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If you are a Mustang owner, the chance that you will eventually cross over into the dark side of performance chips/tuners… is more of a question of whether it will be sooner or even sooner than that! The new mustangs today of either the 4.6 GT variety or 4.0, can make some significant gains with just a phone call, trip to your local performance tuner, or a punch of a few keys on your keyboard.

What kind of gains?

10 to 20 horsepower for the 4.0 are quite typical, and up to 30 for the GT. If you have an automatic, you will be even more satisfied, as these programs also change the way the transmission shift points and lock into place without the traditional “granny” lag of the OEM tune.

The choices for a performance tune are endless and you will find someone who will praise just about any tune or method out there, so it can become quite an obstacle when you are looking for the absolute best tune.

But before we get down to what is actually the best tune, let’s discuss your options…

Basically with the Mustang you have the choice between a tuner and a chip. The chip is a reprogrammed tune that replaces your old program. The pro is that these tunes are generally of the cheapest variety, but the con is that they are virtually unadjustable and as anybody who has ever got the performance bug knows… you will probably not keep the same performance parts over the lifetime of your car.

To solve this problem, we also have the choice of a tuner, such as SCT, Hypertech, Diablo Sport, etc. These allow a specific tune to be introduced in the OEM data bank and then be easily changed, simply by having a new program sent through the Internet for you to download on your tuner. Other tuners are a bit more advanced and allow the user to do the programming of the parameters on your own. These will be more expensive initially… $300-$600, but in the end it will be much less hassle.

So, what does all this mean?

Most experts will tell you to go the tuner route and quite frankly they all do about the same thing, so your choice should be more in where you find the best deal, or whichever one seems to speak to you. The important part will not be the tuner as much as the shop that is doing the tuning. the best tune will always be the custom dyno tune at a shop, but as the custom “canned” tunes have been gaining in popularity, there are two Internet shops that seem to be by far the most recommended by Mustang enthusiasts… BamaChips and Brenspeed.

These places know their stuff and can set you up with a tune that can address torque, horsepower, track racing, nitrous, turbo’s, superchargers, and everything else under the sun. But be patient with these folks as with popularity comes lack of time and these folks are busy, busy… busy, laying down rubber the world over!