I'm going to be purchasing some tunes this next week...Woohoo! Now my questions is which tunes. I have a 2005 F250 V10. I drive a little bit around town but ouch, it hurts the pocket book! I mainly pull my 5600# (dry) travel trailer and am needing some more oomph. My question is, if I get 5 tunes, which ones should I get? Also, which ones are you guys finding work best for pulling campers?

 

When I bought mine I went with their recommendations and got an 87 Economy tune, 87 Performance/tow tune and 91 Performance/tow tune. The thinking was that I already run 91 octane fuel but in case we were somewhere that didn't have 91 or higher octane we could run the 87 tunes.

My advise is talk to them about what you want and how you plan to use the vehicle. They were great to work with and "customized" my already custom tunes to my specific liking when I called them back and asked for some fine tuning (specifically with the torque converter lock up) they made the adjustments and sent me out the updates.

 

Wags has the best advice, give 5Star a call, their customer service is second to none!


For me and our '05 2V V-10 EXcursion that gets most of it's miles towing our 41' 11,000lb TT all over the Eastern US 5Star's custom tunes have made a very big improvement in towing performance.
I bought the 87 Economy, 87 Tow, 87 Performance, 89 Tow and 89 Performance tunes. Unloaded around town the Econ tune is my pick, it has the torque convertor locked up in OD by 35 MPH with a light foot. For the heavy towing work I have found that between the heavy combined weight (19k lbs) and my style of driving/towing that the Performance tunes work better than the tow tunes do. I didn't care for how aggressive the Tow tunes were in downshifting on hills, the Perf tunes will hold onto OD much better on the highway hill climbs. I typically burn 87 Octane gas and that works good for our flat land trips, for the more mountainous terrain the 89 Perf tune and 89 gas provides a noticeable performance increase.

 

Now that I have some other gremlins ironed out, I'm thinking about it, but will get their y-pipe as well. Now, I am already unhappy about how soon the factory downshifts when towing. If you're (Tom) saying the tow tunes downshift sooner, I'm out. Can you expound? I'm going to be using mine for towing duty (16,000lbs) as well and that's what I want the tune for. Did the 4.30 gear upgrade and was disappointed. Hoping the tune will compliment that.
Sorry for the hijack Ben.

 

Ben, your past posts about the lack of performance improvement with a change from 3.73 to 4.30 still confound me. I don't recall reading any other user that has made that swap that wasn't very pleased with the towing performance increase from the better application of available power due to the deeper gears.
As far as the different tunes and how they perform, I have not towed with my rig in it's current configuration (4.88 gears, 35" tires and 11k TT) with the factory tune. The last time I towed with the factory tune it was still on 31.5" tires and was only pulling 9.5K lbs.
On my rig when I loaded the 87 Octane Tow tune I found that it was very eager to downshift out of OD when climbing a highway grade, which would be great for someone looking to either be the fastest one to the top of the hill or someone who wants to maintain a constant speed on the hill climb no matter what. I'm not either one of those guys, I am willing to bleed some speed on the climb if it means that I can stay in OD to maintain the best economy that I can while not slowing down too much and holding up traffic flow. For my setup I have found that the Performance tunes (87 and 89 Octane) will allow me to hold onto OD with a higher throttle opening % than the Tow tunes did. This works for me, between the deeper gears and whatever amount of additional power the headers (and tunes) provide my V-10 has enough grunt to handle all but the biggest Interstate Highway grades here in the East in OD. As an example on a given hill at 65 MPH the 87 Octane tune will allow me to roll the throttle open to about 54-55% before it will force a downshift. That is a big improvement over stock which would drop down around 45%-ish under the same load. Moving up to the 89 Octane Performance tune (and 89 octane gas) on a similar grade at the same speed and towing the same load I can work the throttle opening up to about 65% before forcing it to downshift. That additional opening makes a noticeable difference in engine output that allows it to hold speed during the climb even better than the 87 Perf tune. For a real world example of the application of this operation here is some data from a trip last year towing home from Charlotte NC back to the Philly suburbs. The bulk of the trip was up I-77 and I-81 which is nearly all mountains (Decent sized Eastern Blue Ridge Mountains, and I think maybe the Smokies down by Charlotte). We were towing the 11,000lb TT with 6 adults onboard our EX for combine weight of about 19,000lbs. I was running a little faster than typical due to our time schedule and a stop to visit a forum member in VA, I was going 65 to 75 MPH as much as possible on I-77/81 but had to run with slower traffic around Baltimore and that extended area at evening rush hour. If I could hit the base a grade climb at 73/75 MPH and hold a throttle opening of 60/63% (was running 89 Octane tune/gas) it would slow to no less than 55/60 depending on the length of the hill, all the while staying in OD. On the few very steep climbs I would let it downshift to keep the speed up to the traffic flow, same if traffic wouldn't allow for the higher climb start speeds. The 565-ish mile trip finished up with a 61 MPH average moving speed (pretty good considering the Balto beltway crawl and our side trip on several miles of surface streets in VA) and 8.75 MPG.

