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What tuner to get

spidey

Full Member
Joined
Jun 18, 2012
Messages
686
Location
Alberta
Reading on our lovely forum here, and the tuner that you plug in to stop the cylinder deactivation (but thats all it does) more have been saying about getting an actual tuner to do more for close the the same price, as the other item is $200.

I know nothing about tuners, but defintly am sick of the V4 to V8 crap, the shudder, the under powered, the time it takes to get out of it when needing all 8 cylinders.  Ive seen the gas milage auto caculator actualy go down when in V4 mode becaues of the extra load, because it is in 6th gear

What are some good brands and models.  I do want to get rid of the cylinder deactivation, but if it can do more, rather go that route.

Truck is used to haul a camper in the summer as well

I have been working around it using the manual shifter more in the city.  Im cruising in the city at 50K and the tach is at 1000 rpm and in 6th gear.  I want to save gas as much as the next guy, but thats ridiculous.  Like driving a 5 speed standard 4 cylinder up hill in 5th gear, no power when u need it unless you just smash the gas pedal down
 
HP Tuners is a full feature tuner. It also has a full feature scanner with it. It costs about $500 for the unit and software but comes with 10 "credits". You can use the credits however you want. 2 credits for a specific vehicle or 6 for any vehicle of that year. Or any combination you want. New credits are like $50 apiece so it is a buy it once for your GM and program all of your GM's for it for no more than $100 more per car.

They also sell a training package for $500 that includes disks and books from what I could tell that explain the in and outs of fully tuning your rig.

So if you spent $1,000 you could learn how to program your rig and make money doing tunes for people local to you with this unit.. They do have other variations for professional tuners and for a little more you can add additional sensors etc.

Very flexible for whatever you want to do. Their training guide stuff is generic about tuning any vehicle.

I will be getting one of these for myself at some point...

Rodney
 
spidey said:
Reading on our lovely forum here, and the tuner that you plug in to stop the cylinder deactivation (but thats all it does) more have been saying about getting an actual tuner to do more for close the the same price, as the other item is $200.

I know nothing about tuners, but defintly am sick of the V4 to V8 crap, the shudder, the under powered, the time it takes to get out of it when needing all 8 cylinders.  Ive seen the gas milage auto caculator actualy go down when in V4 mode becaues of the extra load, because it is in 6th gear

What are some good brands and models.  I do want to get rid of the cylinder deactivation, but if it can do more, rather go that route.

Truck is used to haul a camper in the summer as well

I have been working around it using the manual shifter more in the city.  Im cruising in the city at 50K and the tach is at 1000 rpm and in 6th gear.  I want to save gas as much as the next guy, but thats ridiculous.  Like driving a 5 speed standard 4 cylinder up hill in 5th gear, no power when u need it unless you just smash the gas pedal down

I'll let others chime in about the tuner, but have you checked if something else is going on with the transmission? Seems odd to me that it's going into 6th at 50Km/h, it seems like it really shouldn't be shifting into high gear at that slow of a speed. Also, out of curiosity what rear gears do you have? I test drove a 2009 with 3.42's and it turned 1500 RPM at 100.
 
05snopro440 said:
I'll let others chime in about the tuner, but have you checked if something else is going on with the tuner? Seems odd to me that it's going into 6th at 50Km/h, it seems like it really shouldn't be shifting into high gear at that slow of a speed. Also, out of curiosity what rear gears do you have? I test drove a 2009 with 3.42's and it turned 1500 RPM at 100.

I dont have a tuner installed.  I have the towing gears on mine, as I ordered the truck with the full towing package. Not sure the ratio top of my head, but whatever the gear ratio is for the towing package.

Maybe it doesnt go into 6th, its hard to track really since there is no indicator to tell what gear you are in.  And the manual shift, it wont go into that gear anyway even if you have it in 6th unless it needs to

Maybe its the way new engines are and me being a pussy on the gas pedal to get better milage.  I coast a lot to red lights and down hills. etc  Not used to seeing a truck at what it seems is idle speed drivign in the city, but then that may be just the way I drive.


