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As many of you may have seen from the large thread, linked below, NavyCuda has been working on a tune for our trucks, specifically the diesel model. He's been at it for about a year, but he's finally been able to produce a tune that he felt was worthy of beta testing, after alphas testing it on his own truck with excellent results. He wamted to make sure it worked on another truck before selling it. That's where I come in. I've been testing his most recent version, which at the time of writing this post is V2.18. I agreed to be a guinea pig after an agreement with him. He would send me this tune via my EZ Lynk Auto Agent 2, and I would download whenever I wanted to. He asked for honest feedback in great detail, which I promptly provided after testing, and datalogging if something seemed strange, which never happened. He does not have the money to provide me any sort of warranty if something were to go catastrophically wrong and destroy something. If his tune blew up my engine, I was on my own. I understood the risk.
I installed it about a week ago, and immediately let the truck idle for ~30 minutes. It sounded normal, compared to my old tune, but that changed once the coolant reach 10°C, at which point the turbo's rotary valve opened up a tad. Before reaching 10°C coolant temperature, the truck is choking itself for warmup. After this, it idles normally. Most tunes leave it choked, from lazy programming. With V2.18, it sounded like a different truck entirely. The turbos weren't as loud, with my 4" straight pipe, and it had a deep, pleasant, harmonic thumping for an exhaust note. The engine sounded less stressed.
After 30 minutes of idling while watching various sensor readouts on my EZ Lynk app, I decided to drive it. Immediately noticable was that pedal response. It requires a hair more input to get going compared to my CTT tune, but that took about 20 minutes to get used to. I asked NavyCuda about it, and he said it was intentional, to help the truck be more efficient and easy on the turbos. A tradeoff I'm happy with. I had my phone monitoring the sensors while driving. I was out for about 45 minutes, driving through a residential area, a town, and a highway. It was 3am, so traffic didn't exist. I could test as I please. I noticed the turbos weren't as loud compared to my previous tune, which is nice. The truck drives smoother, and swems like it's mot working as hard. V2.18 makes the rotary valve much less restricive since this tune, unlike others, doesn't let the ECM try to raise exhaist gas temperatures to satisfy emissions equipment that isn't even there. This gave me greater thermal efficiency, which I noticed when my coolant temperatires only moved by a degree or two while cruising. Previously, it would oscillate by around 12°F, bounching off the thermostat as the truck kept restricting the exhaust flow to make the gasses very hot for no applicable reason. Lack of emmisions equipment renders this behavior to be needlessly inefficient. In other words, my truck is now allowed to breathe properly, and I noticed a slightly better indicated MPG readout on a route I take often. Below 1000 RPM, the truck has a very deep rumble, like a deleted 6.7 Cummins. I never guessed a 5.0L V8 diesel could sound that good.
Overall, I'm very happy with the tune. NavyCuda is still working on it, with the primary goal being efficiency and longevity. I believe he's getting into timing now that the air maps are addressed. This should help amplify the fuel savings if handled correctly. I'll state it again, I'm not being paid, I still have my old tune and can install that if I wanted to at any moment, and I tested this at my own risk. I will not be making any commision of his sales, so it doesn't make a bit of difference to me if anyone buys it. I'm simply a man that gambled his truck to test a tune. I'm sharing my honest opinion about V2.18 because it emrages me to see what few companies we have in our timy aftermarket gouging us for money for medicore products. Examples are various companies producing lazy tunes that simply tell the ECU that everything's ok with emissions instead of getting rid of those parasitic larameters, CFT charging over $1000 for a kit to delete an EGR but it comes with a bunch of excessive shit like charge pipes and a resevoir, and Titan charging $1400 for a fuel tank; a box with hoses for liquid. It's been several years since our trucks started being sold, and we just now have a better option for tuning. Some of ua have found cheaper solutions to remove the EGR and some are selling their improved ideas, and many are sharing methods for cheap and easy fixes that woukd cost us thousands at a dealership of poorly trained mechanics who just throw parts at shit instead of finding the actual problem. We're own our own, Nissan left us out to dry, and the aftermarket is greedy. NavyCuda's tune is a great example of a community fixing shit themselves.
Navy's write-up on his progress that he keeps updating: Update! - Fuel Efficiency 0Hp Tune for the 5.0L...
I installed it about a week ago, and immediately let the truck idle for ~30 minutes. It sounded normal, compared to my old tune, but that changed once the coolant reach 10°C, at which point the turbo's rotary valve opened up a tad. Before reaching 10°C coolant temperature, the truck is choking itself for warmup. After this, it idles normally. Most tunes leave it choked, from lazy programming. With V2.18, it sounded like a different truck entirely. The turbos weren't as loud, with my 4" straight pipe, and it had a deep, pleasant, harmonic thumping for an exhaust note. The engine sounded less stressed.
After 30 minutes of idling while watching various sensor readouts on my EZ Lynk app, I decided to drive it. Immediately noticable was that pedal response. It requires a hair more input to get going compared to my CTT tune, but that took about 20 minutes to get used to. I asked NavyCuda about it, and he said it was intentional, to help the truck be more efficient and easy on the turbos. A tradeoff I'm happy with. I had my phone monitoring the sensors while driving. I was out for about 45 minutes, driving through a residential area, a town, and a highway. It was 3am, so traffic didn't exist. I could test as I please. I noticed the turbos weren't as loud compared to my previous tune, which is nice. The truck drives smoother, and swems like it's mot working as hard. V2.18 makes the rotary valve much less restricive since this tune, unlike others, doesn't let the ECM try to raise exhaist gas temperatures to satisfy emissions equipment that isn't even there. This gave me greater thermal efficiency, which I noticed when my coolant temperatires only moved by a degree or two while cruising. Previously, it would oscillate by around 12°F, bounching off the thermostat as the truck kept restricting the exhaust flow to make the gasses very hot for no applicable reason. Lack of emmisions equipment renders this behavior to be needlessly inefficient. In other words, my truck is now allowed to breathe properly, and I noticed a slightly better indicated MPG readout on a route I take often. Below 1000 RPM, the truck has a very deep rumble, like a deleted 6.7 Cummins. I never guessed a 5.0L V8 diesel could sound that good.
Overall, I'm very happy with the tune. NavyCuda is still working on it, with the primary goal being efficiency and longevity. I believe he's getting into timing now that the air maps are addressed. This should help amplify the fuel savings if handled correctly. I'll state it again, I'm not being paid, I still have my old tune and can install that if I wanted to at any moment, and I tested this at my own risk. I will not be making any commision of his sales, so it doesn't make a bit of difference to me if anyone buys it. I'm simply a man that gambled his truck to test a tune. I'm sharing my honest opinion about V2.18 because it emrages me to see what few companies we have in our timy aftermarket gouging us for money for medicore products. Examples are various companies producing lazy tunes that simply tell the ECU that everything's ok with emissions instead of getting rid of those parasitic larameters, CFT charging over $1000 for a kit to delete an EGR but it comes with a bunch of excessive shit like charge pipes and a resevoir, and Titan charging $1400 for a fuel tank; a box with hoses for liquid. It's been several years since our trucks started being sold, and we just now have a better option for tuning. Some of ua have found cheaper solutions to remove the EGR and some are selling their improved ideas, and many are sharing methods for cheap and easy fixes that woukd cost us thousands at a dealership of poorly trained mechanics who just throw parts at shit instead of finding the actual problem. We're own our own, Nissan left us out to dry, and the aftermarket is greedy. NavyCuda's tune is a great example of a community fixing shit themselves.
Navy's write-up on his progress that he keeps updating: Update! - Fuel Efficiency 0Hp Tune for the 5.0L...