 

Ben was the OP who's post we have now completely hijacked, LOL.

Yeah, we keep bumping into each other in these various threads. Time to meet for a beer!

You did expound as requested, wow. I want it to hang in there longer before downshifting when encountering hills. Tuning the trans to do that is one aspect I look for, but developing more torque through the tune/y-pipe is also what I want.
Advanced career / disposable income allows me to not loose sleep dumping another $500-600 into it, but I want to realize a noticeable improvement. The truck is in great shape and a factory rebuilt engine is not out of the question if these mods work.

 

Oops, sorry about that Ben and "not Ben".
Beer is my favorite flavor, so that sounds good to me! I was just halfway between us in TN, so you missed the opportunity to meet there and drink mine so now you have to buy when we do finally get together.
Congrats on the promotion. I really think that a tuner and good custom tunes will give you what you want, but of course, I've said that before didn't I....., still can't figure your situation out with the 4.30s.

 

Wow, thanks for expounding on your real world experience.
And NP on hijacking the thread...all good.

I should be ordering today and am planning on some 87 and 89 tunes, maybe one 91 just for kicks. The guy at 5Star said I could get an extra 10 hp with the 91, don't know if it would wash with $ savings vs extra cost of premium.

I can only dream of 8.75mpg! Just got back from the beach yesterday and averaged about 7mpg on the way down and 6.6mpg on the way back. I was taking it easy on the hills and keeping it right around 65-70. I was letting it drop down one downshift, but not two. I'm really hoping that tuning it will help with the fuel economy a bit. Guess we'll see.

Thanks for the info

 

I have an all stock 2006 F250 V10 4x4 4.1 gears and get similar towing mpg as you currently. Averaged 7 mpg towing similar weight on my recent trip San Diego to the Eastern Sierras and get about the same mpg towing an additional 2k lbs from San Diego to Glamis during the winter. I am very interested in your upcoming experience with the tuner and tunes you get as I have been on the fence since I got the truck this past September.

My next trip to the Sierras is in early September. I plan to wait until mid August before deciding to purchase the tuner for my upcoming trip, as I believe the tuner has a 30-day money back guarantee and I don't use the truck for anything more than towing.

Keep us posted.

 

In my opinion, lugging it in overdrive is less mpg than letting it rev in the 1:1 gear up a hill.

In the 99 I had, driving with OD turned off (stayed in 1:1) gave quite a bit better mpg than trying to lug it up a hill in OD.

Just because you are revving to 3k or so doesn't mean you are killing mpg.

I have always remembered that an engine is most efficient at converting gas to power at the torque peak.

 

benjaminkell, Any updates you can share?

 

I agree, don't see how lugging the engine at lower RPM is an improvement?

I spend a lot of time in the high county of the Sierra's, if anything I bump my OD off from time to time to force a downshift. I have found this improves my overall efficiency.

 

If the comments about lugging in OD have anything to do with my earlier post detailing how the Performance Tunes allow my EX to stay in OD longer on hill climbs vs downshifting too quickly, let me share this. I run 4.88 gears with 35" tires for an effective 4.39 ratio, so at 60/65 MPH I'm turning approx 2200/2300 RPMs, under high load (towing an 11k TT). I can assure you that the engine is not lugging in that scenario, it's still pulling that load fine and on most of our Eastern Interstate climbs it can either hold that speed or only bleed off speed down to 55-ish. If the hill is steeper or longer or I didn't get a good run at the base of it I will give it more throttle opening to force a downshift to either maintain good highway speed or accelerate up the climb.
My instrumentation and hand calculations show that staying in OD more vs downshifting on the hills has improved overall fuel efficiency.

 

That's the difference, I'm on 3:73 and when I down shift out of OD I bring the RPM up to 2400ish to maintain 65.

Makes sense now.

 

I figured I should explain my setup better to clear it up some. I started out with 3.73s and a 9,500lb toyhauler and it would downshift if I ran over a shadow. If it would have stayed in OD back then on a hill it would have been lugging. I went with the deep 4.88s with the 35"s in the then future plans, with the 4.88s and near stock sized 32' tires it was a towing monster, like a locomotive! it ate up the hills like they were flat and my towing mileage increased by almost 30% but the unloaded mileage dropped from 14-ish mixed to 11/12 MPG mixed. Now with the 35"s in the mix we are still seeing towing mileage (with a heavier trailer) in the 8/9+ MPG range. The tunes definitely play a part in this improvement!