So I'll start off with what I have. A 2005 CCSB 4x4 LLY DMAX with an Allison that is now less than 500 miles from reaching 300k on the clock. I purchased the truck at 285k and had to do head gaskets immediately out of the gate (didn't know when I bought the truck, took me a week to do it!)
Now I wanted to start getting involved with tuning, and I know for the diesel guys EFILive is where it's at, however doing some research there are some posts in here with valuable info I was able to learn to kind of make a tune for myself. The EFILive route would run me ~$800 whereas I'm $100 into the 2 credits and had the MPVI2 already when I was tuning my truck before this one (07 classic ECLB 2500HD 6.0/4L80e) so I figured it was worth a shot. Yes the EFILive offers the DSP5 switch for 5 tunes, but for the cost difference I figured if I make one tune that I'm happy with then there really is no need to get any crazier with tuning. I just want a mostly stock reliable truck that I can continue to use. Reading through this forum there isn't a ton of info but I was able to learn a tiny bit. Some of the files I wanted to check out date back to 2010/11 and they are not available to be downloaded through this forum anymore.
So onto my tuning experience. I came across an extremely hot tune here that was a lot of fun and I copied a lot of the tables into my tune to kind of get a feel for it. My truck would fly with this tune and it would blow smoke like you would not believe but once turbo boost kicked in the truck ripped. The smoke was bad enough gunning it at 60mph would blow enough smoke to cloud up the entire 2 lane highway it was nuts. The torque was also awesome. I also have a goofy pedal at 600-1000rpm moving down the driveway where it would jump around a lot in rpms and be jittery, but this tune somehow managed to remove that entirely.
Where I had issues with this tune however was mainly relating to fuel usage. It was extremely easy to put the truck into a fuel limp mode (where it detects below 29,000psi in the fuel rails) and would only allow you to rev up to 2000rpm until the code was cleared. In a day and a half of running this tune I saw the fuel limp code probably 10 times and a 5th gear slip once. It was enough for me to just axe this tune entirely. I did order a fuel rail pressure plug but honestly I don't think this would do a whole lot, to continue using this tune I 100% believe a lift pump is necessary.
I did some more reading, and figured out I would try what is called the "20/20" tune which supposedly adds 50hp and found a thread on that here. I downloaded the 20/20 tune for a Topkick LLY from that page and looked over some more tables, and ended up using some info from both the hot tune and that 50/50 tune to make a decent overall one for my truck.
I like this new tune, I had an issue where I would have an extremely rough jittery idle between 600-800rpm so I ended up using the stock LLY table information for the Main Injection and Main Injection Limits and this pretty much removed my entirely jittery idle and in normal driving circumstances this truck makes really good power and only emits a very small amount of black smoke when you gun it and is not anywhere near obnoxious like the first tune was. My jittery pedal going down the driveway is still slightly there, but I think I also need to look into the pedal spring too as I've been told.
So if anyone is looking for reference, I've attached both the hot tune I used with my truck, stock tune, and the 20/20 tune I like and maybe this will help anyone researching in the future. I plan on working with the VGT a tiny bit to have a bit of an exhaust brake as well but for now this tune I am happy with and will continue to improve it with the more I learn and the more I mess with it.
This is my first time messing with diesel tuning, but I am always looking to improve and share what I find out!
2005 K2500 CCSB LLY 6.6-ALLI 20 20 tune updated 4-26-21.hpt
2005 K2500 CCSB LLY 6.6-ALLI modded 4-25-21.hpt
2005 K2500 CCSB LLY 6.6-ALLI STOCK TUNE.hpt