^^what he said.

 

gears, long tubes, stall and tune. you will have fun with that for abit and when you get the cam bug, you have the supporting mods for it

 

Quick Question regarding these custom tunes...I'm leaning towards Black bear based on reviews from forums like this, where as initially when looking into tuneing I had my heart set on the 'canned' tune as i've heard them called, such as bully dog or something like that... The truck I want to tune is my daily driver. Its always fun to have more power and get-up-and-go, I don't plan on doing any really crazy (ie racing, off roading) stuff... My Question is this: Once I get a BB tune is my truck going to be too hard to handle? What I mean is will I have to drive it as a performance vehicle everytime I drive? Not sure I am getting my point conveyed clearly.... and one final ?-- What s the total cost of getting the Black bear tune, ballpark figure?

 

If anything, your truck will drive better. It will still shift pretty normal at part throttle, but can have firmer shifts at WOT. When you go to buy it, there's a form with questions that you can answer and a spot to add any comments for them. You can make it how you want it. I'd take a tuned truck over any non-tuned daily driver.

for prices, id just go to blackbearperformance.com and take a look.
there's also a section for FAQs that's pretty helpful in deciding what you need. I'm no advocate for them, but I sure do love their tuning!

 

A custom tune from a reputable tuner (like BB) won't make your mostly stock truck drive like a race car. If you go down the performance route with special parts, cams, etc... then it "might" drive like a race car.

So as long as you keep your foot off the floor you'll see better fuel mileage (in most cases) and much better power up top. Since you still have your 4L60E transmission a custom tune can boost the line pressure for a quicker shift to reduce wear, but 60E's are very soggy compared to 80E's.

I would mention since you're going the performance route, there's a good chance your current 60E transmission will give up the ghost sooner rather than later. I'd say get a bigger transmission cooler (Tru-Cool 40K) and a Super Servo to hold your 3-4 gears together better.

 

WEll, against the suggestion of some ppl on this board and afer a lot of thought I did get a bully dog gt model 40415 tuner...Got a very cheap price on a brand new one...installed it a few days ago...The monitoring it provides is top notch...I havent been able to test its performance yet b/c my partof the country is sitting on a foot of snow right now but the little have driven, it seems to help some wiht fuel econ..running 87octane and not using the performance setting...Does anyone have anysuggestions on what to set the Bully Dog to get the most performance?

 

I dont understand why people are so excited about monitoring a stock vehicle. The canned tunes are crap, most of us have been there. A good custome tune will net much better results than any bullycrap or hypershit. I got a tune from nelson performance and granted im cammed, with gears and a 3200 stall converter i get perfomance and fuel economy in one tune. It drives like stock on the roads and ive taken it to the track several times and the only monitoring i do is a wideband gauge. I dont know if anyone mentioned that if you were to add say a cam BB or NP will retune for a very minimal fee. I think i payed $25 when i added a cam to mine. End of rant.

 

well I ended up getting a buly dog (I know BOO BOO!!!) but I do like it... better pickup and power, as well as better (by a little) econ... Next thing I'm looking at is long tube headers (either Kooks or Dynatech probably)....Anyone know anything about them ? I know depending on the brand you get some can just bolt on while others require exhaust mods...Also, does anyone know approx how much extra power and torque I'll be getting out of this? I'm hoping in the range of 20-30hp and the same lb-ft....I'm not so much interested in loud or rumbly sound as I am more power, so i'm not thinking about a new muffler yet unless it'd really help with adding power...any thouhgts? Thanks.

 

Why do you keep asking for advice if you r going to go against advice given and do what you want anyway? Black Blear tune would have been $240 and you would have easily gotten twice the performance minimum. As for headers pick a set for what your doing it doesn't much matter cheapest set of pacesetters or similar will do you fine.

 

Amen on the BB tune ! LT's and BB tune would be 10x's greater performance than a handheld programmer. Handhelds are waist of money IMO.
Just my .02 ¢