![]() This isn’t the business end of the first Superchips product for tuning the 7.3L, but you can certainly see why it was called the “gold” chip. According to Bill, you nearly had to destroy the chip to uncover the circuit board. However, he admitted that unless you worked in the industry you would be very hard-pressed to find one that worked due to all of the chips from that era being potted in epoxy resin. To link the emulators to the 7.3L PCM through the J3 port, Bill used modified chips as PCM adapters. This was paramount in not only deciphering which maps, functions, and parameters were being accessed, but under which conditions they were being accessed. make changes while the vehicle was running), and the romulator allowed him to see specifically what memory the PCM was accessing in real time. The RaceLogic emulator-a $2,500 piece of hardware at the time-included an active ROM-Watch, which allowed Bill and his team to live-tune a vehicle (i.e. ![]() ![]() It was something I took pride in and it was very personal to me.” -Bill Cohron Some key tools of the trade in the early days of 7.3L tuning can be seen here in the form of emulators from RaceLogic Performance Products and Intronics, Inc. It was an exciting time to be on the forefront of the tuning industry and being one of the people that was making things happen. “I’m grateful for the experience at Superchips and Edge. We were pioneers.” A few years later, Bill would also play a prominent role in tuning development at Edge Products. In his own words, Bill tells us it “was a very dangerous way of learning how to tune, as we were shooting in the dark on the dyno. The hexadecimal example shown here comes from an A9L calibration from an ’87-’93 5.0L, five-speed Mustang, but it gives you an idea of how tuning was conducted back in the early days. Already familiar with hexadecimal tuning when he arrived at Superchips, Bill Cohron soon became the lead calibration engineer on staff for the 7.3L. Here’s a neat little tidbit for anyone that might not know (or remember): laptop computers in the late 1990s were selling for more than $1,000… In 1997, tuning a 7.3L Power Stroke was a very primitive process. ![]() It represents a time when he and a few select others were developing performance calibrations that would change the 7.3L Power Stroke market forever-some of which are still in use to this day. Well over 20 years old, this ancient keepsake (a Toshiba laptop) remains in Cohron’s possession. More than 20 years ago, Bill was on the cutting edge of unlocking the kind of horsepower we all enjoy today. Gains of up to 140hp over stock were quickly discovered-impressive numbers back when a 300-rwhp diesel pickup was a big deal. Before the Duramax arrived and Cummins went common-rail the Ford camp dominated the tune-only horsepower market. With an electronically controlled injection system to capitalize on, a whole new world of discovering horsepower-where aftermarket calibrators would use keystrokes rather than wrenches-had commenced. In the infancy of electronically controlled diesels, the 7.3L Power Stroke would come to set the benchmark thanks to Bill and select others like him. It begins long before that with its creator, Power Hungry Performance’s Bill Cohron-a man who happens to be one of the first calibrators to ever tune a 7.3L PCM. ![]() In 2022, and as has been the case for nearly a decade, the Hydra Chip is the tuning option of choice for 7.3L Power Stroke owners.īut the story of 7.3L tuning doesn’t begin with the Hydra. With the capacity to hold 17 tunes, available on-the-fly, at any one time, and by offering the end-user the ability to reprogram his chip without ever having to remove it from the PCM, the Hydra Chip changed everything. More like a grand slam than a homerun, it revolutionized the 7.3L aftermarket in terms of its functionality and capability. In the world of 7.3L Power Stroke tuning, the Hydra Chip from Power Hungry Performance is one such piece of hardware. Some of these products have even sparked renewed interest in dated engine platforms. In the expansive world of diesel performance, certain power adders brought to market over the years have been certifiable homeruns. The Product That Revolutionized The 7.3L Tuning Market ![]()
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