Is this something you can do yourself? Can any mechanic do it?
In: 13
Depends on the car/bike.
If the vehicle is fuel-injected, meaning a computer controls when fuel is sprayed into the cylinders and also how much air is let into them, it requires a special computer and connecter to talk to your vehicle’s computer, and that is expensive. However, you have one then you can tune it yourself.
If the vehicle is carburated, you can tune the engine yourself by adjusting how much fuel/air the carburetor mixes together before allowing it into the engine. This is cheap and (depending on the engine) can be easy to do.
In both cases, however, to really know how much power the vehicle is putting out, you need to use a dynamometer. That’s an instrument that measures the engine’s output by putting the vehicle up on some rollers, and then measuring how fast the rollers spin and accelerate. It’s a heavy piece of equipment and the vast majority of people would not have anywhere to put one nor the money to buy it. Without one, you’re basically just going by “feel” measuring if your tuning is actually changing the vehicle’s power; so technically you can tune a vehicle yourself, but practically you may not get good results without going to a shop that has a dyno.
Edit: What I wrote above applies to internal combustion engines. I suppose you could tune an electric vehicle by altering the programming to change how much current and voltage was sent to the motors based on the driver’s pedal inputs, but I don’t know if there’s any practical way to do this. Hypothetically you could calculate the power the motors are consuming using Ohm’s law (P=iv), but then you’d have to account for the motor’s efficiency, so it’d probably still be easier to use a dyno to determine the effect of your tuning.
Depends on the car/bike.
If the vehicle is fuel-injected, meaning a computer controls when fuel is sprayed into the cylinders and also how much air is let into them, it requires a special computer and connecter to talk to your vehicle’s computer, and that is expensive. However, you have one then you can tune it yourself.
If the vehicle is carburated, you can tune the engine yourself by adjusting how much fuel/air the carburetor mixes together before allowing it into the engine. This is cheap and (depending on the engine) can be easy to do.
In both cases, however, to really know how much power the vehicle is putting out, you need to use a dynamometer. That’s an instrument that measures the engine’s output by putting the vehicle up on some rollers, and then measuring how fast the rollers spin and accelerate. It’s a heavy piece of equipment and the vast majority of people would not have anywhere to put one nor the money to buy it. Without one, you’re basically just going by “feel” measuring if your tuning is actually changing the vehicle’s power; so technically you can tune a vehicle yourself, but practically you may not get good results without going to a shop that has a dyno.
Edit: What I wrote above applies to internal combustion engines. I suppose you could tune an electric vehicle by altering the programming to change how much current and voltage was sent to the motors based on the driver’s pedal inputs, but I don’t know if there’s any practical way to do this. Hypothetically you could calculate the power the motors are consuming using Ohm’s law (P=iv), but then you’d have to account for the motor’s efficiency, so it’d probably still be easier to use a dyno to determine the effect of your tuning.
If you have a carbureted motorcycle, read this.
[https://www.vintagebikebuilder.com/mikuni-tuning-and-jetting-guide.html](https://www.vintagebikebuilder.com/mikuni-tuning-and-jetting-guide.html)
If you have a carbureted motorcycle, read this.
[https://www.vintagebikebuilder.com/mikuni-tuning-and-jetting-guide.html](https://www.vintagebikebuilder.com/mikuni-tuning-and-jetting-guide.html)
I’m not sure exactly what ‘tuning’ consists of tbh. But in general, a lot of vehicle maintenance is surprisingly easy. Almost all of it can be learned via YouTube.
If you were to search for “Toyota Camry 2012 oil change” for example, you should be able to find a plethora of helpful videos.
Same thing with breaks, air filters, fluids, etc. If you’re willing to get your hands dirty, you can save a lot of money.
I’m not sure exactly what ‘tuning’ consists of tbh. But in general, a lot of vehicle maintenance is surprisingly easy. Almost all of it can be learned via YouTube.
If you were to search for “Toyota Camry 2012 oil change” for example, you should be able to find a plethora of helpful videos.
Same thing with breaks, air filters, fluids, etc. If you’re willing to get your hands dirty, you can save a lot of money.
Depends on the car/bike.
If the vehicle is fuel-injected, meaning a computer controls when fuel is sprayed into the cylinders and also how much air is let into them, it requires a special computer and connecter to talk to your vehicle’s computer, and that is expensive. However, you have one then you can tune it yourself.
If the vehicle is carburated, you can tune the engine yourself by adjusting how much fuel/air the carburetor mixes together before allowing it into the engine. This is cheap and (depending on the engine) can be easy to do.
In both cases, however, to really know how much power the vehicle is putting out, you need to use a dynamometer. That’s an instrument that measures the engine’s output by putting the vehicle up on some rollers, and then measuring how fast the rollers spin and accelerate. It’s a heavy piece of equipment and the vast majority of people would not have anywhere to put one nor the money to buy it. Without one, you’re basically just going by “feel” measuring if your tuning is actually changing the vehicle’s power; so technically you can tune a vehicle yourself, but practically you may not get good results without going to a shop that has a dyno.
Edit: What I wrote above applies to internal combustion engines. I suppose you could tune an electric vehicle by altering the programming to change how much current and voltage was sent to the motors based on the driver’s pedal inputs, but I don’t know if there’s any practical way to do this. Hypothetically you could calculate the power the motors are consuming using Ohm’s law (P=iv), but then you’d have to account for the motor’s efficiency, so it’d probably still be easier to use a dyno to determine the effect of your tuning.
If you have a carbureted motorcycle, read this.
[https://www.vintagebikebuilder.com/mikuni-tuning-and-jetting-guide.html](https://www.vintagebikebuilder.com/mikuni-tuning-and-jetting-guide.html)
I’m not sure exactly what ‘tuning’ consists of tbh. But in general, a lot of vehicle maintenance is surprisingly easy. Almost all of it can be learned via YouTube.
If you were to search for “Toyota Camry 2012 oil change” for example, you should be able to find a plethora of helpful videos.
Same thing with breaks, air filters, fluids, etc. If you’re willing to get your hands dirty, you can save a lot of money.
With engines, there are a lot of different variables that can be altered to make it run differently.
Some of these are things that can be altered mechanically by adjusting screws or other settings on the engine, she are settings in the cars computer that can be altered through software, and some are physical elements of an engine that may need replaced or upgraded.
On a basic level, most cars are designed by the manufacturer to be efficient and reliable, and to meet a whole series of regulations. What this means is that they will be setup fairly conservatively to provide decent enough performance.
What we can often do is tune the stock engine to increase performance at the expensive of some of these other factors like fuel economy, efficiency, or reliability. By letting the car inject more fuel and air into the cylinders you may get more power and performance, but stress the engine more and use more fuel doing it.
At a certain point you will reach the practical limits of that engine build, and can look into further modifications to help improve performance – by adding or upgrading a turbocharger, installing bigger injectors, changing cams and other components and many more things you can transform an engine.
How much of this can you do yourself? That will depend on your skill and the equipment you have available. Depending on the car in question some tuning may be easy enough to do yourself, and can be done through some fairly simple processes most people can do easily enough with a little practical knowledge, other elements may need more specialist tools like computer software and the appropriate cables, others may need a full garage and toolkit.
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