aftermarket tunes

[John Cunningham]

who has purchased tunes and what brands and how effective are they on 96 on up 7.4 vortec? I was curious..

 

[df2x4]

Black Bear Performance tuned my '97 C1500 with the 4.3L V6. Best thing I ever did to the truck besides the 4L80E swap. Very noticeable increase in power and it made the truck a lot more fun to drive.

 

[Christian Steffen]

A tune from someone reputable will be worth every penny, the stock tuning in these trucks absolutely sucks. Request that TM is removed or greatly reduced by whoever does it.

 

[df2x4]

Request that TM is removed or greatly reduced by whoever does it.

Unless you have a 4L60E... In which case leave it alone!

I'm assuming it's got something beefier than that being a 454, though.

 

[BNielsen]

96 7.4L owner, I've got a Black Bear tune on my truck; I don't know what all was done besides having the EGR and post CAT O2s deleted, but my truck runs like a scalded dog now. It cruises right up to 65 miles an hour now, it used to get pretty wheezy running like that with the stock tune.

I'm planning on sending in another PCM and having a little more done, I need to do some research to see what else can be done, but even with simple tuning I regret not buying one sooner!
100% worth every penny.

 

[Elroy]

that, and replace the stock exhaust and cats

 

[Deathpunch0311]

Are you talking about the torque management?

Unless you have a 4L60E... In which case leave it alone!

I'm assuming it's got something beefier than that being a 454, though.

 

[Christian Steffen]

Unless you have a 4L60E... In which case leave it alone!

I'm assuming it's got something beefier than that being a 454, though.

Thank God they weren't dumb enough to try that.

And he probably means leave the tune alone in general since the 4l60 can be killed by the stock tune.

 

[BNielsen]

that, and replace the stock exhaust and cats

I'd love to go to run shorty headers to a full 3" true dual mandrel bent system, with high flow cats and Magnaflow mufflers, but damn that'd be expensive to get built up.

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Honestly, a tune and a decent cat-back exhaust will wake the truck up quite a bit; I know when I went to my internal-x Jones muffler my truck felt peppier.

 

[df2x4]

Are you talking about the torque management?

Yes. I'm convinced that removing it from my tune temporarily is a big contributor to the fact that my $2700 4L60E rebuild only lived about 10K miles behind a V6.

Thank God they weren't dumb enough to try that.

And he probably means leave the tune alone in general since the 4l60 can be killed by the stock tune.

Very true... I was referring to torque management though. Honestly after my experiences I'm choosing to leave mine at the factory settings even with my 4L80E. I'll take durability over neck snapping shifts any day.