run from bully dog. are you looking for off the shelf? power or mileage?
tony wildman
dp tuner
generally the best option around imo. if you look on powerstroke nation or powerstroke.org theres alot of info there.
Ts performance chips were/are on sale for $200 lately at thoroughbred diesel. I could not be happier. onus points are Tony wildman will add his tunes to a ts chip for a reasonable .charge later on.
The chip I purchased is a 6 position. Stock, high idle, 50hp, 75, hp,100hp, and 140hp. With an intake and exhaust, I find it quite entertaining even at 75hp. I usually leave it on 50hp for daily driving.
I would do a Wildman or DP Tuner. I don't know about Wildman but with my DP-tuner if I want to change shift points or other stuff I just send it back and Jody does it. With the new F6 chip you can do it right over the net without sending it in, I have the F5 chip, had been on my truck for over 120K and been flawless.
Go Dptuner, i have it and love Dp. Truck has a huge power improvement and 80hp eco tune i was seeing 18 mpg in the city and up wards of 26 on the highway, But i would go with the f5 or switch from Dp alot more use out of it.
10 mpg towing is about right. I got 13 mpg at 65 towing a grand cherokee on a big ass gooseneck once, but that was fenton to detroit, flat land....
I've said it before, the big advantage to a diesel is the unloaded mileage over a similar 3/4 ton gas truck. Both get the same towing. Both have the power to tow, unless you are going super heavy then the diesel does get the advantage but for 1-2 "normal" rigs a gasser 3/4 ton (think 6.0 chevy, or v-10 ford type gassers) tows just as well.
When you get into towing consistently over 10,000 lbs the mileage is about the same but the added power makes the experience better with the diesel. (I hate listening to trucks downshift constantly)
Same with comparing a half ton truck to the superduty. The 7.3 will just yank whatever all day, the 5.3 will make a lot of fuss....but the 7.3 won't get much better mileage.
I highly doubt you'll see 16 mpg towing with a tuner on the 7.3, i've rarely seen those kind of claims actually backed up. Even if they are it's typically a best case scenario of a tailwind, a huge downhill, drafting a semi, with an empty 1 place snowmobile trailer.....
I was at 12.5 towing the XJ to and from R&V, avg. about 16-17 in the summer mixed driving. I have owned a few PSD's and never seen better than 18-19 Hwy. No way anyone gets 25+ unlesss it is all downhill.
I'm sorry your truck is such a piece of shit, but I am on an 8" spring lift with a 3" body lift, 44" boggers, a lund visor cap out front (of course to increase aerodynamics) and when I tow my 78 ft 5th wheel toy hauler (lifted to clear the bed rails of my lifted truck) with two jeeps on one tons inside I usually get 24 mpg towing.
I think I could have been around 12-12.5 but we left late and I was pushing 80MPH on the way there. On the way back I took it a bit easier to see the different MPG.
I really like the truck and I will be ordering a tuner this week for it.
Towing a 16' enclosed trailer loaded between wixom and Saginaw I have got as low as 10 doing 80+ and as well as 16 at going 65 the whole way. A lot of that had to do with the wind of the enclosed trailer I imagine. A couple months ago I headed down to Alabama towing a two place trailer with a couple of quads and 1000# of birdseed in the bed and pulled 16 going around 75 the whole way. All this was with the "60hp towing" tune. 285 tires, 3.73 gears, 6 speed, no stacks, no tornado
Say it isn't so man there's absolutely no way you can get that good of mileage with a 7.3l (sarcasm). I know the numbers you claim and I claim are not typical but I actually got the numbers listed. My 5th wheel was a lite model and only a 25ft'r, it weighed in at 5600# empty. Haven't seen close to those numbers since the recall CPS though. We consistently lost 3-4 mpg with it and from what I've read this is the new norm everyone at the Dieselgarage.com and dieselstop.com were reporting the same losses. My truck is not a stock set-up either and almost all mods done resulted in better fuel economy if you could keep your foot out of it LOL. I always ran my tires at 85psi also. If I went over 2000 rpm which for my truck falls right at 68mph it would drop about 1 mpg for every 100 rpm strange but true. I spent many hours researching and experimenting to achieve the best fuel economy I could.
Maybe we should reinstall the DT466 CPS and try that again, the mechanics wouldn't just give me a new CPS for the recall they said they had to remove and keep what was in the engine at the time of the recall. I told them"no way you're keeping my DT466 CPS" and gave them an old one that had been in the truck previous to me installing the DT466 CPS.
I got the best mileage out of my 03 GMC 1500 today. 21.5 on the way to Belleville and 18.4 average round trip, had a bed full of superduty seats on the way home so I added a couple hundred pounds and a full tank of gas. About 65 MPH roundtrip.
I put Lucas Fuel treatment in it a month or so ago and this is the first I have driven it other than short commutes. It was getting 16-17 empty and 12ish towing a car on the trailer.
It also free'd up the check ball in the fuel pump, used to have to cycle the key to get pressure for it to start right away.
I bought a gallon of it and have been putting it in everything.
I really like the GMC again.
I am going to try and find a factory electric fan to swap in place of the clutch fan setup it came with.
I've got a 99 250, manual, and am about to order the Dp as well. From the looks of things you just cant go wrong with it...
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