Bought a 5star tuner with the 87 eco, 87 daily/tow and 93 perf tunes, truck has 3.73 and stock 265/70/17 on it but this should be nice to wake up that low end, especially for driving through town, yesterday I had to lock out 6th gear as we were only doing 50 on the hwy home and its right between the 5th and 6th gear area.. Has zero get up and go at 50 in 6th.. Same for when I was in town doing 30 and its in 5th gear. No power!

Anyways. Also bought some led light bars for the back rack and a few underbody boxes for the flatbed and everything (minus battery) needed to do a second battery in the back with a tender and jump ability.

Should be nice, I'll have a battery that's close for hooking up my 3k winch for loading cars onto trailer and your random small winch stuff. Still have to figure out what I want to do for a large front winch, have to get used to not having a 12k hydraulic winch ran off the power steering pump like my old pickup.. Darn handy here in the NW pulling out stuck trucks and shrubs and moving logs.. Or putting tension in a tree when you drop it in your neighbors back yard.

That's a project for later for now.. 20in light bar in the front bumper (already mounted) and 2-7in bars on the back rack with the boxes and remote battery mount. Should be a good time!

 

Couple of quick photos after i got the wood rails in place the other night. Just impatiently waiting for the rest of the toys to show up

 

Nice love the stakes!

 

Thanks! Nothing special just some 2x4 pressure treat and then some 2 1/2 zinc screws, used some c clamps to hold it in place and a quick framing square to make sure everything was squared up and just put the screws flush. Kept telling the wife.. Look flatbed is useful.. I can just c clamp the wood to the bed and use the skill saw to cut it.. Haha the flatbed is starting to grow on her.

 

Nice truck! Let us know how you like the 5 star tune.

 

Well I got the tuner and the boxes and stuff, I'm pretty happy with most of it. The boxes were way cheaper then I thought they were going to be.. So I'll be returning those and spendingabout twice as much in the next ones..

The tuner I'm still evaluating.. I out in the 87daily tow tune and it didn't seem to change much on th throttle response untill I put it into tow/haul.. Then Holy cow that truck got moving! Almost a little to well.. It got stuck in 2nd gear and wouldn't shift out u til I took it out of tow haul mode.. So much so it rev'ed to 5400 and then I let to get back to 3200 and it still didn't shift.. That concerned me a bit.. I drove it for another 4 or 5 miles to my destination and then put in the 87 economy tune and drove that home and 45 miles down to see my daughter. Seemed to drive pretty well, I could tell alittle bit in the shifting and seemed like it had a bit more power when you slowly rolled into it for passing someone going down the interstate. I can definitely tell when it's in tow mode it is way more responsive than not in tow mode. I will play with it some more and probably put it back onto the daily/tow and see how it drives again for more than a few miles.

I do have an email with 5star to see if there is something with the tune or what's going on.

 

Well update, I have been running the 87 Eco tune for a few days and it has been like a slightly modified stock tune, almost no difference but it seems to have been decent, I just filled up this morning, I had done roughly 100 miles of back and forth to work and then I clocked about 240 miles at 65ish on the interstate and filled up and got 12.6mpg, best i have gotten so far was 13.1 so thats not to bad. I did just put the 87 Daily/tow back on the pickup last night and man.. it definately wakes the pickup and drives how I would expect it to. So far I have not had the wierd shifting issue, hopefully I wont ever have that again, I did get the pickup up to speed the other day on a back road, brought her up to 95 and she was pulling really hard all the way up and shifted into 4th gear at 85.. 2 more gears left?? Haha

Planning on driving it with the 87 d/t tune for another tank or two and see what the mpg's are on it, if they are the same I will leave, maybe switch back to the eco and see whats the best I can get.

 

It will take a while for the tranny to "learn" the tune. The shifting will get progressively better. Using that tune, I get about 1 mpg less than stock, both daily drive and towing my camper.

 

Oh i didnt realize the tranny had to re-adjust every time you tune it.. That would explain some of the odd dipping in the rpms right after a shift.. good to know, I thought it was a one time thing.

 

Even in stock configuration the tranny is regularly adapting the shift characteristics slightly.

 

Im new to these pickups, I had a 94 IDI turbo with a manual and then an 08 Mustang GT in manual, First automatic i have driven for about 7 years.. and the last was a 91 explorer.