Live Tuned by DP-Tuner this weekend

I finally did it! Jody @ DP Tuner live tuned my truck this past Friday at the Modesto Live Tuning event (Terminator Engineering). He fixed my shift points that have been troubling me for a while. He did make a few minor tweaks to the fueling and timing that cleaned up the emissions quite a bit while maintaining the power. It barely smokes at all on hard accelerations. Just a puff then clear up. He also noticed an exhaust leak right off the bat. We tuned with the truck empty and with the WC in tow. It is so smooth now from zero to highway speeds.

I'd recommend it to anyone who has a 7.3L (although he did tune a Duramax and 6.0L while I was there).

Did it do anything for the mileage?

If I drove with a light foot, it would increase mileage over the stock program. In the 8 years I've had a programmer or chip, I've never seen an increase. I have a bad habit of driving it like a race car when I accelerate. That alone depletes the increases. I've seen as high as 19-20mpg when I took it easy one time on a long highway trip running empty. My usual numbers are 13-15mpg for mixed city/highway and a steady 10mpg towing the WC. I got 10-11 mpg with my old 7000# 5th wheel when the truck was new and I still get the same with the WC at around 12000#. So there must be some increases from the programming.

I have the same tuner and see about the same mileage. It's just too much fun to try for better mileage.

Interesting that yours does not smoke. Jody tuned mine and when I get into it, people start pulling off the road. He sure made mine shift better. Before the live tune session, the shifts under a heavy load would knock your teeth out; very nice now. The only thing I didn't get was the drive thru mode; I don't think it was available at that time.

Glad you got it done; you'll love it. Everytime I look at one of the new $50k+ trucks all I have to do is drive mine; cures the new truck fever in a hurry.

Scott,

You have the AC codes. That can make a difference in the smoke. He's refined his tuning in the past year since you got tune. Wasn't it about 1.5 years ago? Since I have the F6, I got some updates over the past year that have clean up things while maintaining the same level of performance.

I too had the hammer shift. It's great now. He smoothed out the TC lockup.

You'd benefit from the drive-thru with the AC codes. With the stock ADs, it's not substantially more quiet. It does take out a lot of the noise at idle. The old version I had was too extreme. He had it down to 580RPM at idle and severely retarded on timing. It chugged white smoke. He refined it so it doesn't do that now and idles at 625.

Since I've had almost every platform out there (SCT, F5, & F6), he did the live tune for half price. We were out for only 2-2.5 hours rather than the normal 3-4. Much better than $60k. I don't need a upgraded HPOP either. Jody says mine runs fine for the tunes I have. Although Joey wanted to get me into a set of his Termys.