i tried searching the forum for threads on this topic but I'm apparently too stupid to accomplish that.

i recently picked up a 99 250 4x4 and my teen son wants to see black smoke.
i would prefer power and fuel mileage. what should i expect to spend on a tuner and what are drawbacks and benefits to that? TIA

 

I hate to break it to you but blowing a bunch of black smoke is stupid it's just wasted unburnt fuel a properly tuned truck shouldn't be blowing big smoke clouds either tune it right or leave it alone. That being said I'm not a big fan of the little 6 position dial tuners that are popular with the 7.3 guys or how they attach to the pcm I would get a sct with a couple custom tunes. A tune will diffinately wake the truck up and make it more fun to drive but don't expect a big jump in fuel economy your not gonna get 100 extra hp and 5 more mpgs

 

Before putting any money into tuning, make sure the truck itself is 100% and you have some form of gauges to monitor your truck, with a pyro being a must-have. One of our FTE brothers (Tugly) put together a nice read on chips/tuning HERE.

When it comes to 7.3s, the most popular chips seem to be Hydra, DP-Tuner, and TS. I personally run tunes by Jody @ DP, and quite enjoy them as I picked up about two MPG and gained a little bit of power. On stock sticks our trucks can get roughly 50-60HP max out of your truck.

On the black smoke aspect, all it means is someone is over-fueling their truck and it isn't running efficiently. When pushing my truck I can get a little bit of a cough of smoke, but thankfully my turbo lights and it clears up quite quickly. Whenever I see people blowing smoke, I just shake my head as they give us responsible diesel owners a bad name.

On my setup (with custom tunes) I spent about $1500. There are much cheaper setups out there, as I went with a unit that can do just about everything and the kitchen sink. You can get a Hydra chip for about $400 plus tunes, then an OBDII adapter and TorquePro on your phone to monitor almost everything but your EGTs.

 

When I got my 01 7.3 Ex 11 years ago the first thing I did was gauges, 3 pillar pod with boost, EGT, and tranny temp. Like they said, they are a must have if you plan on keeping it without blowing it up.
I did some other stuff, exhaust, CAI, sonnex valve and tricum springs, WW, etc. At the time I called DP and was told they didnt want to mess with the Excursion PATS so I went with a 6 position TS chip, nothing custom, just boxed tunes. Only issue was the theft light would blink an extra minute at start up, not codes or problems.
I ran that on the 100hp setting for 10 years with no issues and it ran really well. Would custom tunes have made it run better, maybe, but it ran great right out of the box with no messing around.
Past half throttle on that setting it would blow a little bit of light black smoke and at 3/4 throttle would blow some more, nothing like a huge cloud but you could see it.
I sold it in the summer and with all the money I have dropped on my 05 6.0, I missed it on a few days.

 

my father in law had a work truck with the 7.3 and he bought a super chip and i would not recommend them. you could not notice any improvements from the "seat of your pants feel" fuel mileage he might have gotten 1 or 2 better but thats it. it would cough a puff of black smoke under heavy throttle and his check engine light would come on more than likely from the hpop. it made his trans shift very hard almost like it was bucking from gear to gear while he had it in one of the performance tunes so he always kept it in fuel econ tune. and it was a hassle to change the tune you would have to plug the super chip tuner into the obd2 port and change the tune which when he had to tow his trailer it made it annoying to say the least.
i would start with gauges like said above egt,boost,trans temp. you have to be careful with the egt once you start running hotter tunes you could damage the engine if it ever got to hot. to much boost on stock parts could blow the couplings, intercooler, or intake, as long as you have a good trans cooler shouldnt hurt the trans with a tuner.
my 99 7.3 i had a 75mm sledge hammer turbo with other goodies and i ran at max 65 pounds of boost and just daily driving before i upgraded my couplings i blew one off at 40 pounds of boost on the interstate which scared the crap out of me and my wife it made my hood lift up. but that is my experience with tuners and the 7.3.
they are great engines and strong and reliable if i could find another i would leave everything about stock and just drive it till i drove the life out of it. i think ford did a horrible thing going to the 6.blow but that is just me

 

Black smoke = overfueling = hot exhaust gas temperatures = no bueno.

I run Power Hungry Performance tunes. Gearhead is also popular along with others that have been mentioned. And, of course, there's Jody at DP Tuner.

As for cost it varies. You can have your PCM (computer) reprogrammed for about $65 but you have to ship it to them, have it reprogrammed, and sent back which is down time. You can get a selectable chip and pay anywhere from $200 to $1500 depending on what you want and what your budget is.

Discounting the "major" brands (Banks, Bully Dog, Edge, etc.), there's a lot of individual tuners that make great tunes too (DP Tuner, PHP, Gearhead, Tony Wildman). You can also have one of them sit in your truck and "live tune" your truck and dial it in to exactly what you want.

I personally have not used a major brand tuner but it has been my experience on this forum (and 9+ years of owning my truck) that you do not get the bang for the buck from major brands as you do from the individual tuners. Just my .02

Each tuner is different and each owner has different expectations so I recommend that you search the 1999-2003 7.3L forum for tuners. There are miles of threads to read on the subject. What works for one does not necessarily work for another. I am very happy with my tunes where others might not be. There's more than one tuner in business for a reason. Get a cup of coffee (or 5), do some reading/research, and make your decision. If you talk to 10 different people you'll probably get 10 different answers.

Plenty of guys with tuning experience in the 1999-2003 7.3L forum. Any engine specific question I recommend you post in that forum. Lots of guys smarter than me lurking about to help people with our trucks.

 

thanks guys. I'm just going to leave it alone for now. i have too many projects going to fix something thats not broken