I was thinking about getting one of the DiabloSport tunes for my truck (2002 Ford Ranger 3.0) and was wondering if anyone has ever used it or would recommend getting it.
Are you trying to get your lap time down?
Well, if you were, then you probably wouldn't be asking here.
The answer is no.
Don't you think that if a cheap mod could get your better economy, they would have just designed the car that way in the first place?
I mean, they're making the engines shut off at red lights just to squeeze more miles out of cars these days for goodness sake.
I wouldn't waste my time. The 3.0 Vulcan in the Ranger can't really be tuned, and it won't yield much in the way of a performance boost. It's an old style 2-valve pushrod engine with no variable valve timing. All that can be tuned is ignition timing. The Vulcan is a relic of the 1980s and was Ford's first engine that was designed for fuel injection from the start. It was meant to be a simple, easy to maintain engine for the 1st generation Ford Taurus and not anything fancy. The heads and block are cast iron, which is how they made engines for a long time up to that point. It was never upgraded to support variable valve timing due to its roots in tried and true engine architecture. It was retired in 2006 or 2007, the Duratec 3.0 replaced it in non-Ranger applications and has no relation to the Vulcan. It has VVT and all of the other stuff the Vulcan lacked
I'm not really going to much for power but trying to tune it some to get better slightly better MPG, would I be better off using that money towards a CAI or what kind of upgrades would you recommend?
I'd leave it alone, to be honest. Maintain it with oil changes every 3-5k miles, coolant changes, and it will last a long time; my Ranger has the same engine and it will probably be over 300k in the next year and a half at most. 18 MPG mixed is as good as that engine can do with the low gearing and heavy truck. It was made for a unibody sedan, not a body on frame truck. Drive it and enjoy it for what it is.
It would be a waste of money on that truck. Those Rangers are known to be pretty dependable. If you want better gas mileage, I would look for a different vehicle and avoid pickups/SUVs. Trucks by nature just don't get great MPG. You could hyper mile the truck when you drive it, go easy on the gas, cost where possible...but what fun is that?
And don't waste money on an intake or other "MPG" modification. You're not going to get anything that makes even the slightest difference.