But I defintly want to stop the v4 option, happens when I drive into the city as well, slight downhill grade, and you can tell just by engine noise that its in V4 mode.  Yet the gas milage is worse then when its in V8 mode
 
If all you want/need to do is shut down AFM get the Range Tech OBD port plug-in. Simple and effective. If you want to mess with settings a bit more....Predator handheld. HP tuners is best reserved for dedicated, savvy hobbyist and pro tuner folk.
 
ltxi said:
If all you want/need to do is shut down AFM get the Range Tech OBD port plug-in. Simple and effective. If you want to mess with settings a bit more....Predator handheld. HP tuners is best reserved for dedicated, savvy hobbyist and pro tuner folk.

Thanks,  Reading what the other poster said, way beyond what I would need.

While I do like the idea of the Range Tech, for a bit more you can get a tuner and do more it seems, as well as doing what the range tech does
 
i have a 2013 chevy avalanche and have a hyper tech programmer.  It's pretty easy to program, in terms of turning on or off the v4 to v8 mode as it asks if you want to keep it on or turn it off.  in conjunction with a cold air intake, throttle body spacer and new pipes, along with supreme unleaded it seems to tap into its horsepower at about 2500 - 3000 horsepower.  If any one out there has a hyper tech programmer, i'd love to know what  "specific" programming options really get the most performance with the best gas mileage out this 5.3l V8.
 
georgedafifth said:
i have a 2013 chevy avalanche and have a hyper tech programmer.  It's pretty easy to program, in terms of turning on or off the v4 to v8 mode as it asks if you want to keep it on or turn it off.  in conjunction with a cold air intake, throttle body spacer and new pipes, along with supreme unleaded it seems to tap into its horsepower at about 2500 - 3000 horsepower.  If any one out there has a hyper tech programmer, i'd love to know what  "specific" programming options really get the most performance with the best gas mileage out this 5.3l V8.

Looked at their website and a lot of local dealers.  Some of the others, Diable and Edge Products not so much.

Looks like from their ebsite the Max Energy one would be the one for me, disabling AFM and changing the shift points when not in tow mode.

Been playing with the manual shift while driving regularly, but getting to be a pain.  Have noticed if Im driving 50 kmh and I go to manual its in 5th gear already, and the revs are just over 1000 rpm.  Which to me is just trying to get to a high gear for the sake of as milage for no reason.  if I shift down to 4th gear, it goes up to about 1800 rpm, which is about right for me for city cruising, and have the power when needed without down shifting

Unless something is wrong with my truck and its not supposed to hunt for 5th gear so fast.  I will admit when it is lie that Im not being hard on the gas pedal at all
 
I've got the DiabloSport.  So far I like it.  Even noticed a few economy improvement with the AFM disabled.  

From what I can tell from their websites, it has the same features as the Edge and Hypertech, but a few more; like user ability to further adjust the fuel trims and ignition timing in addition to their canned tunes.  Plus it has the ability to accept custom tunes from someone with their CMR laptop software (it's supposedly similar to HPTuners or EFIlive.  So you can send you logging data to a mail order tuner, or take your car to a dyno tuner who has the software, and further dial in your specific vehicle.
 
Bigtrucklover said:
I've got the DiabloSport.  So far I like it.  Even noticed a few economy improvement with the AFM disabled.  

From what I can tell from their websites, it has the same features as the Edge and Hypertech, but a few more; like user ability to further adjust the fuel trims and ignition timing in addition to their canned tunes.  Plus it has the ability to accept custom tunes from someone with their CMR laptop software (it's supposedly similar to HPTuners or EFIlive.  So you can send you logging data to a mail order tuner, or take your car to a dyno tuner who has the software, and further dial in your specific vehicle.

Thanks for the info, Im sticking to the Hypertech, just because of so many choices, have to stick to one and go with it, started making phone calls Friday to get some prices.

While the Diablo has some good extra features, wouldn't be anything I would ever use or want to learn
 
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