I was considering buying an autotap. Do you recommend buying directly from them $200, or buying it on Ebay for around $130? The biggest con to buying directly is that it doesn't have the GM specific information, will it make that big of a difference? The biggest con of ebay is availability.. I can hardly EVER find an autotap (GM) for sale on there.. and if I do, it is usually close to $200 anyway. comments?

I am a HUGE fan (and small-time addict... I think) to eBay, however in this case I'd probably recommend buying retail (something I almost never say). But that way you've exactly the product you want, a warranty if applicable, and the option to return it for a refund if needed.

Get it from www.pfyc.com with gm specific codes for 279.00. Purchasing direct from a retailer will also entitle you to their excellent customer support. Best car investment I made. Knowing what your car is doing is paramount to any modding.

Two hundred seventy-freaking-nine?!?!? Good LORD. It'll be much longer than I expected before I can get one of those...

Beats a few grand for a new engine

You can also try checking into local 3800 clubs (grand prix, monte carlos, impalas) to see if any members have one available for a loan.

I may try holding out and finding one on ebay. I really want one but don't want to spare the extra $300 right now to get one when you can maybe find one on ebay for $130. (GM specific)

I have (yet another) question about the autotap. Is it capable of monitoring ALL sensor readings and logging them say, when you're driving, so that you can go back and watch all of the sensor readings, etc in a sort of playback mode? Like, can it only record readings from a few sensors at at a time, or can it record all of their readings and save it to a log file for viewing later?

You can read every single paramater and log it however the more parameters you have the longer the time between the scan of each. For example if your logging 100 paramaters and the atap can scan 30 per second then it will take 3 seconds to scan the same parameter twice. If you only have 1 parameter being scanned it will be scanned 30 times in 1 second. Obviously at WOT you want the highest resolution possible so normally you would only scan 5 to 10 parameters.

So would you want that resolution for racing conditions only? I rarely go WOT.

Or testing mods. If your troubleshooting a problem more parameters may be better. If your looking to see what the car is doing after a mod, then specific paramaters are better than all.

BTW: You should WOT the car a few times a week to clean out the carbon