8.1 only question

Looks interesting. I'm of the opinion that if GM thought they could have tuned it to make more power *reliably* they would have done it right from the factory. I've got 182k on the truck now, motor has never been opened.

You want a quality custom tune for a GM gas engine, check out Black Bear tuning! They are the number tuner for GM gas trucks.

Black bear all the way........ got it on my GM 6.0 well worth it....

GM's 8.1L has been around for 18 years and I've never heard of Ultrapower. The description seems to be written by someone who has English as a secondary language.

"We are now offering Allison Transmission tuning on model years 2001-2004 W-Series. The main change you will notice is the transmission will shift into overdrive below 50 MPH when under light throttle. We also demand more load before it will downshift when pulling hills which means less downshifting"

I don't want that This seems to be the opposite of waking up the engine, overdrive sooner, longer to downshift. Those are the exact problems I have with my GM 6-spd trans stock and I would not want to make it worse.

If you are interested in engine/trans tuning for GM, go with Black Bear.

BurbMan wrote:
Looks interesting. I'm of the opinion that if GM thought they could have tuned it to make more power *reliably* they would have done it right from the factory. I've got 182k on the truck now, motor has never been opened.

From what I understand, the 8.1 was tuned "normal" from 2000-2002. For some reason they "detuned" the 2003-2006. Some say it was because they were trying to promote the duramax. I've got about 190k on mine and it runs perfect. I would never turn down reliable TQ,HP and MPG increases though.

I have heard good things about black bear too. I just haven't heard a lot of people with a black bear tune on the 8.1. There are quite a few reviews of the ultrapower ECU on the motorhome market but not the GM tuck / SUV market.

All I can say is email them after looking at there website. They will send u all the info that you need. At first I was on the fence, but took the plung and had it efi live tuned. Easy process, the 8.1is an absolute beast for sure. My close friend has one, Love that power of the big block. He has not done the efi live tune yet but will when possible. All I can say is I’m a happy customer, I don’t know if there are other tuners out there. I stand with my comment about black bear... in my opinion and experience.

We have a couple of 8.1L trucks in our family. Mine has the 6sp manual. I don’t know what you guys are pulling but it must be pretty big. My truck has all the power I could ever want.

With that being said, years ago when I cared about such things everybody unanimously sang the praises of efilive. If I ever feel like I need more hot-rod I’ll probably go efilive.

A thumbs up here for Black Bear... Mine is at about 130000 and love it!

number one reason for a tune would be MPG. The 8.1 is very powerful but I wouldn't turn down more because I tow about 10k with mine.