5.2, gears or tuner?

Hello everyone, I have a 99 2wd truck with the 5.2 in it for my dd. The truck runs amazingly well considering its at 170k. 90% of my driving is around town, and it either wants to be driven like grannys buick on sunday or else wide open. It has plenty of top end power (although more is always welcome), but low and mid range really suffer due to early shifting and low rpms. It is basically stock with the exception of a k&n drop in filter, cat delete and thrush muffler.
I have done a fair bit of research and it seems like the 2 best and least expensive options will be either a tuner or 3.90 or 4.10 gears. Eventually I will have both but for now I'm looking at which would give me the most bang for the buck. I plan to do the rear end myself using a junkyard rearend to minimize downtime, whereas I have never done any tuning so I will have to go thru flying ryan for a tune.
Eventually I plan to mod the intake and tb, also using junkyard parts, probably go with a set of the eq heads, and maybe a turbo in the nowhere near future. Still doing research on turboing.
Anyway, for those with experiance, what do you think would be better for the near future, gears or a tuner? I know its a truck and not a muscle car, I just think it should be a fun truck to drive instead of something ordinary. Sorry for the long post but any advice welcome

Gearing will mess with your spedo unless you get the ABS module reprogrammed or get bigger tires, but you will feel it from a stop. A tuner is great as you can feel it all the way through, but you MAY not feel as much from a stop.

Personally i'd tune it. You just have to fix the plenum if it hasn't been done already, and replace the O2 sensor with an air/fuel sensor.

I have no idea if the plenum has been fixed or not, I've only had the truck about a year now. I can say I am fairly confident it is not leaking at this time though. I have read up on the symptoms and I don't see any of them. The only oil I lose is about a qt between changes coming from the rear main. And yes that will be fixed soon. But back to the plenum, when I mod the intake I plan on putting an aluminum plate in that intake.

Gears are the best "bolt on" performance you can do for these trucks. I went from 3.55s to 4.56s on 33s and it's a different vehicle. That being said, it's a ***** to do yourself. Your truck being a 99, as long as you haven't changed the tire size you don't have to flash the computer for the speedo. 99+ trucks read axle speed instead of output shaft speed, so gear swaps won't affect it, only tire size changes. The good thing about the 2wd truck is it's only one axle. If you get a junk yard axle, get one out of a 2001 and up. Their axles have flange yokes instead of bearing caps and make driveshaft connection much simpler and consistent. If you can find an early third gen, those axles are the same as the 2001s except they have disk brakes in the rear. That would be a good time to upgrade to disk brakes as well if you're interested.

jhamilton86 said:

Hello everyone, I have a 99 2wd truck with the 5.2 in it for my dd. The truck runs amazingly well considering its at 170k. 90% of my driving is around town, and it either wants to be driven like grannys buick on sunday or else wide open. It has plenty of top end power (although more is always welcome), but low and mid range really suffer due to early shifting and low rpms. It is basically stock with the exception of a k&n drop in filter, cat delete and thrush muffler.

I have done a fair bit of research and it seems like the 2 best and least expensive options will be either a tuner or 3.90 or 4.10 gears. Eventually I will have both but for now I'm looking at which would give me the most bang for the buck. I plan to do the rear end myself using a junkyard rearend to minimize downtime, whereas I have never done any tuning so I will have to go thru flying ryan for a tune.

Eventually I plan to mod the intake and tb, also using junkyard parts, probably go with a set of the eq heads, and maybe a turbo in the nowhere near future. Still doing research on turboing.

Anyway, for those with experiance, what do you think would be better for the near future, gears or a tuner? I know its a truck and not a muscle car, I just think it should be a fun truck to drive instead of something ordinary. Sorry for the long post but any advice welcome

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I have a 2001 ran 1509 with a 5.2 in it and I have a tuner for sale. Decided to go turbo and the tuner won't work for the turbo build, it's just a canned tuner but it did a good bit, it's an edge 85250 cts gas Evo tuner I paid 500 for it a little less that a month ago bought it brand new. Comes pre updated and with the box looking for somewhere in the 400ish range


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Pretty sure after 01 they won't bolt directly up. Something about the springs having a narrower width from each other or narrower track width or something like that. I don't remember for sure.

Tuning all you need is the new handheld from Ryan and a windows computer. The tuning you would be buying isn't custom stuff requiring datalogging and air/fuel ratio monitoring, you'd just be getting a canned tune from him that's been proven on anything from stock to basic bolt-ons. You plug the handheld into your home computer after downloading the included SCT software, load the tune onto the handheld, plug handheld into OBD2 port on truck and load tune into the pcm. Pretty easy. If you have any software problems you simply call SCT and they can remote fix it in 60seconds or less.

Gears are fairly complicated to setup however having an axle not in the vehicle will make it much easier because you won't be on the ground and will have better access to everything. I personally would go 4.10 to have that extra over-geared torque and access to a wider variety of tires be it taller or wider or both.

Both have their benefits. The FlyinRyan tuning will give you better transmission/overdrive operation and a fair amount more power with deletion of the death flash and tq management. Gears however will take some strain off the trans and will increase the tq you're putting to the ground.

It's been a while but I have helped set up a set of gears so I have a good idea what all is involved. Right now my plan is to get thru the Christmas season, save up some money and then decide but I am leaning towards a tuner first.

jhamilton86 said:

It's been a while but I have helped set up a set of gears so I have a good idea what all is involved. Right now my plan is to get thru the Christmas season, save up some money and then decide but I am leaning towards a tuner first.

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Like I said if your interested I have Abrams new edge tuner you can plug in and boom, your tuned looking for around 400. I paid a little over 500 for it a little over a month ago


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jhamilton86 said:

It's been a while but I have helped set up a set of gears so I have a good idea what all is involved. Right now my plan is to get thru the Christmas season, save up some money and then decide but I am leaning towards a tuner first.

Click to expand...

Less than a month ago my bad


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e_hartzell17 said:

Like I said if your interested I have Abrams new edge tuner you can plug in and boom, your tuned looking for around 400. I paid a little over 500 for it a little over a month ago


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I appreciate it but I have to get all the Christmas shopping done first. It will be after the first of the year before I pull the trigger on anything