How we tuned cars before laptops...
- Thread starter Jim Rockford
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that was an upgrade. At least you had a keyboard. I was shown to take 2 glasses of water. Slowly dump one down the carb and rev the snot out of the motor to blow out any carbon. Then take the second and set it on the intake and mess with both a vacuum gauge for highest vacuum and watch the ripples in the glass for the smoothest idle whilst messing with the idle mixture screws. I wish I was kidding.... did this on everything from Big Block chevs to tractors
I used one of these in my early days, would love to get my hands on another
And I'm sure many guys here used laptops like these
And I'm sure many guys here used laptops like these
Many of our G bodies are between the two, using a analog dwell meter, OBD 1 scanner, and hand tools to tune them.
I love seeing these old tools - great stuff. I have an old school oscilloscope that I keep thinking that I'm going to try to master, but never seem to have the time.
From looking through these posts I see a paradox. I view tuning and fixing poor performance as two distictively different things. A car that runs bad, or has a noise, or a performance issue doesn't need tuning but rather needs to be repaired (fixed). It's very common that the average person believes that the computer tells the tech what is wrong with the car - it makes me chuckle or get PO'd, depending on my location when I hear this. Basic tuning, operation and repairs are still needed to be completed and have little to nothing to do with a computer.
I tune with a computer, once in a while diagnose with it, but my computer systems don't give out trouble codes to diagnose.
From looking through these posts I see a paradox. I view tuning and fixing poor performance as two distictively different things. A car that runs bad, or has a noise, or a performance issue doesn't need tuning but rather needs to be repaired (fixed). It's very common that the average person believes that the computer tells the tech what is wrong with the car - it makes me chuckle or get PO'd, depending on my location when I hear this. Basic tuning, operation and repairs are still needed to be completed and have little to nothing to do with a computer.
I tune with a computer, once in a while diagnose with it, but my computer systems don't give out trouble codes to diagnose.
Putting an ear to a screwdriver works well too.
I am glad I learned on a carbed car. Jetting. Plug gapping and reading. Timing curves.
EFI has just made me lazy.
DBW cars can be pretty crazy. To calibrate the DBW throttle in my P71, with KOEO, you slowly depress the gas pedal then quickly release it, turn the key back to off, then repeat two more times. Anytime the battery is disconnected there is this complex relearn procedure you need to do. First let the car full warm up in idle, then put the parking brake on and let it warm idle for a minute, turn the A/C on and let it idle another minute, then release the parking brake and depress the brake pedal and put it in drive and hold it at idle for another minute, then drive 10 miles. DBW sure is better than drive by cable. 🙄
And people wonder why I'm more comfortable pulling the choke knob and using the foot starter button...…….
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