Do you have a turbo, or have you modded the engine?  If so, probably very worth it.

If not, your results will be much more modest.

Depends on the vehicle. Some of the Ecoboost 150s are getting 100ft/lb or more with tunes.

A lot of the generic tuners are 15-25 though.

2022 Civic Type R here, some bolt on parts and a tune made the car a monster! Definitely worth it.

As was said in post 2 and 3. Depends on the car and tune.

Some cars are already tuned to the near practical max, whereas others leave a lot left on the table.

In fact, some cars are purposely detuned to make way for the higher end model which is literally the same mechanics but with a different oem tune. So if you had the lower end model, you could effectively upgrade to the higher end model performance wise, whereas if you had the higher end model, you would have little or nothing to gain, while potentially introducing some undesirable bugs into the system as even good aftermarket tunes sometimes have flaws.

So, a gigantic it depends.

My car came from the factory pretty maxed out. There's almost nothing I can do to squeeze more performance out of my car without doing something massive like a total engine swap.

A turbo vehicle with a custom E-85 tune can be incredible.

Modern GM has so much torque management built in that a tune can make it feel like a huge difference.

It's like 100 horsepower. You need 3 chips. Engine, tranny and turning up the amps on your blinker fluid.

Laughs in HP tuners.

Honestly if that's your mentality, just buy whatever the hot garbage FUEL MAXIMIZER OVER 9000 OBD port product of the day is from Amazon.

Yeah, I killed two 4L60E transmissions in the nineties changing shift points on stock engines. GM tends to make stuff just well enough to make warranty.

A planetary and torque converter came apart.

JFC. Is he a counter monkey at Autozone lol?

Attached File

95hp and 110 torque cost me $3k in my GL63. It was well worth it.

Not really.......

You can program some things with the trans, like shift points, firmness, TQ lockup etc.
You can also tune out or limit the TQ management built into a lot of cars, change gear ratios for tires, even add infotainment options not included on that model

As stated depends on the car.  And if you want your warranty I suggest not doing this.

If the company name starts with a M, do it. Seriously, do it now. Night and day.

LOL, the question, as asked, is about as meaningful as asking "Are accessories for your gun worth it?"

The answers could range from "really bad idea," through "waste of money," to "no brainer."  The OP needs to do a deep dive into the tunes available for his specific model, the reputation of the vendors, etc.  Spend some time on forums dedicated to your car, talk to people who have installed specific mods, and maybe then you'll be in a position to decide.

I have a 2016 Ford Fusion SE with the 2.0L turbo.  Sport mode changes it so it will actually pass redline before shifting, nice of Ford to do that out of the box.  Friends got me a custom tune and now it shifts firmer, rev's faster, pulls closer to a V6 off the line.  I love it, and it's just a basic tune from Steeda.

The fully custom one I had for my F150 made such a difference that a friend who had the same year and options rode in it and asked me "what the hell?!?  This is what I wanted my truck to feel like!"  That's when I told him it was custom tuned.  I miss that truck, but it was time for it to go.

Can someone give me an example for what you’d see out of a 3.5L Ecoboost with a customer tune? I’m still I’d we warranty but just curious.

It really depends on the engine.
I put an aftermarket turbocharger on my roadster and of course the tune made a tremendous difference!
I eventually removed the turbocharger, put a header on the car, and went with a simple ECU tune.
Yeah, it helped but it was minor, mostly just required premium gas for the advanced timing, removed the drive torque control, removed the slow throttle response.

@WrightP Depends on how far you want to go but I'm around 470whp on factory turbos with down pipes and mbrp exhaust on mine. I've used both 5 Star tuning and Unleashed, and I prefer Unleashed. Torrie is super solid and will do what it takes to get your truck perfect, calls, texts, nights, weekends, dosent matter.

Wow, that’s pretty impressive.

Chip tuning? lol.

It depends on the tune and the vehicle. F150’s will benifit from better shifting. A n/a will not benefit as much as a EB or any turbo vehicle.

Agreed.  

Used HP Tuners on my 2004 Chevy Colorado and my Son's 2006 Colorado. In addition to many of the things you listed above, we were able to turn off the incredibly faulty Passlock system on the trucks. Also used it on our 2004 Corvette.  

Used Cobb Accessport to load a Stage 1 tune on my wife's 2005 Saab 92x (rebadged WRX.) Unlocked about 25hp, ran smoother and got better gas mileage.  I loaded it over a weekend when she was out of town but didn't tell her I had done so.  She drove it to work on the following Monday and upon returning home asked me "What did you do to my 92x?  It drove so much better today!"

There's a guy on youtube with a tuned only '21 4x4 crew cab 3.5l that breaks into the 11s in the 1/4.

Where can we get one?

i got one for my new style impala

it DID make a difference
was more responsive, and waaaayyy better shifting points.

Op this is a great tune for your 992.


https://www.m-engineering.us/products/porsche-992-carrera

I would love to install a supercharger on my 2022 F250 7.3 but filling a 48 gallon tank with 93 octane instead of 87 would be very expensive.

Procharger makes a nice little kit but a whipple would be preferred.  Along with a cam swap would make me smile while stomping on the gas pedal (from gas station to gas station)

"chip tuning"?   What car is it?    Most cars are "Flashed" a new tune through the OBD port.

