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Originally Posted by White Lightening
Greetings,
As I read threads on the board - I often read about the use of tuning chips. I figure these are different computer chips to give different performance curves etc.. But when posters talk about them - they never indicate what the down side or negatives of them are - or why it was needed for a street truck.
I've got the LQ9 high output performance engine V8 6 liter producing 345 hp (2004 4 x 2). I'm not refering to racing - because that isn't my thing. Will a tuning chip "do anything" to improve my truck for normal driving? And if so - what are the negatives as well as the positives?
Thanks for any input.
White Lightening
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First off, yes an aftermarket tune will benefit your truck. Since I assume you're refering to a hand held tuner, I'll post up about them. A custom tune will do so much more, but we'll leave that for another post.
1. It will adjust air/fuel ratio a tad and give you a little more get up and go.
2. It will firm up the shift points by slightly increasing transmission line pressure. This will help your tranny. Instead of it sliding into gears, it will give it a more firm lock into each gear, thus reducing wear on clutches,etc.
3. I don't know if the VHO has a governor, but if it does, the tune will remove it or raise it up for Z rated tires.
4. You can increase your shift points. GM goes pretty conservative on the air/fuel mix, as well as the shift points. These trucks pull pretty good past the stock shift points, so you can get a little more out of your engine.
5. Some tuners remove some of the torque management. As you know, GM, in their tunes, puts in a safety feature known as torque management. This simply put, is a feature that cuts timing on these engines when the computer detects more torque than what is preset in the pcm during shifts. It really isn't noticeable on stock engines, but as mods are added, torque managment gets worse. It literally feels like the truck falls flat on its face during and right after a shift, then picks back up. The computer is cutting the timing, and therefore cutting the torque being produced. Some handhelds take out a certain percentage of torque management, and custom tunes can take out up to 100%. It's just a way for GM to better protect their crappy 4l60e-4l80e trannies.
I don't think you'll see any downsides to a handheld programmer, unless you count romping down on your truck more due to the addition of horsepower a "bad thing".