Maybe I can break it down a little bit for you. We all were Noobs at one point in our life.
PCM - Powertrain Control Module: It is located in you stock (bottom) of your air box. It is the "brain" of the car. Controls how the car acts/reacts with engine and transmission. Controls both.
You can adjust the setting on the PCM to enhance performance using a tuner such a DHP, HPT, or a dyno. A tuner is program on a labtop with a cord the connects from the labtop to the OBDII port of your car (picture Scotty posted). You open the program with the interface connected to your car, and it has every setting and information available the PCM can obtain. You adjust the settings to the mods you have and download the new file (changed settings) to the PCM. You take the car out for a drive, see how it reacts to the new settings. If it needs changes, then you do that, re-download the new settings and try again. You keep going until you get it right.
Billboost - is a person on the forum (who's a genius on everything) who tunes, but so do many other forum members. Iceman6669 tunes and is located in Michigan. He is a personal friend of mine and does a great job tuning (as he has tuned me multiple times). Reptile is another forum member who will tune a PCM from his home and send you the PCM through the mail. So all you have to do is swap PCMs. Dsmuts is located in Ohio and tunes as well. There are many other members on this forum who tune, but I'm not sure of any located in Florida. You'll have to ask around yourself, or join some Grand Prix Facebook Groups and ask there.
When it comes to "Performance Packages" stay clear from those. First off, they are a rip off of money. You can piece things together (New & used) much cheaper. Second, just because a website has a few things you can do to your car and says your car will be fine, isn't true. That information is 10 years old and these cars are much older now. Every car reacts differently to modifications. Just because this person ran X and Y mods safely, doesn't mean your car will. So it's crucial to scan for KR to see how your car reacts, which leads to my other point.
KR = Knock Retard. Knock Retard is how Pre-Detonation is read, and it's read in degree's. Detonation is when the Air/Fuel mixture in the cylinder "explodes" with an uncontrolled burn BEFORE the spark. Then when the spark is created from the spark plug, the rest of the unburned air/fuel mixture is lit, and you have two flame fronts bashing heads. This causes an extreme amount of heat and pressure. If it gets bad enough, something has to give, which is usually always a piston. Hence why you hear about "chipped pistons." KR at wide open throttle is detrimental (the more the worse obviously). The more mods you have the smaller window of "safety" you have. For example, if your car has 5 degrees of KR at WOT on a stock motor, you'll be fine. But if you have 5 degrees of KR with a heavily modified build, you're chances of breaking something are increased substantially. You can monitor KR with something called a scan gauge.
A scan gauge is something the connects to your OBDII port and spits a lot of information from the PCM on what your car is doing, including KR. Most people use a gauge called "Aeroforce Scan Gauge" since its a normal sized gauge and can fit in a Pillar pod. They cost $220 new but can be had used for roughly $150+. You can also use something called a Scangauge II for $150 but its a rectangle shape, and odd to mount somewhere. If your on a budget and have an Android phone, you can download an app called Torque Pro, purchase an OBDII wireless port for Torque for $20 from Ebay, and that app will read KR. The bad though, the refresh rate is slow, so once you see a high spike of KR, more than likely it happened a split-second too late. The first thing you should do before modding is buy a scan gauge. It's a must to be safe.
To get you started on modding, i'll lay it out simple for you.
1: Make sure your car is running properly and fix any maintenance issues with it.
For a basic build to yield roughly ~20whp possibly:
-Scan Gauge
-Headers (Many people have Speed Daddy since they are $220 brand new)
-Make your own intake
-AL605 Copper Spark Plug
-3.4 or 3.5 pulley
-Tune
Soon you'll want more and can start looking into bigger things:
-Intercooler
-Gen V Supercharger swap and Lower Intake Manifold (Blower off 04+ Grand Prix)
-Northstar Throttle Body/LQ4 Mass Air Flow Sensor
-Rockers OR a cam
-Ported Heads (Iceman6669 does ported heads on this forum)
-Heavier springs
-E85
etc...
But by this time, you'll have to start looking at replacing/rebuilding your transmission with upgraded parts to handle the extra power, and your lead foot. Transmission work and parts are very expensive. You're looking at $3,000+ for a great transmission from Triple Edge Performance.
Also, there is always a turbo build. In the end, it's the way to go. Way more power for the money. You will easily get caught up in a very expensive blower build that will get you something like 300+whp for the same price as a turbo kit that will get you 400+whp. If your just looking for big power, turbo is the way to go. But the majority of us, are addicted to the blower whine.
But before you even think about the moving on from the "basic" build, perform the "Three R's" a million times.
-RESEARCH
-READ
-RE-READ
Hope all that information was worth my time and you gained some knowledge from it.
