Yet Another Tuner Thread

First post to this forum. Just jioned the mustang club last week, bought myself an '07 GT 5 speed. Bought from a little old lady in maine and only 41k on her.

So I used to have an '01 Ranger with the 4.0 V6 in it. I bought a catback exhaust, CAI, and a superchips tuner. It shifted a little more aggressive but other than that i didn't notice any increase in performance. Though after a while the truck would stall when going to stop at a stop sign or light... I kind of contributed that to the tuner, but could also have been a 130K mile torque converter.

Long story short: Ranger was a dog before and after several bolt-ons.

Now the mustang is obviously a performance car and the ranger was not. I've read all sorts of good things about CAI's and tuners for these 4.6L cars, but do they really do anything?

Has anyone had any bad experiences, or good experiences they can back up with some number for me? would be very appreciated. And can anyone explain what these tuners do to a car? I assume they add some timing and maybe more fuel...

Also in case anyone is wondering this car is bone stock and is my DD so I don't want to screw anything up with it if i decide to load a tune onto it.

Thanks for reading my little rant/first post

Ben

thanks for the responses guys! ...and sorry I took so long to get back to you, I seriously appreciate the input.

cmann said:

Adding a custom tune does so much more than just adding a handful of extra HP to your engine. There are many parameters you can adjust including the sensitivity of the gas pedal (to fix that annoying lag between when the gas pedal is pushed to when the engine actually responds), the rate in which the engine slows down after the you lift off the gas pedal (to fix that annoying hanging throttle effect most cars have from the factory). You can recal the speedo if you ever change rear gear ratios or install taller or shorter rear tires. Also if you have an auto trans, you can adjust the shift points and firmness to what you like. And don't forget the tuner will also read and clear codes and data log your engine which is real handy if you are trouble shooting a problem.

Pretty much a must have if plan on doing any meaningful modding at all.

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I totally forgot it was a code reader when I posted... slipped my mind. So that alone is worth some money and actually does cut the cost of the tuner down a bit.

retfr8flyr said:

From what you are describing, I think you would be better off staying stock. A CAI and a tune will really change the car and make it perform much better but it will require premium fuel to do so. It will run between $600-$700 for an CAI and the tuner, then you will have to run premium gas, at about 40¢-60¢ a gallon more than regular. For a DD car that will really increase your fuel costs. You need to decide if the extra cost of going with a CAI and tune is worth it for the performance increase. One more point is that a tune makes a much greater impact on an auto car then it does with a manual.

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I don't really care about the extra cost of fuel, especially because I don't drive a whole lot, and I can always revert the car back to stock if i really wanted to save the extra $8 dollars per tank.

But if I chose to get a tuner and/or CAI there wouldn't be any real harm I can do to the engine? I'm assuming no since these tuners have been around for quite a while now, but I would like to hear that from someone with experience with one on these 4.6 mustangs

Thanks for the good info! Google's translation of the site was mediocre, so once I have the cash to burn I'll have to shoot him and email and see. It's really interesting though. What's the other forum you're on?