wwentzler
New member
Now that I have tuned my personal truck (2003) with both HPTuners and MM3(Smarty UDC pro), I wanted to go over a few of my experiences from both the tuners prospective and the end users perspective.
First, a little bit about me/my truck. I have been playing with my own truck tuning via custom software for about 2.5 years. I am by NO means anywhere close to an expert on any of this. The truck I have is a 2003 5.9L CR. It has had several different turbos to dial in, setup to spin plenty of Rs, blah blah.
Now we can start with the tuners prospective- Both softwares are fairly easy to use, they just have their own little quirks. Basically all the same usual tables are in both softwares, and I would venture to guess they have the capability to make nearly identical power. The selection style for highlighting cells is a little goofy in MM3, beings its not a highlight and drag like you would find in excel, to select a large square to edit, you highlight the column height and use a side button to select rows. The smoothing tool in both seems to work pretty equally well, just slightly different between programs. My only complaint with MM3 is that the software interface screen looks kinda lower quality than HPT, but that is completely personal preference.
Data logging for the tuner (in person obviously) is much nicer on the MM3. Its as simple as clicking through on the monitor and launch the logging, and also during logging with the MM3 you can tap on the screen and make a mark in the logs, which I found useful for reducing smoke and fixing a rail pop issue. HPTuners logging software is a little more nicely setup and has some more options for gauge displays and showing graphs while driving which is definitely nice to have. Again, the logging interface of the MM3 doesn't look as nice in my opinion as HPT. MM3 currently does not offer external I/O, which is something I would like to see added. They both again seem to accomplish the same job, but transporting nothing more than a micro USB from truck to office is REALLY nice.
As for the end user, I think the MM3 has a huge leg up in a few ways. First, flash times with the MM3 are about 3 minutes vs HPT they are about 5 minutes. When flashing in the cold or not on a charger, this has been really nice to have the MM3. ECMs seem to be extremely picky about temp and voltage level when flashing a tune. Ive had a few times in the cold that I really had to fight to get the truck to successfully flash while using HPT. Other than flash times, you get a monitor with the MM3 vs not having one with HPT. I have found myself ALOT constantly playing with the monitor to watch various things, even as simple as exact coolant temp or fuel percentage. Not to mention, if you run into any sort of issue, you can log every PID available with a few clicks of the monitor. Again, a perk is not needing to carry your laptop out to change anything or log, just pop the microSD out and go inside to look at logs.
This is all purely based on use with an early CR, so there currently is not any SOTF or real time abilitys to discuss.
I am not posting this to necessarily persuade one way or the other, I just wanted to share my experience, as I know tuning can certainly be a confusing and expensive modification for alot of people. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask and I will try to answer to the best of my ability.
First, a little bit about me/my truck. I have been playing with my own truck tuning via custom software for about 2.5 years. I am by NO means anywhere close to an expert on any of this. The truck I have is a 2003 5.9L CR. It has had several different turbos to dial in, setup to spin plenty of Rs, blah blah.
Now we can start with the tuners prospective- Both softwares are fairly easy to use, they just have their own little quirks. Basically all the same usual tables are in both softwares, and I would venture to guess they have the capability to make nearly identical power. The selection style for highlighting cells is a little goofy in MM3, beings its not a highlight and drag like you would find in excel, to select a large square to edit, you highlight the column height and use a side button to select rows. The smoothing tool in both seems to work pretty equally well, just slightly different between programs. My only complaint with MM3 is that the software interface screen looks kinda lower quality than HPT, but that is completely personal preference.
Data logging for the tuner (in person obviously) is much nicer on the MM3. Its as simple as clicking through on the monitor and launch the logging, and also during logging with the MM3 you can tap on the screen and make a mark in the logs, which I found useful for reducing smoke and fixing a rail pop issue. HPTuners logging software is a little more nicely setup and has some more options for gauge displays and showing graphs while driving which is definitely nice to have. Again, the logging interface of the MM3 doesn't look as nice in my opinion as HPT. MM3 currently does not offer external I/O, which is something I would like to see added. They both again seem to accomplish the same job, but transporting nothing more than a micro USB from truck to office is REALLY nice.
As for the end user, I think the MM3 has a huge leg up in a few ways. First, flash times with the MM3 are about 3 minutes vs HPT they are about 5 minutes. When flashing in the cold or not on a charger, this has been really nice to have the MM3. ECMs seem to be extremely picky about temp and voltage level when flashing a tune. Ive had a few times in the cold that I really had to fight to get the truck to successfully flash while using HPT. Other than flash times, you get a monitor with the MM3 vs not having one with HPT. I have found myself ALOT constantly playing with the monitor to watch various things, even as simple as exact coolant temp or fuel percentage. Not to mention, if you run into any sort of issue, you can log every PID available with a few clicks of the monitor. Again, a perk is not needing to carry your laptop out to change anything or log, just pop the microSD out and go inside to look at logs.
This is all purely based on use with an early CR, so there currently is not any SOTF or real time abilitys to discuss.
I am not posting this to necessarily persuade one way or the other, I just wanted to share my experience, as I know tuning can certainly be a confusing and expensive modification for alot of people. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask and I will try to answer to the best of my ability.
