Help me decide…Livernois or 5 Star tune?

[CO2Ranger]

I had it on for awhile. Temporarily went back to stock and it's kind of hard to tell the difference. It does shift better but can't really tell otherwise on hp gain.

It can be deceiving, but.when you're in Sport and you drop the pedal, the pull is longer and MUCH more pronounced. If you have a boost gauge I'm guessing you'd see quite a difference as well.

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[Jmarler]

It can be deceiving, but.when you're in Sport and you drop the pedal, the pull is longer and MUCH more pronounced. If you have a boost gauge I'm guessing you'd see quite a difference as well.

Gotcha. I just put it back on, so I'll do sport more.

 

[Hellrazor]

If warranty is important, 5 Star offers several different warranty programs with their tunes and they do stand behind it.

I'm not the norm on here but I had a poor experience with my Livernois tuner (I'm currently back to stock).

Most others seem to have had good luck with it.

While the FPP does seem to leave a bit of HP on the table, it apparently doesn't require flashing a different tune if you need to tow something.

Agree my Livernois tuner is a $625 paper weight

 

[Langwilliams]

I'm very happy with my Livernois tune(s). When I was running the 91-93 tune it almost felt like an engine swap. It drives like a different truck. I went back to the 87-89 tune for winter an looks like I'm sticking with it because of the gas prices. It's a nice bump in power.

Looking at Doc's dyno sheets, Livernois claims similar HP numbers with there high octane tune but I think the unleased torque looks higher, like 10-15% over their claimed numbers.

 

[AzScorpion]

I've been running the 91-93 soft shift tune (the 91-93 performance tune before that) for over a year now. But with prices of premium approaching $5.00/gal here I just flashed over to the 87-89 soft shift tune. It'll be interesting to see the difference once it's completely out of premium. Something tells me I wont be all that excited.

 

[Ron L.]

I have the Livernois tune and really like it. You get all 5 of their tunes to try out and it's nice to be able to flash back to the 87-89 tune and still get some performance over stock. I would also look at the Unleashed tune. There's a lot of guys running that one too and Torrie (the owner) can make adjustments for you when ever you add additions performance items. Doc @Doc has it and I think @landiscarrier also is running it so maybe they'll see this and be able to give you more info on it.

What Dave said.

 

[Peter949]

I've been running the 91-93 soft shift tune (the 91-93 performance tune before that) for over a year now. But with prices of premium approaching $5.00/gal here I just flashed over to the 87-89 soft shift tune. It'll be interesting to see the difference once it's completely out of premium. Something tells me I wont be all that excited.

Yup, just did the same 2 hours ago.

 

[AzScorpion]

Yup, just did the same 2 hours ago.

I have to admit I was pretty depressed doing this. I feel like I'm neutering my Ranger by doing this. I love the way it drives with the 91-93 soft shift tune and hope these crazy prices don't last to long.

 

[Jmarler]

I have to admit I was pretty depressed doing this. I feel like I'm neutering my anger by doing this. I love the way it drives with the 91-93 soft shift tune and hope these crazy prices don't last to long.

I'm doing a road trip soon so I'll see if I can put the soft shift performance to the test.

 

[NotBudule]

. For the transmission I requested tuning that has the same shift points as tow mode but with out hanging the rpm before an upshift and it being as aggressive down shifting. I have had him make one revision to the original tune and it is 98% there. I am going to give it a little more time to see if the adaptive learning gets rid of the hunting that happens occasionally between 8th and 9th. Otherwise it keeps the rpm in the ideal range between 1500 and 2000 for cruising.

That is EXACTLY how i would like mine to run , but i only drive about 7000 miles a year and have to keep the warranty going... i guess im pushing that tow button for a while.... i could see a big performance tune voiding your warranty but one like this shouldnt....imo....

 

[Burnt Money]

I have been running the Livernois 91/93 soft shift performance tune for a little over 20,000 miles with no issues. I have used the towing tune for towing and just to try it out. The non soft shift tune is kind of a pain in traffic. That’s my personal experience. As others have said. It’s a noticeable gain in drive, but In sport mode it’s a very noticeable difference in how it performs. Personally I like how it feels with the soft shift performance tune and the tow/haul turned on. It seems like a happy medium between normal and sport mode.

 

[Mirage775]

I want to chime in here about 5-Star! I'm pissed off with them!

