Black Bear tune before long road trip or after

[Tomahawk54]

Hello everyone, i have read a lot of posts on this site and have decided to do a black bear auto cal tune on my 2016 silverado. I should receive the first tune for the truck right before my family and I are going on a long road trip for the holidays. should i go ahead and load the initial tune onto the truck or wait until i get back? i dont wanna get stranded if something is wrong with the initial tune. not sure if there is really anything to worry about or if i should be good to go. 

[jimbowattz]

Copy the stock tune back to the device after you install the BB file and take it with you when you leave for your trip. If you start to experience anything funny, just flash back to stock.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

[Jacoby]

If anything is wrong with the tune you’ll notice it right away. 

[Thomas0920]

Yes, I would probably do the tune check as well.

[davester]

I would suggest not doing the tune right before your trip.  There's the chance it buggers up one or more of the computers (so you need to replace them for the truck to run again) to the flash not being correct for your truck (some error made with the tune).

 

Personally, I go for avoiding to do any significant work that doesn't have to be done to a vehicle right before a long trip.  Even maintenance I would want to do a week or two before the trip.  Only if there's an actual problem would I work on it (light not working, CEL comes on, etc).

 

Is it worth the chance of having a ruined long weekend just for the chance your truck has a bit more power?

[Tomahawk54]

a chance the tune could mess up the computers and have to be replaced? does this really happen? thats not a cheap fix... 

[g2full]

I think for good measure it's always a good idea to delay modifications right before a trip. But if you've got a week or so or even 3 days I'd do it, but that's just me. Also, the "stock" flashes should remain on the Autocal. I'd recommend taking that, your laptop, and the cables with you just in case and if anything whacky is noticed go ahead and flash back to stock.

 

[davester]

8 hours ago, Tomahawk54 said:

a chance the tune could mess up the computers and have to be replaced? does this really happen? thats not a cheap fix... 

I've seen posts where people have written stuff like "I tried installing the tune and it gets most of the way through but just before the end it reports an error and won't go any further, and the truck won't start.  I can't get ahold of XXX (whoever made/sold the tune/device) because it's the weekend and I need my truck.  Please help."

 

reflashing the computers on your truck is not a zero-risk thing, even for dealers when they are flashing the stock gm tune.  Most of the time, it goes fine, but if you happen to have the wrong truck, with just a slightly bad connection somewhere, or the battery is just a little too low, or you don't plug it in all the way....

[BlackBearPerf]

On 12/13/2019 at 1:14 PM, Tomahawk54 said:

Hello everyone, i have read a lot of posts on this site and have decided to do a black bear auto cal tune on my 2016 silverado. I should receive the first tune for the truck right before my family and I are going on a long road trip for the holidays. should i go ahead and load the initial tune onto the truck or wait until i get back? i dont wanna get stranded if something is wrong with the initial tune. not sure if there is really anything to worry about or if i should be good to go. 

It's totally up to you, with the AutoCal you can just program your stock files back to the vehicle if you need to. If you have any communication with the vehicles errors, you will have them when you try to program the tune to the vehicle initially, and usually removing the radio fuse fixes it. Just in case here is a link to our instructions, we have a list of common error codes section in there for your reference. http://www.blackbearperformance.com/autocal_management.asp

Edited December 17, 2019 by BlackBearPerf