hi gang. first post here.

i have a 1998 2500 5.9L magnum.

i'm pulling a 1988 29ft 7000lb (dry weight) travel trailer.

just put a cold air intake kit on...very noticeable improvement.

i'm shopping around for a hypertech tuner to improve towing power when going up and down hills.

bear (my trucks name) is detonating/pinging like crazy when going up hills. i am going to begin using 9X octane fuel this week.

has anyone experienced any gains when updating/upgrading the flash from a hypertech tune? i read bcdalton's post on his travel trailer...perhaps you could shed more info on the towing.

thanks a bunch.

 

Ok, I am going to label this one: "Standard Response Number 1."

Have you checked your plenum? Do that FIRST. Look down the throttle body, and see if there is any oil in there, if there is, that needs to be fixed first.

If the plenum is ok, (or, you end up repairing it....) PM Hemifever on these forums, and he can hook you up with an SCT tuner for right around 275.00. I have not seen ANY complaints about his tunes. (while I have seen several for hypertech.....)

Welcome to DF!

 

gears are the only way to correctly fix speedo reading as well as gearing for at least stock power level...sct tuner on a truck with bigger tires and whimpy gears would be a half assed self defeating setup imo.

 

it wouldnt if you had the 5.38 gearing which you probably do since your speedo is reading right now unless you had the pcm changed already to adjust for tire diameter...

 

I'm about to purchase one of these tuners from him also. I hope you don't mind if I ask you a couple questions. You mentioned that it came with the CD, how does it plug-in to your PCM? Does it also come with the handheld device too, or will I need to purchase one of those also?

I've done a lot of modifications to the truck. New intake manifold,new timing chain,new oil pump,new catalytic converter,ext. I'm hoping to get better performance after I installed a custom tuner.

 

The SCT is the ONLY way to go, i love it and would recommend it to everybody, i've had mine for a month and a half and i've been doing alot of mixing and matching, but keep in mind i do have a V10 there's no such thing as fuel ecomony, but with the 87 tune and 89 octane i get roughly 14 mpg. towing, thats a different story, for every 1000lbs i pull i lose 1 mpg. so that 7000lb trailer that was mentioned before would take me down to about 7 mpg. i haven't experimented with the 93 octane because of the price. i have used the 93 tune on 87 and 89 octane wasn't much of a difference. except in the power department there was an improvement.

 

it has the odbII connector on it, all you do is plug and play follow the instructions on the tuner, you really don't need the cd. in short heres what happens, you plug it in with the engine and key off, it'll power up and ask you what you want to do, tune wise, you choose which one you want 87,89,93. you select the one you want, wait a few seconds then it will tell you to turn the key on engine off, it will power down your ecm and reprogram it then you turn the key off and back on a couple of times and your done, unplug and start, one thing to note is when you turn your truck on after a reprogram, your abs lights will come on, mine did but they will go away after a few minutes so don't think there is something wrong with your abs. thats it in a nutshell, granted i may have missed a step or two but i've done it soo many times i should have it memorized by now but i don't. if you have questions ask hemifever or ask me i can probably answer them.

 

I appreciate all your information. I will get in touch with him today and get my order. One more question. Does this unit allow you to set the timing or does it do it for you ?

 

No, this does not allow you to set the timing. The parameters are fixed for the most part and, to a certain degree, only certain parameters are adjusted. Dodge is relatively new to the tuner scene vs. GM where, there's some wicked programs like EFI live where, you can do way more with than what we have to work with.

The OBD II on Dodge RAM trucks are somewhat limited as far and, in depth as what can be done with them. For example, when I upped my tire size, other tuners allow one to input that into the tuner- such is not the case here.

The fuel trims and such, yes, those can be changed along with some other parameters but, when I called and spoke to engineering about what those parameters were, there weren't that many. It was very limited as compared as to what can be done with GM, Chevy and Ford OBD.

They are working on it though. I couldn't obtain enough information out of Hemi on what the limitations were so, I ended up calling engineering to find out what parameters / areas were included as being user definable / adjustable. This is when we compared EFI live and a few other DART type tools and, surprisingly, there's not too much that could be done with it at that time. While most of the tunes are fine, there were a few things that it simply could not do and, what those were, I can't recall but, there were in fact, quite a few things that we wanted to do but couldn't. One was tire size. That one I do recall being an issue. Oh, another that just came to mind was reprogramming offset values relating to sync. It was not available at the time I spoke with them.

Maybe things have progressed since then, I don't know but, either way, it's a fine tuner and, I use it daily almost as I often travel a lot. I haven't had a bad flash to where, it killed my PCM like some tuners do so, in that aspect, it's good. For the money, it's very good.

CM

 

SCT:
Connects to computer with a regular printer cable. Plugs into PCM from the OBD port on the drivers side in your cabin. (look at where your feet are then look slightly right. you can see it from where you sit in the drivers seat). THey are all handheld.

YOu will see a nice gain with your upgrades. The new intake is a really good deal because it takes away the plenum leak possibility.

I have the tuner, and I did these mods BEFORE putting the tune in:
1. 24# 4 hole Bosch/Ford Motorsport injectors
2. MSD 6AL box and coil
3. 1.7 Harland Sharp Roller Rockers

Drove it for a week then put the tune on. BIG difference. Shifting was MUCH better. I actually returned the truck to stock because I am bringing it back in for some warranty work (Brakes and shocks). Tore down the MSD and reflashed the tune to stock. Good thing i put in the MSD with quick connects so returning it to stock only takes 8 minutes. Most of the time is taking everything OUT. But if the MSD box ever failed and I needed to bypass the box. It would take 30 seconds.