Predator Handheld - 4th F-Body

safemode · August 9th, 2010, 02:33 PM

I am almost certainly going to go with this unit (U7198). You can find new units for 255 and sometimes find used ones not locked for 200. Since I can't justify spending 400+ for laptop software since i'm not going to continually modify the car over a long term, and mail ordering requires sending the pcm in and not being able to adjust anything for nearly the same price, the handheld seems the best route.

With that out of the way so people dont repeatedly post about buying some 600 dollar software instead, I was wondering who has used this handheld on their Ls1 fbody and if they had hard numbers to report or in what configurations they noticed the most change.

PNISSHR · August 9th, 2010, 03:31 PM

Im sure that the predators are better but I had my car dynoed with and without a hypertech handheld back to back the same day and only saw a max of barely 5 hp. Just thought I would let you know is all. I have seen custom tunes produce 3-4 times that.

RrCoX22 · August 9th, 2010, 05:03 PM

honestly they're not worth the cash unless your going hptuners or EFIlive

...otherwise recommend saving up the cashola

safemode · August 10th, 2010, 10:18 AM

hptuners and efilive are in a completely different category. At twice the cost, they're geared toward a totally different application. Getting the car dynotuned is right up there in cost. Getting a mail order pcm requires about a week or more of no driving or buying a second pcm spending (more so if you buy a second pcm) about what you would on a predator and it's a one time deal.

But anyway, I dont expect 15-20hp gains from tuning when i dont have very much at all out of stock-spec done to the car. I mostly care about being able to control shift points, line pressure, and remove codes as well as monitoring sensor data.

RrCoX22 · August 10th, 2010, 03:18 PM

for the same price you could get a dyno tune if you have a decent shop nearby. that's the route I would recommend but only after you have decent amount of mods otherwise it's not worth it either with a predator or dyno. honestly hptuners or efilive is approximately the same price range...

otherwise if you care about just removing codes, get an OBDII reader for cheap

safemode · August 10th, 2010, 04:15 PM

Let me know when hptuners or efi-live enter the sub 300 dollar range. Otherwise its not worth it. I'm not going to be drag racing the car and constantly changing things. There's no way to justify spending 400+ bucks on either of those two programs when you're not going to use it much after the first couple tunes.

A cheap obd2 reader + something like a mail order or dyno tune would be nice if the obd2 reader also did full data logging so i can plug it into the computer and see how things are going. I may not want to re-tune it constantly but monitoring it is always good and with a handheld, i dont need to lug around a netbook and it only costs about 150 bucks over the cheapest simple obd2 code readers.

anyways, the idea with the thread wasn't to debate handhelds. I know tons of people are using them and i wanted to get some numbers and the like from them.

99Hugger · August 11th, 2010, 01:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RrCoX22

for the same price you could get a dyno tune if you have a decent shop nearby. that's the route I would recommend but only after you have decent amount of mods otherwise it's not worth it either with a predator or dyno. honestly hptuners or efilive is approximately the same price range...

^ Yes