Absolute dyno #'s are a source of contention. It looks like Jay dynoed on a device that loads the vehicle down correctly (as the vehicle is loaded on the road). Look at K&N's dyno

http://www.kandn.com/dynocharts/77-3044.pdf

Stock K&N got ~165 HP at the wheels, but Jay got ~135 HP at the wheels. I've personally measured the drivetrain efficiency for all-wheel drive trucks to be about 65% efficient which is in line with Jay's dynos. K&N's dynos show a 75% drivetrain efficiency - this makes me think that the drivetrain wasn't being loaded as the vehicle is loaded on the road. A nascar 2-wheel drive drivetrain efficiency is about 75%. K&N's 16.5 HP increase might only be 14 HP on Jay's dyno. This is why I use delta HP numbers to indicate improvement or no improvement when tweaking. In fact some pros tuners will use a mustang dyno for tuning then use a dynojet for reporting HP numbers because the dynojet reports higher HP numbers.

Jay's first dyno plot shows a ~10 HP gain at the wheels (approximately 15 BHP) in the upper RPMs. If the H3 tune is similar to the colorado/canyon that I've looked at there isn't much to be gained at the lower RPMs ~2200. There was room to improve at the upper RPMs, but honestly 10-11 HP (7% gain) at the wheels is pretty good. Sure, you can take the A/F to 13.1:1 to get a couple more HP to be squeezed out, but I think that would require a true custom tune with a wideband O2 and then you are running too close to the edge. When I tune LS1 corvettes and camaros, I can get ~18 HP or about 5% improvement with some margin.

A 7% hp gain might drop your 0-60 MPH by over 0.5 seconds for an H3.

I'm not sure that's what you wanted to hear.

 

I received some feedback and questions from this site and another site I posted this on. I am not selling a service - we are pitching in and buying a tuning tool. The normal HP tuners costs $500. It doesn't make sense if there are 5 local people to each buy an independent HPT package. What will most likely happen is that I'll have the HPT first and do a tune/tweaking on my H3.

I can either:
1) load my tune into your vehcile
2) you take over from where I left off and do you own tuning
3) you start from scratch and do you own tuning

My choices are to pay $170 to upgrade my current HPT hardware and be able to do only my H3 or we all pitch in $100 (for 5 of us) and buy new HPT hardware so we can do all of our H3's. Saving $70 isn't a big deal for me. The motivation is to open this up to local H3 owners who want to tweak their performance/fuel economy.

That's it - Fort Pitt

 

The last option for a $100.00 for at least 5 peeps, seems like a fair deal...I hope the folks in your area hook up with you as it seems you know your stuff..

Jay's Tuning on mine I think is right in line with what you're talking about...Like I said It is worth the effort for the extra ponies you can squeeze out...My is tuned for a 89 octane..so it is still conservitive..But the performance gain is like the difference between A/C on and A/C off dragging on the engine before the tuning.