularly close attention to things like spark advance so I don't have a pile of pistons on the floor to clean up when I'm done.

So, number one best tip I can tell you is, know your customer, write it down and understand what you're tuning for as a good tuner that's so so important I can't stress that enough.

Number two, kind of similar: know the use of the vehicle. For example, if a customer comes in and says, "Hey, this is a drag race-only car. It never sees any other activity than drag strip competition. I want every horsepower you can give me." He's going to get a different tune than a customer who is maybe going to have mixed use. So, he doesn't need all of that. Maybe it's a vehicle that spends most of its time on the street, with some performance on the strip, and he just wants to optimize it. In that case, it won't get nearly as hot of a tune; it won't be nearly as on the edge as that full-blown drag strip-only car. So, it's very important to understand the use.

Then, I'm going to add on to that by saying: think about the worst-case scenario for that customer. Where do they live? Are there a lot of mountains they drive through? Is there going to be a lot of extra load on that engine? When you really understand this—and we talk about this on the dyno with our students in class—you have an ideal scenario here: the vehicle is on flat ground, it's a controlled environment, you're at the laptop making sure nothing is going wrong. But when you send that car down the road, you want to make sure that you didn't send it out on the edge and that you've tuned for the worst possible situation.

Let's say you're tuning a truck, maybe a Silverado, and you're not getting any knock, and you've maximized the spark and are making great power. But at the end, the customer tells you, "Hey, by the way, I tow a 5,000-lb trailer every day." Well, that's actually your fault. You should have listened and asked upfront, "How do you use this vehicle?" When you tune for it, if you have a good load-bearing dyno, you're going to tell that dyno, "I want you to add enough load to simulate that 5,000-lb trailer." So that when he leaves and hitches that thing up, in the worst-case scenario, your tune is still good. It doesn’t knock, it's not lean, and there are no problems. You've done it right by the customer.

So those are two super important things. Number three is knowing your fuel. Is the customer always going to run the fuel that you are tuning on today? Maybe you've got 93 in the tank today, but are they always going to run 93? You need to find that out. Also, know the fuel in the context of the vehicle's use. Maybe it's a street-strip vehicle, and sometimes it sees use at the strip. What is the customer going to do? Well, if you tuned it on 93 and the customer, when he gets to the drag strip, is going to put C16 in, there's a problem. We talk about this in class quite a bit. You need to tune for the fuel. So, when the customer leaves, you've got to let them know, "Hey buddy, this is tuned for 93 octane, not C16," which is like 117+ octane. This means it's probably going to burn slower and make less power, so you should have tuned for that fuel to optimize the power. There’s nothing wrong with the fuel—it just has to do with the tune, and the fact that you need to tune for the specific fuel.

Okay, next one. Number four. You see this pile of laptops here? You’ve probably been wondering this whole time, "What is this?" Well, I'm going to ask you guys: what do all of these laptops have in common, other than the fact that they've been my laptops over the years? They're plastic. You hear this? They're crap. Yes, I've bought some crappy $200–$300 laptops over the years. They have worked fine, don't get me wrong, but number four, when I say number four, means: buy a good laptop. If you're going to be tuning routinely, try and get one that has some rigidity to it, that isn't plastic like these. All these laptops here share one thing in common: they're plastic, and they all have a problem with the motherboard. Why do you think that is? The motherboard flexed over the years from me getting in and out of the car. Every time you do that, it twists, and over time, maybe after a year and a half to two years, the cheap plastic one will give out.

There are better ones that do have a kind of plastic shell, but they're rigid. So when I say "buy a good laptop," I'm talking physically—it can't be cheap or flimsy. It needs to withstand getting in and out of the car without flexing. That's a big deal. Also, I do see some guys on the internet saying, "Just get a cheap laptop. An i3 or some low-level processor is enough." Well, it is probably enough, but don't forget: your time tuning equals money. Time is money, and money is time. So buy a good laptop, especially if you're a professional. Get something really good, like an i7, so it runs quickly and you're not sitting around waiting for it to grind through tasks and software. It’s a pet peeve of mine, so: good laptop—absolutely number four.

Number five: know your value. What do I mean by that? Don't be the cheapest guy around. Know your value, because your time has value. Especially as you tune for a number of years and time goes on, you refine your craft and get better at it. I always tell students in class: specialize. Become the guy (or girl) in your town that people will drive 500 miles to see because you're the best at whatever you're passionate about. If you love Corvettes, go be the best Corvette tuner you can. Specialize, and get to know the ins and outs of that platform. When you're tuning on that platform, you can more easily determine, "Is that a tune problem, or is that a mechanical problem?" This approach serves your customers better, which relates back to knowing your value, because then you can charge a premium. This is where you want to be as a good tuner—you're spending your time becoming an expert on your platform.

So, that's all I have for you today. I hope you guys enjoyed this video, and as always, stay tuned!