I'm looking to put a programmer on my 2004 ext cab FX4 5.4L and ive looked into the hypertech and a few other options. Im wanting to get a decent gas milage increase along with power what would you suggest i get?

 

A car.

 

Good luck finding a chip that will give you both power and a decent mpg increase....your setting yourself up for either failure or disappointment. I think the most you could get is about 1-2 mpg...if that.

If you get 1mpg increase from a 400 dollar programmer....it would take almost 2 years to recoup your cost if you go through a tank a week.

 

a superchips unit custom tuned by Mike troyer at troyer performance would give you the best gains, as far as MPG none of the programers are going to give you much in that department if any, good luck

 

Hi Gman,

Most of the people here have us do our Troyer Performance custom tuning, as we have specialized in the F-150 platform longer than anyone else, and are well known for getting the best results.

Now in terms of your fuel mileage, that is really up to you - how you drive the vehicle, how well you maintain it (not doing dumb things like leaving O2 sensor in for 70K miles, etc. and the quality of fuel you feed it - the better you maintain that vehicle, the better results you are going to get in terms of both mpg and to a lesser extent the sheer raw power gains at full-throttle, too.

It is true that the majority of our customers *do* in fact report MPG gains here - you can spend some time reading over posts and you will soon see a clear pattern of many people posting about gaining about 2 mpg overall in most cases. Some gain 1 mpg, some of the hot-roded trucks gain no mpg, and some gain 3.5 mpg, it all depends on your truck & how you treat it & feed it, basically.

Now of course, nobody with a brain thinks that performance tuning is somehow supposed to magically pay for itself, that isn't going to happen nor is it ever supposed to. It's *performance* tuning, so what it is supposed to do is to improve *performance* - any mpg gains that come along with that are icing on the cake, so to speak. But as long as you keep your foot out of the firewall, and use good quality fuel, then yes, you will generally see some mpg gains from our tuning, almost everyone who actually tracks that properly does report gains in those areas as well.

On a truck that only gets about 12-14 mpg at best, you are increasing that by on average anywhere from 8.3% to 14+ % better fuel economy with a 1-2 mpg gain, and that is very respectable indeed - nobody could ask for more, that is a huge extra bonus from performance tuning.

If you'd like to go over any of this in more detail so you'll have a good idea of exactly what you can reasonably expect, please feel free to give us a call at our number listed below, & we'll be happy to go over this with you, OK?

In the meantime, best of luck with your truck!

 

IMO the XCal2 with TP’s custom tunes is the answer. You’ll get a huge power gain and the overall drivability will improve dramatically. As far as improved gas mileage goes, in my case it was a grand slam. I get a solid 16 plus mpg local driving now, and at the same time, I got extra power out the ying yang on demand. IMO you can’t go wrong with the XCal2 coupled with Mike’s custom tunes

 

HI John (jpdadeo),

Good to see you again!

Yes, a lot of us actually do see nice mpg gains even in these newer 2004 & up heavier trucks, it's all in how you drive it & feed it, basically.

At one point, with our Stage 2 kit (before we threw the supercharger on), we were getting almost 24 MPG when cruising at 65=70 MPG with the A/C on using the cruise control - now once we stepped it up to 75-80 mph, the MPG started dropping noticeably of course, but it';s really not too hard to get better overall mpg from these trucks with proper tuning. And for those who are more concerned with MPG than anything els,e we can even do a special MPG type of tune for them - it doesn't have the power or response of our "performance" tunes, but we can do an "MPG" type of tune for those who only care about MPG and nothing else, basically.

Thanks for your post, & hope you enjoyed your New Years!

 

well i bought a hypertech today and i must say that im pretty satisfied with it, with the 93 tune ive got a pretty decent power increase but ill need to wait for my next fill up to check the gas mileage.

 

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Just be happy with whatever you buy!!!!! I have a Troyer x-cal but would still like to have an Edge and a Hypertech!!!!


TOYS, I LIKE TOYS

 

I will throw in a vote for the Edge Evolution. 60+ of us (yep, over $20K in one order) from this forum just purchased ours in a group buy, you've missed that I'm afraid but the Edge is well worth your consideration.

It has an interface with the OBDII port by your knee under the dash, from it it can display a lot of different readings up to 4 at once (I use tranny temp, oil temp, coolant temp and cylinder head temp). Changing the tune to a more aggressive one, or customizing the one you have in takes all of 20 seconds or so as well. I find the stock tune to be a bit conservative, though still quite a kick compared to stock...with a little adjustment (try the 04-06 forum to see what many of us are doing) it makes your truck fly..and my mileage has increased the expected 1-2 mpg.

Read all the posts you can find in here to get an idea of what is what. Don't take anyone's word for anything on the net because you never know who they are or what their agenda is..instead take a general consensus and make your decision from there. In fairness, one of the 60+ has a difficulty with his unit in that his truck has been flashed from ford with a program the edge has never heard of. Strange, since my truck is only a few weeks old and was reflashed the second day I had it. Still, that guy is none to happy with the delay in getting his tune installed (has to wait for edge to update the tune online). I would imagine that delay won't be as long as the delay ordering a troyer canned tune, but still any delay is a bad thing when you've handed someone your cash already. Poor guy can still use the guages, the 0-60 and 1/4 mile timers etc..but can't make his truck faster. I don't blame him for being a bit miffed.

Anyway, good luck in your search. Be sure to check other forums as well, a tuner who claims to own the market here is often never heard of anywhere else. Oh and here is a link to the Edge product. As an aside, I have no affiliation with any tuner, nor do I even possess the gene that produces a product or brand loyalty. Buy the hammer that fits your hand best, so to speak. If another well known, established company comes up with a tuner that is better than the edge..I'll be all over like white on rice.

http://www.edgeproducts.com/pdf/FordF-150Evolution3.pdf

Bill

 

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TP is not a custom tune unless you datalog and have adjustments made after datalogging.

From reading these posts there doesn't seem to be a large percentage of people that do the datalogging.

 

I'm not familiar with MT all that much, just read his website and drew my own conclusions. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

1. He uses hardware sold by SCT out of longwood florida (a company he is a customer of, not in affiliation with)
2. He inputs his own settings into the unit
3. He ships the unit to you
4. You pay for the dyno, do some datalogging and send him the info
5. He updates what settings the SCT unit should have in it

Is that essentially it? Because if it is, calling that a custom tune and the edge a canned tune is certainly not accurate. Perhaps I am wrong in one of my assumptions though.

Bill

 

If you’re happy with the edge, great. I haven’t tried the edge but if I had one I’m sure it would suffice and I would probably tout it as the best thing since sliced bread but as luck would have it, I ended up with the XCal2 custom tuned by Mike