Imagine that you buy a pickup truck. Its engine is pretty standard for the make and model. It will get most jobs done, but you really wish you could make the engine more customized to what you do with your truck. Would that not be great if you could customize the engine of your truck at any time? Guess what? You can! Here is how that works and how to customize your engine dozens of ways for each job you are going to do.

HP Tuners

​HP tuners stand for "horsepower tuners," a type of device that allows you to crank up the horsepower in your engine or turn it down. This means that by tapping into your truck's onboard computer, you can give your truck even more horsepower to pull and carry heavier loads when you need it to and then quickly switch the HP back to handle lighter loads. You can do this more than once in a day and dozens of times in a week. You will need an HP tuner, your laptop, and the appropriate software. One such software program that truck owners find especially fun and exciting to use is the HP tuners VCM Suite offered by companies such as Calibrated Addiction.

​Load the HP "Tune" into the Tuner

​From your laptop at home, you can create and load the "tune" you want for your engine. Power up, power down, more torque, less torque, greater fuel efficiency, etc., until you get the right "mix." The "tune" is then downloaded onto the tuning device. The tuning device plugs into a port under your truck's dash. 

Plug and Play

​Plug the tuner into the port under your truck's dash. This is the same computer port used by technicians for diagnosing issues with your truck. Additionally, this port is the same one used by insurance companies to track your driving habits and provide you with a discount for good driving.

Find this diagnostic port and plug the tuner into it. Turn the tuner on and run your program. Upload the "tune" into the truck's computer. This will take only a couple minutes. Then your truck's engine is customized to operate in the way you want it to for that day or for however long you want the "tune" to work. Change the "tune" at any time simply by plugging and playing a different "tune" into the truck's computer. If a "tune" fails to work as expected, tweak it and upload again.