Today's Tuners

wintersun wrote:
Most people use a tuner to get more horsepower out of an engine and the result is a blown engine or failed injectors from fuel starvation or blown tranmissions and these guys are not even towing or carrying a load in the bed.

Completely false. I have been running tuned diesels for over 5 years, towing heavy loads and running empty, and have never had any of the problems you mention.

Emissions controls do cause more fuel to be consumed in return for less pollution out the tailpipe. You can remove this equipment and violate federal and state laws and certainly do no favors for your fellow citizens with the soot you put out the tailpipe but lots of people could care less about anyone else so there is a big market for kits to do this.

I agree that the newer diesels (2007.5+) are more of a challenge for the tuning companies, and what you didn't mention is that you do put your powertrain warranty in jeopardy if you use a tuner on a truck that is still under warranty.

A friend with a 2005 truck with the Duramax LLY engine saw a 1.5 MPG gain or about 20% with a tuner when pulling a 13,000 lb. trailer around the USA. Over a distance of 40,000 he would have saved enough in fuel costs to recouped the cost of the tuner. He sold the truck before he put the 40K miles so for him it was a net loss on his tuner investment.

But he enjoyed that extra power for xx miles without an issue? What's that worth?

With newer trucks I have a difficult time believing that one guy at a tuner shop can extract better fuel economy from a diesel engine than the manufacturer's hundreds of automotive engineers are able to provide. The big three compete on power and also on MPG so they do everything they can do that is legal and not going to reduce the reliability or durability of their engines while improving fuel economy. You can see this with the claims by Ram for its 2014 trucks which are very impressive if they prove to be close to accurate.