Need more details.....

What car and engine?

I’m wary of tuning new small displacement turbo 4’s. I think a lot of manufacturers have them strung tight to get V-6 performance while meeting CAFE (Fuck the fantasy that is CAFE) numbers.

I’ve got an Alltrack with a 1.8 T4. If it were the GTI 2.0T, I’d be more inclined to do it.

I wouldn't say NA tunes are always a waste of money.  I'll be getting a canned tune from a reputable place once I get my car back together.  For less than $300, cam lower thermostat temp, add a launch control function, get rid of CEL for emissions stuff, slight RPM limit increase, options for more aggressive or linear throttle map.  They claim about 7 HP/TQ increase, which is the best HP/$ for the car.

My car is older with a large aftermarket and motorsport community.  I don't think OP is going to find something like that for his NA Taurus.

Did OP just bail on this thread?  

Do these need to be unplugged or removed for states that require inspection/exhaust testing?

Depends on the tuner too….

I did it a few times with turbod vehichles

Noticeable difference in power each time.

Cost me a motor once out of pocket. An ECM another time.

Banks derringer (and pedalmonster) on my Ecodiesel Wrangler made a decent improvement. IIRC the derringer added about 60hp and 80tq.

Here's the thing, you need to view all claims by the tuner with a grain of salt. A car's engine is little more than an explosion machine that works on the principle of chemically attaining the most efficient explosion through the right ratio of air to fuel and mechanically attaining the most/best explosions by flowing air through the engine as efficiently as possible. Anything that a tuner does must necessarily perfect the air:fuel ratio and/or maintain an ideal air:fuel ratio while in light of a greater flow of air than the manufacturer anticipated and/or change when the spark plugs spark. That's it.

So, if someone says that a tune alone is going to net 50 horsepower on a naturally aspirated engine with no mechanical changes, you should immediately wonder how that's possible. In what way did the manufacturer tune the car so imperfectly that they left that much horsepower on the table? It's basically an absurd proposition on a modern vehicle.

Now, if you change mechanical components that increase airflow through the engine, then, sure, suddenly a factory tune may be inadequate, and an aftermarket tune will adjust the amount of fuel injected to work in conjunction with this new-found airflow, and you make a bunch of extra horsepower.

Further, if your car is turboed, many factory ECU's now control the amount of boost the turbo puts out, so a simple tune can make considerably more power precisely because you are increasing airflow through the engine so as to take advantage of the fuel/spark magic of the new tune.

A couple of examples: My naturally aspirated Corvette Z06 gained basically no horse power from a tune alone. But the addition of intake and exhaust plus a tune gained 40 whp. My Turboed Cadilac ATS-V, however, has its turbos regulated by the ECU, and a simple tune will net a 100 whp gain BECAUSE THE TUNE IS ALSO EFFECTIVELY MAKING A MECHANICAL CHANGE THAT RESULTS IN MORE AIRFLOW.

Additionally, an aftermarket tune can adjust other things than an engine's peak horsepower output. Sometimes manufacturers do things like limit the amount of boost a turbo puts out in a particular gear or force traction control to intervene at an undesirable time or force a shift point that is less than ideal. An aftermarket tune can affect these drivability issues, which may or may not have any impact on or anything at all to do with horsepower output. Some tunes also allow you to take advantage of better fuels that are more conducive to making more power.

In short, as with anything, view a manufacturer's claims with a grain of salt, don't claim gains that you haven't measured on a dyno, don't believe your redneck cousin whose truck got a gajillion hp with just a tune, etc.

Before jumping into it, learn how an engine works, what an ideal tune looks like, how it's different from a bad tune, and how your particular vehicle's suite of sensors works to inform the ECU. Then you'll be better equipped to evaluate the claim of a tuner.

Until I see a dyno sheet, this is just bench racer car-fudd lore, and you're better than that.

LOL. Yeah, and I bet he has recommended fuel pump replacement for at least 1,000 customers who had an ignition-related failure to start.

If it’s turbo charged and the tranny and engine are built with enough headroom for it, probably.

You should expect to spend $500-$1000 for something off the shelf. Anything cheaper is a scam.

OP realized the plug in chip for his 98 Silverado isnt going to really give him 200hp lol

Tell me you're an out of touch boomer without saying you're an out of touch boomer.

But to answer your question, it depends.  It depends on your car/engine, what you are doing, and the tuner you are using.

The old v6 Ranger barely made 25hp to the wheels and you sure weren't adding any more with an intake. The only reason why it spun the tires is because it lost most of it's rear weight from rust savings.

I've got a tuner on my car that eliminated afm and top speed limiter. I also have it set to mileage tune

My warranty on my 19 F15 3.5EB work truck is/should be up. Guess its time to get a tune

No. Just been busy.



No turbo. I was just wondering if i can get any significant increase in hp and gas mileage.

I drive my cars stock and havent ever really cared.

Significant? Not really on either of those points for most modern NA vehicles. Force induction is a different story for hp but I'd also question the mpg claims. About the only things that really see a difference in fuel mileage from tunes are diesels.

M Engineering or APR

992 Carrera S sport here.  Your GTS will smoke most anything with the larger turbos after a tune.