Making more power with your Cummins diesel truck is easy when you have the right tuning equipment to inject more power into your engine. There are two basic ways to tune your engine: You can flash or reprogram the factory ECU or you can use an inline tuner that modifies the signal prior to the fuel injector. Flashing a modern truck’s ECU will leave a footprint—one that dealers can see. An inline tuner does not recalibrate the factory settings of the vehicle. As long you remove the physical parts, it’s doubtful a dealer would know. If you have a truck with an existing warranty, an inline tuner like the Edge Juice w Attitude CTS3 is a great choice. Edge’s CTS monitors have proven themselves the gold standard of PID and performance monitoring, and the newer CTS3 5-inch touchscreen displays have upped the game. The CTS3 can be packaged with the Juice with Attitude inline tuning module to allow shift-on-the-fly tuning via the CTS3 display. The complete package adds five different options to increase power (with an unlockable sixth power level), monitors almost every PID possible, allows a variety of performance tests, adds defueling safety parameters, and gives the option to control lockers, lights, cameras, or even other brands’ tuner modules through the Expandable Accessory System (EAS).
Install time of the electronics takes less than a couple hours. Upon turning on the truck, the beautiful 5-inch display is easily readable (day or night). The touchscreen ability works excellently and does not skip around nor ignore our touch like some displays sometimes do. The readout is customizable with 23 different gauge layouts, multiple color differences and backgrounds, and numerous PIDs to choose from. The slide-down or slide-up menus offer quick access to everything, and you can quickly toggle between three different main displays you customize by sliding your finger left or right.
The five power increase levels are noticeable when unloaded, but the real difference can be felt when hauling 10,000 pounds up a grade. It meant no longer having to downshift from 6th gear to 5th and losing momentum or turbo boost.
Within 24 hours of this Ram 2500’s purchase, we hooked a trailer to it and found ourselves already wanted some extra juice. An Edge Juice with Attitude CTS3 was on the truck within a few days. It’s a mouthful to say but it’s easy to use!Here is the core of it: The Juice W/ Attitude module. The wiring harness has male and female injector plugs that allow it to go inline between the injectors and the ECU. The Edge module modifies the factory signals and adjusts fuel levels. Kits vary from application to application, but this is made for Dodge trucks back to 1998.A traditional windshield-mount suction cup mount is included, but we opted for the new Pillar Display Mount for 2010-2018 Rams.The pillar mount uses the lower bolt hole of the A-pillar grab handle and provides a solid and sturdy mount for the monitor. An HDMI cable connects the CTS3 display to the rear of the system The pillar-mounted arm has a spherical end allows the monitor to sit at multiple positions.The Data/OBDII cable gets routed to three points: The data link connector on the Attitude’s main harness, the OBDII port, and the HDMI display port. The six-pin rectangular EAS (Expandable Accessory System) junction routes to the circular EAS connector under the hood.The rectangular EAS-to-circular EAS cable plugs into the assembly that goes to the Juice module. You can stack and expand control of multiple accessories through this EAS port.The cables were routed through the firewall at a lower rubber boot.Due to the length of the harnesses, the Edge system requires mounting on the factory fuse box. While that may be your favorite spot for placement, it is one of the safer spots under the hood.The juice with Attitude harness has two pairs of male & female plugs that allow it to go inline of the injectors and the factory harness. This is how the Edge unit modifies and enhances the signal delivered to the injectors while not leaving a footprint in the original ECU’s programming.The CTS3 gives three easy-access gauge layouts that you can access with the sideways swipe.The pull-down menu is brought up by sliding your finger down the screen. It gives access to backgrounds, themes, gauge layout, and has the ability to control recording via an optional camera that ties into through the EAS.You can load three of the 23 different gauge displays at the swipe of a finger. By double-clicking on the screen, you can bring up the PID menu where you have a variety of choices you can lock in.There are a few Pitch/Roll G-Force screens—one of which we keep as our three quick-swipe gauge layouts for when the truck is in the dirt.The Juice’s adjustable parameters allow you to turn on and adjust the torque management, limit the backdown settings for defueling, change the low boost response, and manipulate the timing options on some trucks.The CTS3 has performance testing intervals including 0-60mph times, 0-100mph times, 1/8-mile times, and 1/4-mile times. The performance test is run from the time the light goes green after you hit start. At that point, the timer begins until you reach the speed or distance to finish the test. These tests are all based off of sensors built into the vehicle, so the better calibrated your speedometer is, the more accurate the tests will be.The CTS3’s onboard diagnostic code reading show what (if any) trouble codes are in your truck’s system, and gives you the ability to clear most any code.Edge includes an EGT probe that can be installed directly into the exhaust manifold. This requires drilling a 21/64-inch hole and running a pipe tap to create a place to mount the probe. Some aftermarket exhaust manifolds have a port ready for an EGT probe. While this additional Edge EGT probe does give another point of good information, it is not required on a later model Dodge that has a factory EGT sensor. But we do encourage you to add the Edge probe.The CTS3 display has an auto light sensor that automatically adjusts the monitor for optimal viewing whether it be day or night. Of course, this, too, can be adjusted.
Upsell Option: Amp’d 2.0 – Throttle Booster
We installed the Juice with Attitude on a manual transmission Cummins truck and made more usable power, but this fourth-generation Ram has a throttle response delay built in from the factory that, when combined with a manual transmission where the boost drops off when off the throttle between shifts, created a lot of lag when shifting. On the highway when towing in 5th or 6th gear, it wasn’t an issue. But it can make for a bit of an erratic driving experience as the power goes from low boost and low power to jumping back into the Juice-supplemented powerband as you shift through gears. The Juice unit has an adjustable low boost parameter, but the fact was that the pedal delay from the factory was killing the performance. This is not an issue in automatic transmission trucks since your foot stays in the throttle and boost barely budges between shifts of an automatic transmission when accelerating. But on this stick shift with pedal lag, help was needed.
Adding Edge’s Amp’d 2.0 throttle booster is the icing on the cake needed to get the most out of this Edge package. Five different presets and three custom settings quicken the throttle response, allowing turbo boost to be built more quickly, consequently making a big difference in drivability. For those of you who like to link everything to your smartphone, it has that Bluetooth feature that gives complete control.
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Want power adjustability with the simple touch of the screen and multiple gauge display? Check out all the Edge kits we have for Cummins, Duramax, and Power Stroke engines! Finding the right tuning module for your truck is only a click away!
