ATV Florida Forum

I've heard a lot of stuff at school that the mod chips for trucks that say they increase performance and mpg don't do that much to your truck... Is this true? If so what is the best for mpg and the best for performance?

I have a superchips tuner (SCT) tuned by rouge performance.  It works well for me, I avg 1.5-2mpg more and increased throttle response.  I have towing/performance/gas milage tunes.  They all do their purpose very well.  I have yet to have a problem.  BTW this is an 02 ranger...I use a scangauge II to measure my readings (which is calibrated to GPS miles)...I just recently did some tests, reg 87 I got 13.7mpg for 2 tanks, performance 93 oct I got 16 flat, towing (actually towing too) 93 I got 11.2 :(   Some pretty crappy milage, but it is what it is.  And the 93 octance performance tune does well for DD and the hwy.  I'm avg'ing 18 on the highway, 14 city with that tune (I use that tune mostly, except when I tow)

They are really effective on diesel engines

depends on your truck, what do you have. certain brands like hypertech suck. diesel truck can add 150hp if you wana destroy your trans. gassers pick up response by cutting any abuse protection, its called torque management on gm trucks, dont knwo what the others call it.

nothing beats a custom tune tho, and diablo sport is the best hand held for gassers, it has more features than any other hand held, you can load up a already done tune(good for basically stock trucks) or you can even go in and put together your own tune for soemthing heavily modified like say you put a cam in or cut the cats out or something like that

on a truck like mine, personally, for the cost of a hand held i can buy an emulator and the datalog cable and all and custom tune it myself for that much, and thats what ill be doing, but its alot of work and pointless for a stock truck.

my buddy had one i believe superchip on his ram 1500 hemi he liked it and he was in construction always hualin 1k+ in tools and equipment to orlando and back 5 days a week got 15 mpg average city/highway

So i guess everyone thinks there really worth it.
Alright thank you all for helping.  ;D

If you have a ford vehicle, you need to get yourself a DP Tuner.  Check Jody Tipton out.  www.dp-tuner.com

not at all, alot of them are total garbage. you need to tell us what you drive before you waist any money on a tuner, otherwise this thread hasnt really done much for you but give you confidence in buying a tuner weather its good or a peice of crap

well I'm not going to drive for another year... I was asking cuz my friends and I were talking bout how high were gunna lift our trucks and what were gunna put on em. then the subject of mod chip came up and they said the ones they know of are junk.

might i ask is mommy and daddy paying for gas, truck payment or car insurance?? if not, lifting your truck or even tuning it will deff be postponed for the price of gas, i got a 2001 mazda B3000 (jap ranger)
with 4 inches of lift and 33x12.5 at/s i fill up 3 times a week at 60 bux each time, all out of me pocket, so good luck

Thats why I've been working and saving my whole life...Mom aint going to help cuz shes payed for 2 sisters and my dad "doesnt" have the money. So I'm kinda on my own...but I hope not. And I have to pay insurance. :'(

I just bought a rebuilt superchip programmer for my 99 Z71 for only $100 + 15 shipping. It came in a factory box with all the factory stuff. It looked brand new to me. I programmed it with th 87 octane program it definitely feels more powerful. It is also supposed to add 2-4 more miles to a gallon. I will find out in a few weeks if that is accurate or not. You can also custom tune the shift points and pressure of how hard it shifts. it will pull trouble codes out and reset the engine light. The feature I like is I is now my speedo is correct, because it re-calibrates the speedo for the larger tires.

What brand was it?

Superchips

It is a discontinued model 2715.

Has anyone else here had a good turn out with the 'superchips'?

What kind of truck do you have?

I quoted myself...I don't have one...It was talk at school.

trx450 racer, is your 99 a new body style or old, 99 could be either. if its a new one the power your feeling is just the removal of torque management. normally they reduce torque management to 50% and add a few degrees of timing. it will add response, maybe add a mpg but not 4mpg lol

dont play with the shift firmness, adding line pressure is not the right way, you need a shift kit if you want firm shifts...

for 100$ you did pretty good.

My truck is the new body 5.3L. I just added the SC program I didn't tweek it at all.

When I push the tow button it will snap your neck when it shifts. How do they make it do that? It was like that before I added tghe SC.

Thanks for the info.

thats just tow haul mode, it keeps the torque converter locked up so you theres no slippage of the torque converter while its shifting, the torque converter being unlocked is what makes the shift somewhat smooth besides the fact that the valve body itself is just setup to make smooth shifts. when you put a shift kit it has bigger holes between the valve body so you have more pressure in the valve body, and more fluid going to the servos, thats what gives you a true firm shift whether the torque converter is locked or not

in non tow haul mode your torque converter never locks before 55mph. also in tow haul your shift points are higher so of course thats also going to give you a more violent shift.

what the superchips does is it opens up the solenoids letting more pressure go through the valve body which gives you a firm shift, the right way is to have bigger bores making more fluid go through, also giving you firm shifts, but that is the correct way to do so. its not a good idea to just send more pressure to what youv got, you gota open it up and let more fluid through, you would see what im talking about if you saw the components in the shift kit compared to what your replacing them with.

this is just a watered down version of how a automatic trans works as my understanding of an automatic trans is only decent, not great. but it gives you the idea. some will argue that im wrong and that its ok to just send more pressure to the valve body and get firmer shifts that way, its up to you, a shift kit for your truck can be found at auto zone for 30$ and its made by b&m which is a good company so i see no need to be using a programmer to firm up the shifts...

You think a shift kit with the programmer is a good idea?

sure, shift kits never hurt, just put a shift kit on and leave the shift firmness to stock on the programmer, and you will still have firm shifts from the shift kit itself. you can change your shift points if youd like but it will just destroy your mpg, tow haul can just be your performance mode as the only difference is tow haul has a seperate learn mode for the shift points so if you always put it in tow haul when you drive fast, it will remember that and put the shift points high, if you drive like a grandma the ecm will set your shift points low, its called learn mode. you have 2 seperate learn modes, one for regular and one for tow haul.

as for the shift kit, idk if your going to like installing one, it depends on how mechanically inclined you are. if you are pretty mechanically inclined its really pretty easy. if you have no idea what your looking at once you drop the pan then it may be sort of overwhelming, the kit will have good instructions on everything you need to do, just follow them. you only need to change the 5 quarts of fluid in the pan, but the trans itself actually holds something like 16 quarts, if its never been flushed, now is the time, but thats a whole other project in itself, you can always just pay a shop to do the flush for 100$, its a real pain doing a full flush yourself. what i did was disconnect the trans cooler line and put a bucket underneath it, let the truck run in drive, as the old fluid poors out you poor new fluid in at the same rate, once youve done 16 quarts your done... if your not cheap/poor like myself, your going to just want to take it to a shop for this becasue they have a machine that sucks the fluid out, nice and simple...

Thanks for the info. I can do all the work myself no problem. I have flushed it once about 3 years ago. My buddy Turboderf is an ASE certified master tech and I learned a few things in my 24 years of selling auto parts. I just bring it to his shop and watch him do it. That is usually how I do it myself. All kidding a side I can do it is I have to, but why do it if I can watch him do it. LOL

sounds like you have no excuse lol, next time your at autozone pick one up, the b&m kit goes for like 35$ right off the shelf, no having to order one online...

the transgo is a better shift kit for the 4l60 or 4l65 i forget which the half tons have. not the the b and m is bad there is just more to the trans go kit. there all pretty simple, once you have the valve body out you can do it all on the bench, nice and easy.

1/2 has a 4L60E, 3/4-1ton have a 4L80E. The 4L65TE is in FWD cars.