What finally made you pull the trigger? How long have you been mauling over the idea?

 

 

I'm trying to get on top of a few more maintenance issues and I will be joining you as a new Hydra owner

 

 

You guys wont regret the hydra. I love mine and everyone I know with one has been happy with it.

I like the daily 80hp tune for regular unloaded driving with my truck. Good power, economy and shifting while keeping smoke minimal. The tow tunes are decent as well. I am still dragging my feet on getting custom tunes because I've been mostly satisfied with the included php tunes.

remember, it is VERY important to clean the pcm very well, but also not too aggressively. I was one of the many who didn't clean the pcm enough the first time and had an interesting trip home with my truck stalling about once a minute in moderate city traffic. You want to make sure you are all the way to the solder while removing as little solder as possible. You will see some copper streaks under the solder and it's fine as long as the majority of the surface is still solder.

If you plan on towing while tuned, you'll want an EGT gauge. High EGT is a silent killer for diesel engines. You want to stay below 1250f for sustained pulls and try to keep the peaks below 1300f. I managed to get my exhaust temps up to 1300f on the "25hp" tow tune with 6637 air filter and 4" exhaust. The tow tunes seem to exceed their hp rating in the last 10% of the throttle. The "25hp tow" tune seems to be as powerful as the 80hp tune at full throttle, but only slightly quicker than stock up until that ~90% throttle range.

if you still have a stock 4r100, I'd advise keeping to tuning to 80hp or lower. A modified valve body and upgraded torque converter can add a good bit of durability to an otherwise stock transmission to withstand just about anything the stock fuel injectors can dish out.

 

 

Your truck will feel way more powerful with the Hydra. I noticed a massive difference the first time I touched the pedal and loved it. That was on stock injectors with the standard upgrades: 4" exhaust, intake, gauges, hydra. I was already tuned with an SCT programmer. The hydra made a massive difference even over that.

 

 

According to PHP, all of their included tunes are safe for PMRs, except for their "140hp" extreme tune. On stock injectors, no tune, regardless of what is advertised, is going to make more than about 80hp more than stock. If there is any reason the 140 tune might be risky for PMRs, it's the overly aggressive low rpm fueling.

 

The pmr cutoff # thrown around is approximately 400hp, which you will never (very very unlikely that is) make without bigger injectors/turbo

 

I went for the DP tuner when I was looking for a chip, the only reason I went that route was because I liked the deceleration tune, does anybody know if someone does that for the hydra now? I like the reviews on the hydra & thinking time for a change.

 

There's some dude in Montana....

 

Depending on the condition of your injectors 60Hp is about all the extra Hp stock injectors can muster.

From my understanding that's the PMR killer, low end fueling.

 

I don't think horsepower directly is this issue. There are plenty of people running 500+ on PMRs. It is the increased cylinder pressure caused by low end fueling/advanced timing that the PMRs cannot stand up to. Get the tuning right.