Got home from Austin about 5:40, said goodbye to the wife (ortho trauma nurse, she works nights) and had the 5 Star tune in by 6:10. Took it for a test drive and immediately noticed a big change in how the vehicle drives. Just did the 87 street/tow tune for now. It almost responds too quick right off idle but I’ll reserve judgement until I get used to it. I think my Grand Cherokee was more like this, my parents own it so I get to drive it again now and then and noticed it was touchy off idle like my Expedition is now.
Immediately noticed it no longer has a insatiable desire to climb to the highest possible gear in search of Prius like MPG it will never achieve (so why bother). Usually driving through my sub I end up lugging along in 8th. Now it sat in 5 in the 1,500-1,800K RPM range. Not lugging the motor, but also not revving needlessly. Just right.
Accelerating is entirely different. Before I had to keep mashing the pedal more to keep the RPM’s climbing and preventing it from grabbing the next higher gear, instead of just holding the pedal steady like in every other vehicle. It was irritating. Now I just put my foot in it and it shifts through the first few gears at a more reasonable pace and keeps the engine a bit higher in the RPM range. Unlike sport mode it does get to 10th. It still gets there pretty quickly, just not constantly grabbing another gear in search of better MPG at the expense of driveability though. I actually found that without trying it was accelerating at a more rapid pace as I would have to back off a bit or I would get too close to the cars ahead of me.
It was just one drive through the sub and a few miles on 55MPH roads so I reserve the right to change my assessment but from what I’ve felt so far this is exactly what I was looking for. It made the vehicle more enjoyable to drive, at a reasonable price, and without having to install, log data, send, wait for revision, etc. Could I do that if I was solely after more power or wanted to tweak the shifting even more? Sure. Would this be the right tuner for that? Doesn’t sound like it from Loki’s experience. But if you want to save a few bucks and don’t want/need to eek every bit of power out of your ride, I’d go with the X4 and 5 Star.