About a year ago I bought a 2000 7.3l excursion xlt. 84,xxx miles. All stock. My question is do guages and tuners go hand in hand, I was given a superchips plug and play tuner and was wondering if its ok to run as is or do I need guages. If thats the case I would preffer a tuner with some sort of monitor/ screen with it. Any suggestions and comments appriciated.

 

I got my DP Tuner before I got gauges, but if I were to do it again I would listened to the majority and got Gauges first. I was surprised at how fast the EGT's rise if you push the engine before it is warmed up... Welcome to the Forum by the way!

 

The 2 most popular & recommended tuning systems for the 7.3L PSD are either a TS Performance 6 position chip (with custom tuning available from a number of different respected vendors) and DP Tuner. Neither of those 2 systems offer the ability to also display gauge data. So most run separate gauges.

Some, e.g., say Edge, do offer the ability to do both, but the tunes tend to be canned, and non-optimized for the 7.3. And by the time you've added in the cost of the EGT probe & boost sensors, you're not that far off what one would have spent to run individual gauges anyway. And the tunes tend not to be as good as the afore-mentioned 2 systems.

I suggest going with either a TS 6-pos chip or DP Tuner, and just adding the individual gauges you need. The standard 3 gauges most people add are: EGT, boost, and tranny temp.

 

no matter what diesel engine you own, you should add gauges BEFORE a tuner. Period.

As for canned vs custom, that is a debate. But you can get an Edge Insight (displays gauge info only, no tuner) and see tons of information about your truck and how it is running in a very small package.

 

Thanks for the info, looks like ive got a little more research to do.