I just bought my first 03 F-250 6.0diesel last July. So far I have a K&N intake, cat and muffler cut out, and EGR deleted. I plan on a tuner next and have somewhat narrowed it down to either the bully dog gauge tuner, or edge Evo CTS. Right now just having a hard time deciding between the two. Anyone out there running one or the other? Any feed back on those or others would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

 

You should probably change the title to your post to "Edge EVO or Banks Bullydog tuners opinions or input?" since you won't like most of what you hear anyways (and it will save most members time)....these two don't offer custom tuning that is tailored for your Torqshift tranny...Edge and Banks see it as HP gains...which is fine if you want to blow your tranny....I get the Programmer/Gauge combo thinking though. Unfortunately everything still is second place or further behind a custom tune delivered by SCT devices. Maybe SCT Touch? That's my opinion, since you asked.

 

Do your homework before You buy either one of those two. Most folks w/the 6.0 are running an SCT w/custom tunes so that the trannies don't get torn up for one, there are some really good tunes for the SCT and the 6.0's that should be an improvement over stock depending on your expectations and driving habits. Good luck! and welcome.

 

Stay as far away from banks,bully dog, edge, or any other off the self "canned tunner". they are really bad for your trans. If you want to go the tuned route go with something that dose custom tunes. You will be much happier with them. SCT with tunes from innovative diesel is the one that I would recomend, or go with the Spartan Phalanx with there custom tunes. If you want the "canned tuners" for the swift on the fly capabilities trust me its not that cool. It wears off after a while, and you will find yourself leaving it in one position all the time. I think tex put it best when he said "think of it this way when you put a program on your home computer most of them require a restart to work. Your truck is the same way you are loading tunes on the computer so it really should be restarted." You see what I am saying shift on the fly is not good for the truck or the trans. If you do a search on this forum (or any other ford site) you will find tons of people how have run these canned tunners and end up with trans problems. They simply dont do anything for the trans for the add hp. They just intersept the signal from the computer and change them to get the desiered result. and you should go back to stock on the air intake. After market ones dont do anything for performance. That is one area that ford got it right. The stock air filter flows as much or more than any thing am. and filters better too. there are many people on here that dinoed 500+hp with the stock filter. there are too many things that could go wrong when using a am filter setup like dusting your turbo and engine for one.

 

How about the manual tranny? Mine is an 03 with a good ol six speed, will it affect a manual?

 

No, but the engine parameters are still being messed with and not in a good way.

Canned tunes offer very little(particularly the ones with shift on the fly capabilities) in true programming. In fact, most of those tuners derive their power but at the sacrifice of higher cylinder pressures, which isn't good for the stock TTY bolts(a known issue with the 6.0).

Custom tunes are able to tweak this, that, and the other and are able to minimize how much cylinder pressure is increased.

Now when someone mentions a/m intake I just can't keep my mouth shut, sorry. K&N actually has one of the worst reputations with the 6.0 as far as troubles go, but most aftermarket filters do not flow more air then the stock ones until you hit 3700 on the tach. Peak HP and TQ on a stock or tuned truck is at 3300 and 2000 respectively. You are well outside the peak range for a 6.0 to be working in. Now, they do flow more, that isn't the issue it's when they flow more. If you do some mods to increase your rpm range, then it might be beneficial to you(along the lines of what mods I have done), but as of now, you really aren't going to be seeing any benefit to it other then what's in the mind. I find it ironic when people show my dyno sheets with the improvement that the intake made and the test trucks were 7.3s, not 6.0s and the 7.3s do have crappy stock filters, but they try to pass that on as "proof" that those intakes should do the same thing for the 6.0.