i’ve seen a couple videos abt the hydra chip and a tune that u can put on it that says it’ll give u an additional 140hp, i find that very hard to believe you’ll gain that much from a simple tune, has anybody had this tune? what were the actually numbers u feel u got from it?

 

Tune names listed as "80hp", 100, 120, 140, etc. are just the names given to the tune. Going up from tow>daily>performance>race>extreme. Late 99-03 trucks are the only ones that will have the 140 tune as an option because they had bigger injectors. The most extra rwhp you will add with stock injectors is about 80-90, assuming you have an intake and 4" exhaust, no boost leaks, healthy hpop, and healthy fuel pump. The difference is that the 140 tune will fuel harder down low and will feel more powerful and light the turbo quicker, but will also smoke some when getting on it.

 

What mcnance said. But I want to add that if you don’t have a Hydra you should really get one. There’s no comparison to stock

 

I can't remember the exact number but a 7.3 with basic mods(air filter/exhaust) can only gain so much. I think it's about 90hp or so... to get more from the same setting of the same chip, you;d have to upgrade injectors and other things.

But they still make a huge difference, power and mpg from my experience. I chose Arachnid 8 position and use #6 most all of the time. I found a long steady grade and moved through the positions while in one gear. You could tell the difference and 6 felt most powerful to me. The upper two positions made excess smoke with no more power than 6... and clouds of smoke is not my thing

 

I second this, wow makes it feel like a completely different truck!

 

The stock injectors have about an extra 60Hp in there to squeeze out. That's from the late-99 to 2003 AD injectors (140cc). There's less in the early-99 AB injectors (120cc).

 

Anything over a ‘100HP’ tune is just a smoke show (read: stupid).

I have seen up to 325 RWHP, from just tuning on an otherwise stock truck. Stock can be up to 225 RWHP.

Factory Intake and stock exhaust will do that just fine. It’s a common misconception that changing those things adds power. The factory intake flows and filters more than adequately for anything stock injectors can do. It is prone to breaking and then allowing dirt to get past and that is a good reason to ‘upgrade’. Deleting the stock muffler will drop EGT a little under full tilt runs, but adds an negligible amount of total HP.

How does ithe chip work? In a diesel, timing is controlled by the injection event. There is an optimum window to inject fuel and the factory tuning nails this for the best emissions and fuel economy. There is an opportunity to inject more fuel in this ‘window’ and that’s what the chip/aftermarket tuning does. Spraying fuel AFTER this window (like the 120/140HP tunes do), just makes black smoke and copious amounts of heat (EGT).

On that note, the factory tune is 100% SAFE to run wide open, up pikes peak, pulling the maximum load the truck can haul. EGT will never be an issue (provided everything else is up to snuff). Add more fuel with different tuning and you can melt it down if you don’t pay attention. For this reason, any deviation from stock tuning requires a pyrometer to monitor EGT.

I always tell people to ‘Make it run right, then we’ll make it run better’. You’ll want to fix drive pressure leaks (exhaust manifolds and up-pipes), verify you have no boost leaks and check the health of injectors, HPOP, etc. I have fixed these items on stock trucks and people thought it was a completely different truck (from turd to respectable power and restored MPG).

Hope this helps!!