Bully Dog power Pup and my experience

A few weeks ago I ordered the Bully Dog Power Pup for my 2004 Western Star Lowmax flat-top with a 475hp C-15 MBN engine. The unit cost $2,800 plus shipping

The install was straight forward except for they don't tell you that you will need to call them to get an interlock code once you do the install, so you will definatley want to do the install between 9am-5pm central time.

I run the same route, from Chicago, IL to Seadrift, TX loaded to 4,500 pounds in a dry bulk tanker. And I return empty. My gross is about 36,000 and this includes truck, trailer and product. My round trip is roughly 2,700 miles each week and I set my cruise between 60-62mph for the entire trip.

Stock I was avg 6.5-6.8mpg

I first ran the Power/Economy MBN tune and on my round trip I avg 6.7mpg. You could definatley feel the power increase and the truck spooled faster, got up to road speed twice as fast and there was absolutely NO smoke (my truck smoked quite a bit stock)

On my second trip I ran the economy tune and it was not much different than the stock tune. The truck ran poorly as it did stock and I was back to 6.8mpg

I then called Bully Dog tech and they set me up with a 6NZ tune for my truck. And on my next 2 trips I ran the Power/Economy tune.
The performance was amazing, the truck ran smooth and my EGT's stayed around 600* the entire trip. I ran into a lot of head winds on the first trip and my avg was 6.2mpg, my second trip down it went up to 7.4mpg and my trip home last night got 6.5mpg as I had 45mpg side winds all the way thru Illinois.

Overall i really expected a bit better of an outcome. Not sure if it was worth the $2,800 I spent and since they have a 30 day money back gurrantee, I am going to send it back and invest some money in a Mr. Haney tune instead in the future, and a Espar heater as I think I will see better MPG's due to not idling in the cold, but right now, I will be happy getting back to my constant 6.8mpg stock, tho my EGT's will go back up, I don't have too many problems due to the light loads I pull.

That's about the just of it. I know it was a short study, and I really wish they would allow us to test it out for say 90 days to see if we want to keep it or not, 30 days is not much time to get a good baseline seeing the different weather conditions that exist.

 

No, I reverted it back to my stock MBN file. Also, I do not know my EGT's at stock because I put the gauge on same time as the programmer.

As for the 600* temps, you also have to remember that I run very very light loads, mainly all flat land and my boost pressure rarely reaches 20psi, with an avg of 7psi most times (except those heavy winds where it was at a constant 13psi)

 

Just another wonderful update, apparently my ECM must have had some type of tune done to it before as I can barely get 5.5mpg with the stock MBN tune, where as before I was getting 6.8mpg average

 

Nope, sure didn't. So maybe the BD Tuner worked well, I just already had a tune so I didn't see a change. If my stock baseline is truly 5.5mpg, the 6.8mpg I got with the tuner was quite an improvement.