i would reccomend you have it tuned professionally. its very cost efficient and you wouldnt run into as many problems. or you can always go for the preditor from diablo. if money was no object... then i'd say go for the AEM EMS.
I say go with the professional tune, Im going in late jan/feb, 3 setting chip plus the dyno tune for $500 i think was what i was quoted, I'll leave the computer tech to someone other than me!
IMO a tune, like everything else, really depends on you and your goals for the car. If your going to install the H/C/I and be done, go with a chip and let the professionals do it. However, if you are planning to further alter the combo in the future, it might be worth looking into something that allows you to tune the car yourself. The Tweecer R/T is really nice, i'm hopefully going to pick one up in a few months, but it does require a lot of learning before you can really make any significant changes. That doesn't bother me because by then i will really understand what is going on with my motor and thats valuable in itself. The PMS is another tuner you can use that is much more user friendly. It does cost a bit more. There are a lot of other ones out there, but i would decide whether you want to deal with tuning the car yourself first before you decide which tuner you need.
I would save your money & get a pro-m optimizer for adjusting air/fuel ratios & a Innovative Wideband meter, that's what I did, I spent $800 on dyno tunes only to wind up still having to buy a wideband to correctly tune myself as dyno tunes are not as accurate as a self tune done using realtime driving vs simulated, my ride now runs perfect, way better than any dyno tune could do.
also it saves you $ in the long run aswell as you make changes to your car you can tune your car again instead of spending hundreds everytime you want to change something
If you're serious about it, get out into the twEECer forums and learn a bit - you'll get a feel for all that's possible. You can literally change/adjust just about every parameter in the ecu. Get the data logging feature - allows you to 'dyno' tune by driving the car, and logging data from the system which you can review after the 'run'.
There's a LOT to learn, it's fairly pricey and you can really screw things up if you don't know what you're doing. As for tuning on other's cars - you understand that any of these changes require a chip, right? The twEECer or pms units simply turn YOU into the chip burner. It's not like some other makes where you can make adjustments to the factory ecu with a laptop. On the Ford ecu's you burn adjustments into a chip with the laptop using twEECer's methodology - but you have to plug the chip into the computer and leave it there for the changes to be implemented. So your friends will have to spring for twEECer's too. You'll simply be able to help them figure out what they want to change. And I suppose you could share the laptop.
well in all honesty you can really screw an engine up by tuning yourself if you dont pretty vast amount of knowledge. i use a PMS to do my tuning and absolutley LOVE IT, no lap top is needed and it is a pretty powerful tool. check this site www.stangtuning.com there is info on all the popular systems
I have a Tweecer RT and wish I had gotten it sooner.
My WOT tune was OK, but the driveability was horrible.
I dont have allot of time with it, but it's already made a night and day difference.
The 5 different tunes on the fly is one of the best features IMO, you can make small changes and see how your car responds on the fly.
My car used to die like 3 or 4 times before I could get it to idle(even playing with the throttle!) but now I dont even have to be in the car(as long as its in neutral) and it cranks right up and idles perfectly.
I select the "off" position and my car seems to puke, even the sound changes quite a bit, throttle response gets horrible as well.
I pretty much looked at everything the market had to offer, and for the price, the tweecer can't be beat.
The only downside is that it does not have any outputs like others do.