hey guys need some advice.

i have 01 excursion 7.3 with the follwing mods.

S&B intake
4in Exhaust
Edge tuner
6in Rough Country lift
ultra 16x10 with Yokohomas Geolanders.


I am looking to purchase a new tuner and the two that i have been hearing alot of good things are DP and SCT. any advice? is getting Custom tunes really worth it?

 

Yes, custom tunes are worth it provided your truck is in good condition and everything in the supporting systems works optimally - otherwise you may not see maximized results.

I left DP and went to Gearhead, as have several other friends on here and in person. Just my recommendation - Gearhead.

 

What Matt said ^^^^^^^^

 

hey matt thanks for information i will look into that!

 

My DP to Gearhead convert Matt beat me to warning you of DP tuning. I can write you a book on my experience.

Go with Gearhead an you'll be very happy with your truck. I am and so many others are as well.

 

I'll write the sequel. Ugh, what a terrible experience and, IMO, somewhat dangerous tuning.

I also like getting free tune tweaks no matter where I buy my upgrades or what I want changed. BIG plus and nod towards GH for that.

 

Gearhead here now.

I will say that I had canned tunes from Diablo on my truck for while with the stock injectors. I was VERY pleased with their tunes on the stock truck, but they were probably a bit much for the stock torque converter/transmission combo. Be very mindful when running modified tuning on your stock torque converter/transmission. You could do them (and your wallet) much harm in their stock configuration if not careful.

 

All due respect Mike, and promises notwithstanding, there have been a lot of people over the last 12+ years with custom tunes and broken engines with perfectly working transmissions. Honest buddy, I kid you not.

To the OP, I've had Jody at DP Tuner tune 4 of my trucks. Ok, actually 3, but the 4th was my sons truck and I paid for the live tuning on that, so I'm including it!

Jody emailed tuned my Ex back in '05. This was back when Beans Diesel Performance sold Jody's F5 chip and tuning. He live tuned my old '02 (now my daughters truck) back in '09 I think it was, and my son's '00 (now long sold) and my current '99 back in '11 (I think).

Jody is a great guy. He got stuck with me in my old '02 one year when I drove him from Holtville in SoCal (stones throw from the border) up to Modesto to Terminator Engineering's shop. He tuned my truck during that trip up to Joey's place.

My Ex is basically a stock rig with the mods you see in my sig, and it has over 200k+ miles now.

My old '02 F250 has AC codes and a 38R. My daughter calls it her little diesel "race truck."

Jody also tuned my current '99 F250, but I've always had the itch to try other peoples programming/tuning too, and I wasn't 100% happy with the tuning on my '99 like I was on the 3 previous trucks even though it was live tuned, so I am now running custom tunes by a man who doesn't tune for the public (Cody, another great guy and a HUGE asset to the 7.3L PSD community), but I convinced him to tune for me a while back (and he didn't charge me a dime) and I couldn't be happier with the results.

Each tune writer will have their own way of writing custom tunes. And each custom tune will make the truck run a little different, drive a little different, and even sound a bit different.

Jody's tunes on my 3 previous trucks were really smooth, and except for the Ex, produced too much black smoke before clearing up. Again, except for the Ex, back when these tunes were created, Jody did exactly what I wanted.

I say "except for the Ex" because like I stated earlier, the Ex was email tuned, not live tuned. When I bought Jody's F5 chip through Beans Diesel Performance, I hadn't ever met or talked to Jody.

Lots of black smoke is NOT what you want. You don't want clouds of that stuff billowing out the tailpipe whenever you smash the throttle.

My '99, with tunes created by Cody, runs great. The power comes on extremely smooth and the truck runs fantastic.

I think I've read negative things about every single tuner out there who runs a business selling custom tunes. Aint nobody perfect. What works well for one guy and his truck doesn't automatically mean it will be perfect for you and your truck. Heck, look at me! Up until my '99, Jody was batting 1.000 for me!

Do your due diligence and figure out what you want by reading, reading, and then more reading.

Call the different tuners available to the public and ask questions.

I don't know about you, but when I read feedback on ebay and Amazon, I read all the negative ones because it helps me see a much better picture of how a company responds to problems. Sometimes the negative feedback actually convinces me to go with a seller at times because of how they tried to take care of the problem.

Stewart

PS - There is some acrimony between the different tuners out there in diesel land. Personally, I refuse to get dragged into any of that stuff because it doesn't matter to me or affect me. I have my experience and my preferences and I've met a lot of great guys who have been tuning for a long, long time. I think they are all great guys (including the two guys who have tuned my trucks, Jody and Cody) and I'm very happy with how my vehicles are running at this time.

 

You have a point, Stewart. Fixed it for ya.

 

I'll support the transmission wear argument. It's not like I've spent the past seven months building a nasty hybrid replacement trans...

It's also not like I went way beyond normal person power levels and injector sizes for a daily driver and frequently boost launched vehicle either... Absolutely not me.

 

Since this is a 7.3L rig, I'm moving this one over to the 7.3L PSD forum.

Stewart

 

 

Hahahaha....! too freakin' funny!

 

Feel free to shoot me an e-mail, PM, or give me a call on the phone. I would be happy to help you out and go over what we have to offer. I can also make recommendations for what I think would work best for your needs (everyone uses these trucks differently after all).

There are many tuners out there and they all have their own style of tuning. The important thing is that they are able to give you what YOU want. That is the beauty of custom tuning and current tuning products which enable you to receive tunes via e-mail.

Also, as stated above, our tuner (Jody) will sit in your truck with you and dial it in to exactly what you want. He even travels around the country to do this.

 

i will second DP for a chip. my 02 runs an 80 econo tune 99.999% of the time for the past 8 1/2 years now without any problems at all.
the one issue i had ended up being my own fault. i called DP at 7 pm on a friday and the phone was answered on the third ring, and got me running again in under 20 seconds.
i was showing someone how to disable the truck with the switch, and was not pushing the rite combo to get it out of no start mode.