I was thinking bout getting one.

 

You could have actually had the same milage the whole time, theres some thing you do to calculate the error due to tire size and add that to what you would normally calculate to equal the total, I forget what it is.

 

when I had my 2000, I had a ton of mods, 52mm TB, modded kegger, 1.7 rollers, FIPK CAI etc.. and it ran fine. the only time I ran into a pinging problem is when my cap & rotor wore out. that was mainly due to the MSD box I had and the 22~25k miles on it since the last swap.

My opinion on this having been a user for so long is that if your starting out to mod your truck get one or the superchips... once your motor gets to a "heavily modded" state, then consider going to a custom flash for your setup.

if you decide to go the mopar pcm route, you have only 1 program to work with and who knows what that program was optimized for (most likely for a stock motor).

and just to let everyone know what I had...
k&N FIPK2 with an upgraded 6x9" round filter (helped out alot)
52mm Fastman
1.7 crower roller rockers
1.5" cut modded kegger intake
gibson headers
flowmaster dual out 2.25" exhaust
r/t heads (these were the 1.92's)
MSD Off-road box & coil
MSD superconductor 8.5 mm wires
fuel rails wrapped
fuel cooler
aps precision plenum plate

with all those mods, it still worked fine. could it have been better with a custom flash? without a doubt.

 

my hypertech is ok I think it works better on other trucks than the 5.9 my friend has one on his 99 f-150 and it made a way bigger differece then on mine. I think its just a little harder to tune the magnum. but I dont think it was worth the 300 bucks.

 

It is on the pricey side for the performance you get out of it. If worried about pinging, you can do other things to combat that. The decision maker for me was that besides performance and tire size programming, it also is a code reader. Since I have a '98 and the key on-off-on-off-on trick doesn't work so it made sense to get a programmer when that was also factored in.

There's a hypertech #50003 for a '98 on e-bay for $165
http://cgi.ebay.ca/Hypertech-Power-P...QQcmdZViewItem

 

I am using a hypertech programmer with my stock truck. I do get spark nock when i do not use premium gas even with the lowest octane setting. It did fix my odometer but my speedo is still off 5mph. I used my gps to check these. With 285/75/16 tires it runs 5mph faster than my speedo says, (truck speed 60 speedo says 55, odometer perfect.). This seems screwed up anyway. As soon as i can go back to stock tires I will be trying to ebay the programmer. I anyone knows why my speedo and odometer don't match let me know its driving me nuts. Im a little **** retentive about some things.

 

Try reducing the tire size you used to program the speedo. Using an online tire size calculator it gives your tire size as 32.83 inches but not all tires are the same and as you tire wears it'll also get smaller. I programmed my truck for what I thought the tires were the first time and I ended up being out and had to reduce the size I had set it at.

 

If your advancing timing above stock, you really need to increase the fuels octane or ping will occur.
MP PCM is intended for use with CAI, M1, mild cam (rt/rt+10) headers and catbacks.

Beyond that, adding a bigger cam, big heads (202 or larger) and boost, I would go with a true piggy back tuner like the smt6 or more preferable, stand alone engine management.
B&G flash is ok but the loss of the engine diagnostics is not worth it IMHO. I had to put a stock computer in to set my sync signal after installing my 408 cause the B&G had nothing but a/c diagnostics in it when trying to set signal with scan tool.

 

I have the hypertech and it made a noticeable improvement in my 00 5.2. It ran and idled smoother. I did a lot of reading before I bought it. It is not a supercharger so don't expect a huge HP jump. After reading a lot of post in this forum it appears gains are more noticeable on trucks with automatic trannys than standard. If you are looking for large HP gains you will have to do bigger mods. I guess it comes down to: was it an improvement, yes, did it make a fire breathing, smoke belching truck, no. You'll have to deside if it is worth it or not. Ad my .02 to the rest.

 

I found out the same thing when I made a call to Hypertech over the summer. I switched to a Mopar Performance PCM, and with my mods, the PCM outperfomed the programmer noticably. I think the programmer is still a good mod, but noticable results are probably most felt if your truck is stock or near stock.