i'm thinking about gettin an SCT and using my attitude to monitor it. Can that be done?

 

Im pretty you can use it just to monitor

 

For what it's worth, I would find a dealer that's friendly to modifications before you need any major work done. Ideally, when your truck poops out a head gasket, it would be nice to have a dealer in mind that isn't going to hang you out to dry on the tuner, as well as offer you the opportunity to upgrade to the studs instead of the stock style head bolts. I've got several sets of head bolts in my toolbox that went unused and the customer didn't want 'em after I put the studs in their machine.

 

I was told that deleting the EGR system the chances of blowing a head gasket weren't as high.

 

I run the juice with attitude along with banks intercooler,5" exhaust, cfm intake and injen/amsoil inake filter, egr plugged, all mods were made at 120k and I now have 190k on the truck/ no head studs yet/ will do them eventually though. I am like you, I don't push it too hard when towing, I use the recommended setting of 2 for that, I normally leave it on 4 for normal driving, two weeks ago I took a 460 mile trip/920 round trip, and got 25mpg staying at 5 over posted speed.the trip was to pick up a 6.0 core motor, complete, to do a complete build, fire rings, studs,head and main,billet cam,forged rods, better valve springs,,bigger injectors,,just to have something I can pound on a little more.Bob

 

The generic tuners (edge, quadzilla, and the likes) are actually harder on your headgaskets than most custom tuned SCT's. The timing is more precise with the custom tunes. With the more "generic" timing from these other "programmers" it can drastically increase cylinder pressures.

If you've ever seen the spray pattern differences in the two, you would understand, the custom tuned SCT's spray right into the bowl, where it's supposed to be.

This isn't even getting into transmission tuning... which IMO is even more important.

 

I agree with you on the trans tuning, that is why I take it easy on the towing, the engine has alot more power than the trans could handle on a daily basis. the trans will last if you take care of it, I towed a 92 chevy crewcab dually with a 454 in it back from Sarasota fl to maryland/ about 1000 miles one way/ with no problems at all, at the time I had about 160k on the truck. The dually is for a cummins conversion I am doing, all mech.

 

Youd be suprised what the stock 5r110 can handle. I run the hughest tune on my SCT, custom of course, and dont baby it. With proper tranny tuning it can handle alot more then youd think.

 

Exactly my point. I dont baby mine at all, and have the extreme race tune or extreme street tune from Eric as my daily driver.

 

I run the panty dropper tune as my DD fromTSD. Im also suprised how well the factory head bolts have been holding ( knock on wood).