I had the 5 star tunes on my '08' V10 it was a nice added feature to that truck when towing the 5th wheel.

 

IIRC, there is a counter for how many times the tune has been altered, so I think they will know...

 

5 Star stands behind their product and I trust them. It's a chance I'm willing to take vs. future warranty issues. Not worrying about manually shifting while pulling is huge for me. Not to mention the throttle response I have now. Even empty is a bonus as it shifts at the right time now instead of screaming RPM's in between shifts when you hammer on it.

 

All my 7.3L are 5 Star tuned. ;-) The 7.3L was one of the last engine platforms I helped developed with the new owner. I can assure you that transmission tuning was a very important part of the process. Yea it made some more mid range power but more importantly it shifts good and at the right time. My favorite tune files are the perf/tow and heavy perf/tow. I liked these because in NORMAL mode (NOT TOW MODE) it still had 2 skip shifts in them 1-3 and 3-5 . We took out the 2-4 and 4-6 . And more important too me at the time was to have the 1-2 shift at light parking lot speeds instead of the high shift 1-3. I have not driven a 23 7.3L truck yet i have heard now they shift via all gears in NORMAL mode. Very happy my with all my 7.3L engines I still wish Ford would put that 6.8L in a F150 I guess thats another discussion.
Have a Super Duty day everyone always like the FTE discussions ;-)

 

Update on my 21 F350. If you recall, at 129k miles, it misfired on 5 cylinders. They (Ford) changed the plugs and a coil, seemed to run fine, but during their post repair test drive, the engine shut down.
Turns out, the cam failed.
They put a new engine in, but it wasn't running right, so they did some more looking and found the cat converter to be clogged. They said it was the misfires that clogged it. My bill… .$21,000.00. However, the dealer is working with me on price, but still, this is a very steep cost for something I thought would be a trouble free platfirm.

So, the moral of the story, if you have a misfire event, shut the truck off and find a way to check the health of the cat converter. This truck never threw a CEL for the exhaust, which is odd.

 

i bought 7.3's because they can pull our heavy box trailers and get good fuel mileage. The 6.2's aren't good engines for pulling heavier trailers.

Yeah, we don't do our own maintenance, Ford does all the maintenance on my trucks, because I want everything documented. I'm not sure why that's a bad thing, but you do you. I'm a small construction company, I don't have a huge shop with a mechanic on staff, most small companies don't.

I'm not sure why you decided to take a crack at me there with your comment about me needing to trade my trucks in for 6.7's, maybe you're butthurt because I posted facts about the 7.3 having issues and the 6.7 being more reliable. If I hurt your feelings, my bad.

 

Moral of the story is dont let dealerships experiment with your truck while your pocketbook is paying the bills. None of these dealers are looking inside the engines to verify a failure. A misfire turned into a cam which turned into a whole new engine which turned into a catalytic converter which turned into $21k. You are paying for their incompetence.

 

He's was paying for a poor quality product that should not have failed in the first place.

 

Thanks for sharing Ace... The fan boys will attack and defend as it's been on full display. The guy that is attacking you claims he services other trucks so makes you wonder

 

We don't know what caused the failure. It could have been a plugged cat contributing to the misfire and lifter failure or the lifter failure could have been the cause of the misfire and plugged cat or the misfire could have cause the failed lifter and plugged cat. Not enough evidence to chalk it up to poor quality parts. A number of these engines are having plugged cats and we don't know the cause because dealerships don't have competent techs anymore.

 

I've owned gas powered vehcles for ~45 years and never had a cat failure. Having said that I do believe that misfires are the primary cause for cat failures. Ace didn't do anything wrong here and the lifter failure is most likely the root cause.

 

How does a lifter failure ruin a catalytic converter?

Edit..it must be the slit between the pistons.

Clog or ContaminationThe inside of a catalytic converter can become contaminated by unburned gasoline — often due to an engine misfire, clogged air filter or bad oxygen sensor — or coolant that has likely leaked into the exhaust through a bad head gasket, or engine oil that has leaked past the piston rings or valve guides and is burned along with the air-fuel mixture in the cylinder.

 

Misfire.....

Edit:.... It must be a box truck problem only

 

My last truck I exclusively used Penzoil and the chrome tailpipe always had black soot on it. I have only wiped my tailpipe 2 times in almost 30k miles on this truck. At the time I owned the other truck there was a thread where people were reporting the same thing.

 

Curious what was your other truck?