Tuning, chips, etc and gains

[Muttled]

I have read a lot about how people will advance their timing by tuning via software, wiring a "chip" inline with the pcm, or even putting a resistor in the IAT sensor. What I'm wondering is how much of a gain I would see from the actual tuning of the car. I know cams usually place the car around 220-250rwhp, but I'm wondering how much of that is the cam, and how much is by virtue of the tuning itself. I know the cam needs tuning to really do anything, but I'm wondering what tuning can do itself on a car with, say, full intake and exhaust, and 3.42 stock gears.

[Nachius]

Realistically with proper tuning on a bolt on car you can pickup quite a bit of horsepower.

Our cars run fairly rich for the most part from the factory.

So leaning them out a bit and advancing timing up to just before you see knock will net you a decent amount of power.

If I remember right Magnus with just the maft+ saw 20+HP gains reaslistically

[Muttled]

So perhaps the IAT mod would not be so useless afterall, if you used it purely to advance the timing? It would still not seem to be a great idea, advancing timing across the board without regard to operating conditions.

Hypothetical situation: if you advanced, let's say for the sake of the question, 5 degrees, with no knock, and at 6 degrees you see knock. At 6 degrees, would the knock retard cause the power to be the same as at 5, or less than 5? I'm wondering because I would imagine that the knock retard would cause quite a bit of power loss above and beyond any gained by the timing advance.