Power Programmer for gas engine performance

It's been since the late 90s early 2000s models since I've spent $ on gasser programmers. I'm sure they give a slight bump in power, and I mean slight, like first day you go "wow, this thing is great" and after a week you don't notice it.
The 2 features I found value in were firming up shift points and removing the top speed limiter. (I used to "commute" about 40kmi a year, a lot in the middle of nowhere desert, so 100mph + was the norm.)
IMO it won't hurt anything, but not much bang for your buck with a naturally aspirated engine. You can only suck so much air with factory intake, cam, pistons, comp ratio etc. whereas with forced induction, you have a much broader spectrum of parameters when you have a compressor force feeding air. That's why tunes work 10x better on turbo diesels and Eco boosts.
As a kid I thought it was cool, now I'd take that $500 and buy a gun or something if I was intent on spending it.

We had a bulldog programmer in our 2012 Dosge Mega Cab 2500.
We had the truck over a year before putting it in and then it was in for two years as we recently sold the truck.
We loved it. Let us change the shift points, gave us better gas mileage and you could notice a set in Hp as well.
And when the trailer wasn't on the back it did even better with gas mileage and just cruising on the highway.
Also just added one to my wife's Avalache and already noticing a difference. Since we don't have a toy hauler we use her truck to pull the ATVs but other than that it is just a daily driver.
Was well worth the money and we are thinking about adding it to our new Cummins as well.

I use an Edge CTS for a monitor system, but their tuning kind of sucks. At least for diesels. And custom tunes ROCK!

What are you trying to accomplish? If your after better shifting as the previous guy said, that would be a benefit.

But if your after power..you won't see much in gas engines. I know Five Star Tuning is real popular with the Ford gas truck guys. I'd look there..but I do like the monitor system for all your pids with the Edge.


Tell us what your after and we can go from there. V10's in the '99's are weak, I think rated at 240 horse that one year. I had one. Meh.

I would not spend the money for performance or improved mileage.
Better shifting, lower shift points, speedometer fix from gear or tire change etc is the reason to buy.
(well those were my reasons to buy)

I have tuners for my Mustang, Explorer, and F450. Only the Mustang has custom tunes. The other tuners make the vehicles shift more appropriately ... the Mustang is a manual. Before the tuner, the Explorer downshifted up almost any grade which was really annoying. They also correct the speedometer.

As long as you don't do the max performance tune you should be relatively safe. Either way, check out Ford-trucks.com for the tuners for that particular engine that seem to work pretty well if you go custom. Otherwise, the SCT basic models work pretty well for me for the F450 and Explorer.

I can't say they are "worth" it except for the Mustang custom tunes which is a blast!