Well, there is a bit of misinformation in this thread that I can hopefully clear up. First off there is an emissions delay in closed loop to open loop in a J4J1 processor, in fact there are two of them, one based on coolant temps and time and one based on RPM and time. The J4J1 indeed has a longer delay than a T4M0 - a 95 GT Computer, but it isn't that much. They ALL have this delay. The person who said 5 seconds was probably misled by looking at the numbers in the software because in SCT software the time to delay OL after the ECT temps have met the criteria for OL, is listed as 8.0 - some people interpret this to mean 8.0 seconds - and if that were the case, a car would probably never get to OL on the dyno. The numbers refer to clock tics of the PCM's crystal (which has a clock speed of 15 Mhz). Looking at it that way, it is not a really long wait at all. The delay is there for emissions. We normally zero these delays out on all tunes we do.
The other thing to consider is that once you get on it in 1st gear, you do transition to OL, and there are delays in the PCM code that delay transition back to CL, so you really do NOT start over when going through the gears. There IS a tip-in timing retard, that we normally get rid of too.
Timing is not based on a 'delay' it's basically based on RPM vs. load - and load is roughly volumetric efficiency. There are a number of things used in final spark calculations as well, so setting a target spak value doesn't necessarily mean that's what you'll get. What would happen when you go through the gears is as RPMs rise, load would normally rise, then when you get out of it to shift or even powershift, RPMs would drop and load would drop a little - and in those circumstances spark would not normally drop, just the opposite, at lower loads and RPMs spark usually is raised.
Hope this helps.
Don
