When you buy a hand held tuner it will have canned tunes in it that you just upload into your car

 

:withhomo

I mean "Technically" you can tune it yourself if you get the specific software that the device uses; but I would never recommend that unless you've A. know what your doing, or B. have tuned a car before.

Canned tunes are perfectly fine for minor bolt-ons, but if you are doing something bigger, cams, s/c, nitrous, turbo; a dyno tune is a 100% must.

 

^+1... usually when you get a tuner say the SCT3 hand held you tell wherever you buy it from what bolt ons you have on the car and they will load a custom tune for you setup. you can also get another tune for added bolt ons, but for big power adders its always best to get a dyno tune.

 

There are limited options you can play with on your own, but all the cool stuff you will need the software for. Whoever does your dyno work will have this stuff.

 

you will not be able to tune it except for what comes adjustable on the tuner, IE gear ratio, spark, etc. to properly tune the car you will need someone with SCT software to do it.

 

i only really plan to do gears puleys and maybe cai, which is a better tuner to havve for that?

 

The preloaded tunes work just fine for that. Hit me up for a deal.

 

tuners are great for most simple mods but once you start doing cams and stuff youre gonna want to get it pro tuned