In the market for a tuner I am getting ready to change duty stations and will be driving a crossed the U.S. pulling a 20' enclosed car hauler. I have heard a lot about DP Tuner and Jody does a great job. Any other recommendations will be awesome. Looking for little more power and fuel mileage. Truck spec's K&N cold air intake, Exhaust all the way back, sun coast shift kit, Mag tec tranny and diff covers, and gauge pillar. May be a little more but that is the most of them I can remember. I am looking for work and mountain tunes not so much the go fast track tunes. Any advice is greatly appreciated. thank you in advance


jake

 

There are tons of posts addressing this issue already and a lot of them are relatively current...within the last month or so.

First, make sure that your truck is 100% rock solid stable and that there are no engine or transmission issues lurking. They will really become obvious if you complicate matters by adding a tuner and adding the tuner with any present can increase the chances that you will do real damage to your engine regardless of whose tuner and tunes you ultimately decide upon.

The K&N intake/filter is not very well regarded around here. I am in the market for an additional 7.3 and I have passed on two that had K&N intakes and filters due to the fact that when you remove the intake to look at the wheel on the turbo there is almost always dusting and most of the time dings and chunks of metal missing.

Some will say there is no difference between tuners and tunes, that it is more a flavor of the day thing....take that with a grain of salt. Seek people who have run tunes created by at least three different tuners. There is a huge difference a lot of the time. EGT's, smoke, noise, transmission shifts and overall stress on engine components are more important than raw HP. Some tuners can accomplish the same HP gains with lower EGT's, smoke, noise, FIPW, ICP, and etc... ie: less stress on the engine.

Some tuners will charge you for each and every tune that you need as you upgrade your truck. The cost of additional new tunes, needed due to upgrades, is included in the initial purchase price with some others. There is also a large library of tunes available for you to experiment with as well...all included in the initial purchase price.

The hardware that some tuners use is proprietary, meaning that you can only use their tunes on that tuner...ask about that. There are coding concerns with some that make them less compatible with others for shifting on the fly...so you probably should not mix and try to match tunes from certain different tuners. Others play extremely well together....

Find any post by TUGLY and read the links at the bottom of his signature. There is one that addresses tuning.

 

Thanks for the mention.

"Custom Tunes" link in my signature is the one he's referring to. I have run tunes from three tune providers, and they do not all have the same "mentality" or system familiarity when tuning.

I finally stopped spending money on tunes/tuners/providers when I installed the Hydra (many providers can email tunes for this) and found a provider with great system familiarity.

Watch out for claims of "My truck is so powerful now", because that sometimes means the throttle response has been altered more than the actual performance. Simply put - touching the throttle gives gives it a blast of acceleration, but leaves nothing in reserve past 2/3 throttle. You can expect a max of about 60-65 HP bump with stock injectors. Any claims beyond that are just naming a tune with numbers - or have fine print "in the brochure" that you need more mods to the truck to reach the advertised HP gain.

Better fuel economy with tuning? Give up on that right now. I have tried or read almost everything available on the subject. Ford had that right, given the weight and brickish profile of these behemoths. Short of modifying the weight or vehicle aerodynamics, the best thing for fuel economy is a 100% operational truck and installing a block of wood under the accelerator.

 

And not lifting the truck or going with larger tires......all this contributes to reduced fuel economy even in the best running 7.3L.

Rich is 100% right on the block of wood joke...for fuel economy, best to keep things under 2000rpm.....you will drive like a granny, but you will squeak every ounce of mpg that your setup will allow. Above 2000rpm, while the smile may appear and you will make good power....you will be drinking fuel at a more aggressive clip....

 

Thank you for the responses guys very good information. I may just rethink and for go the tuner, not that I have health problems with my truck I am very ocd when it comes to my truck. I am sure inside there is a couple though that I have just not chased down yet. I don't have a lack of power just always looking to make my truck better. River19 you will never find lifts on my trucks I own them for what they are built for working and hauling I don't like looking like a peacock driving down the road with a trailer. Thanks for the info again guys.

 

You might want to look into AutoEnginuity (not Giotto), Torque Pro, or Dash Command. These are diagnostic apps that read the sensors (not just the trouble codes), and they make great monitoring systems with alarms.

 

Tugly,


I really appreciate all the info you are providing I would have never thought about a app like this. Which app are you using in the video posted. I like how it is a real time read, I am guessing you can leave this in while you are driving to monitor everything on the road.

 

I bought OBDLink MX (they make BT and WiFi - BT doesn't play with Apple) for the OBDII adapter. I have the Nexus 7 (2013) tablet with Torque Pro.

You can set up several pages of gauges, you can set alarms for each gauge, and it can be programmed to log as many or as few PIDs as you wish. You can also set up vehicle profiles. I yank the OBDII adapter from "Stinky", throw it in "Stingy" (Prius), and load the Stingy profile with all the PIDs, alarms, and logging preset.

 

That is a nice set up you have. I will be looking into this, it is always nice to know what your truck is doing and how she is feeling.

 

BUT don't let the "no better fuel mileage" thing discourage you from getting a tuner. A good custom tune can really wake up a truck that's towing. You won't gain any fuel mileage with a tuner, but driving like you have some sense you can get a nice bump in performance and not "lose" any fuel mileage either.
And thanks for your service!!

 

Schlepprock250, I would not say it scares me away, but it may just have to be something I do after I make it acrossed. I will be working on limited time so I would like to have time to adjust the tunes so they are perfect for any other time. I am going to buy a toy hauler when we get over on the east coast so believe me it will still be towing. Tugly does make some great points though and it will be perfect if I can pick up this monitoring scan tool and get the truck up to tip top shape of what I may be missing on the drive over. I am a very easy tower as you could say I do not push my trucks to the max when towing I try to stay right at the 2k RPM area seems to be the best power and bang for the buck in fuel at that RPM.

 

Nice steering wheel you have there Rich...

 

Tuggly - I am in the same boat, looking for a new tuner. I had/ have the Bully Dog GT and really am not impressed apart from the screen monitoring it provides. I like the idea of having an open source Hydra device, that allows me to run multiple vendor's tunes. Could I ask you who you bought your hydra device from, and what vendors you use for your tunes?

Cheers,

Kevin

 

Also if you find any post that I have done on the bottom of it typically will be a link to the torque pro FAQ which should help you with any questions you might have!