F150 Tuners

What you need to know about F150 Tuning

Tuning is one of the most cost-effective and best bang-for-your-buck upgrades that you can make to your F150, and without the need for actually doing an install, tuning can be extremely hassle-free. That being said, there's more than a few tuning options out there for your truck and there's plenty that you should know before taking the plunge.

What is a tune anyway?
An aftermarket tune is essentially new software for your F150's Powertrain Control Module (PCM) which controls various functions of your F150's engine and transmission. The new software changes key parameters of your truck's engine management which allows it to make more power and torque that with the factory tuning, while also changing transmission function to get improved shifting and driveability. These tunes come on tuning devices (also called programmers) that upload the tunes to your truck using its OBD-II port. While there's a ton of different devices out there, they all function in a similar way.

"Canned" vs. Custom Tuning
Despite the fact that there's a ton of F150 tuning options out there on the market, there's really only two types of tunes out there: "Canned" and custom tunes. "Canned" tunes (more professionally known as Pre-Loaded Tunes) are the tunes tunes included on most tuning devices out the box. These tunes are created by the device manufacturer and are built for essentially any F150 with a given model year and engine type that the manufacturer supports. Canned tunes provide good power gains and provide at least parameter adjustability. Custom Tunes are tune files built specifically for your truck by a custom tuner. These tunes are locked to your F150s' PCM and are specifically tailored to your F150's unique strategy code, modifications, and other features and generally make more power and torque than canned/preloaded tunes and do a better job of fine-tuning transmission functions. Stage 3's Custom Tuner of choice is 5-Star Tuning, who tunes bot SCT and HPTuners nGauge Devices. You can read more about 5-Star and our custom tuning process over on our F150 Custom Tuning Page.

Handheld Tuners vs. Monitors
The various tuning devices out there for the F150s can be broken down into essentially two categories: handheld tuners and monitors. Handheld Tuners are your basic, old-school style tuner that are small, compact, and just as effective as anything else when it comes to tuning your truck. A handheld tuner is easy to store and is a handy thing just to keep around, but you can always put it out of sight when you're not using it. Monitors are larger than handhelds and are designed to provide you information on your truck's running information. These devices usually have a large screen meant for displaying digital gauges. Monitors tune just as effectively as handhelds, and their monitoring abilities come at some extra cost, but if you to keep tabs on parameters that your F150 doesn't give you from its factory gauges.

I just want to change my tire size
One of the most common reasons for folks wanting to tune their F150s is because they've jumped up to a larger wheel and tire combinations. Adding larger tires to your F150 throws off your truck's final drive ratio, which in turn, throws off your F150's speedometer and odometer. The reason is that your F150's PCM is programmed with its factory tire size, and adding a bigger tire throws off its settings. If you're solely interested in changing your speedometer settings, then there's plenty of more basic devices that solely adjust for tire size that come in at great prices.