I too went with 5-Star, (at first), because of their warranty options, (which aren't even theirs, they're actually Stage 3 Motorsports warranty), and they also had an early Black Friday deal on the SCT BDX tuner and also their tunes. I was also having trouble finding tunes available for a 2021... For a 2019-20, tunes were readily available, but something changed in '21, per Ford and Superchips...

About the extended warranty, it turns out, the guy I talked to at 5-Star said the warranty options were a waste of money, in his opinion, as they only protected "the engine", if the dealer found a previous tune on the PCM... He said with their tune, all you had to do was put the truck back to stock and the dealer would never be able to tell if the PCM was ever flashed previously. He said, if you carried the truck to the dealer with the tune on it and they I'm pretty sure that's a straight-up lie?

Anyway, this was the day before Thanksgiving last year. He said, it'll get programmed and shipped out today. A week went by and still nothing, so I emailed them and they said there wasn't an order made last week... I took a pic of my bank statement saying they definitely took the money out! After some more emails, I received it a few days later and installed it in my truck. I removed my Auto-stop Eliminator and Pedal Commander prior to installing the tune. The pre-install asked me a bunch of options, that I thought were already supposed to be installed on the tuner, but I answered them anyway and it took 30ish minutes to install...

Well, after driving around for a week or so, I emailed them and asked a few questions about the tune and a few days later, they emailed me back saying that the device shipped out, without any tunes on it and I was actually using the SCT preloaded base tune....

After they finally emailed me all 6 tunes I had purchased months earlier, I drove around on the 87 Daily/Tow tune for a few weeks, with mileage dropping slightly, but it was expected. Then, when I switched to the 87 Performance tune to try it out, that's when things started going badly...

On MLKJ Day, I had an appointment to get it aligned at the Mazda dealer, (I know the alignment guy there). I only drove it "D" mode and when I was actually going 60+ mph, during decel and downshifting, the truck would shift all the way to 4th, but wouldn't shift any lower, regardless of how slow you were going or how low the RPM's were... When I put it in full "S" mode, it wouldn't have this issue, but more issues came with this though. My mileage went from 15-16mpg to 9-10mpg! I emailed them about the issues and they ignored me for a bit, but finally answered with a BS answer at that. I asked them for a trans only tune and they sent it to me free, but it took several days..., but I took the tune off and thought about buying the ASS and Pedal Commander again.

So, needless to say, I'm not a fan of 5-Star Performance and I will never be purchasing anything from them again.

I thought about selling the BDX, but decided to pay Torrie @ Unleashed for a couple of tunes. I think I paid $299 for labor and the 2 tunes, 87 & 93 Performance only. He actually worked on the tunes one random Saturday and emailed them to me that afternoon. I installed the 87 one and drove it to work the next day and it "seemed" like it was much better than the 5-Star crap? I drove around in "S" for a tank of fuel, which was fun, and I got about 15mpg, but honestly, I've been driving in "D" mode ever since the last fill up and I'm getting 17.2mpg with it. Mileage is definitely better with Torrie's tune. He actually emailed me several times, asking different things, when he was doing the tuning.

With the 87 tune, 259/314 @ wheels and with the 93 tune, 289/364 @ wheels. The gains over stock are, 30/50 @ wheels with 87 and 50/100 @ wheels with 93.

So, if you haven't decided yet, I'd say go with Torrie or if you don't care about that much "performance", you could get the Auto-Stop Eliminator and a Pedal Commander.

Hope this helps?

EDIT:

Oops, I forgot to add that with the FPP tune, you HAVE to use 93 all the time and a Ford tech or an ASE mechanic will have to sign off where they installed it, in order for the warranty not to be fully wasted. I've read and heard that Fold Corporate will not void your engine warranty because of a tune or if any other bolt-on parts have been added, but some on here will disagree with me... Oh well...

I don't know much about the Livernois tune, so I cannot help you with it...

 

[Mustangman02232]

Agree my Livernois tuner is a $625 paper weight

my 5 star SCT is just tossed in the console, was less then impressed with that One too and took a 2 mpg hit with it installed. I’ve just put it back to stock, wish I never spent the money on it

 

[Mirage775]

my 5 star SCT is just tossed in the console, was less then impressed with that One too and took a 2 mpg hit with it installed. I’ve just put it back to stock, wish I never spent the money on it

If you want to give it another try, get the SCT BDX tuner and get a tune from Unleashed. This is the best tune out there right now!

 

[Mustangman02232]

If you want to give it another try, get the SCT BDX tuner and get a tune from Unleashed. This is the best tune out there right now!

I have the BDX

also added the 5 star warranty so don’t really want to swap companies

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