Hey guys im looking for a little better mpg and power out of my89' 302. Runs great but im pulling a trailer from Buffalo, ny to phoenix. Would like a little more power to make me feel better but i want reliable power, dont want to fry my computer. Any thoughts???

 

For the most part the route to more power(and lots of it) with that vintage motor involves swapping hard parts, so what little gains there are to be had with a chip you can have for free if you borrow a timing light and advance timing at the distributor. These motors will often take 2-3 degrees more timing over stock(10deg BTDC) before pinging becomes audible on regular octane and this will put a little more pep under your right foot.

 

With regards to “Chips” and “Tuners”, years ago it was the best that most could do to enhance the ignition timing, fuel curve, transmission shift points, etc. It was (and still is) very important that a person verifies that the “Tuner” is ASE certified in both ECM and Transmission programming and IMHO be have current certification by the OEM whose vehicle you want to modify. There are plenty of persons who advertise their programs to be the best and even offer custom tunes, but in all reality, very few actually have credentials in these areas- but that’s not to say that some of these “geniuses” haven’t really caused damage to a few vehicles- just jump over to flatratetech.com and read just some of the comments from the MSE techs!. Perhaps what is equally important is the parameters that can be adjusted are set by the OEM vehicle software…so there is really no “magic” in what they are doing anyway. IMHO, if you live near any major city there are excellent tuning specialists with dynos who for the same price (if not less) will tune your vehicle taking into consideration your specific needs including environmental conditions, for your specific vehicle. IMHO, the best bang for the buck! If you are comfortable and understand how to tune a vehicle, you can also do this yourself. There are several software programs available, that “Speak Common English” that will allow you to tune your vehicles ECM. One company is HP Tuners, they have a website….they offer two core programs, one for those who are doing dyno tuning and one for the home-garage mechanic (which is priced at about the same as most of the “canned tunes on the market) …this version limits the span of adjustments as a safeguard against doing something outside of the oem scope……basically, keeps you from doing something “too stupid by accident” (grin). They also have adapters through affiliates for burning chips for pre-obd vehicles- but you must have an understanding of how/why you are adjusting fuel mixture and ignition timing.