I am quite surprised this topic did not get picked and commented on a lot more.

In almost 2 years on this board, this is the first I remember hearing this info. Getting rid of ignition retard, fuel flow shutoff and firming up line pressures have been features of chips we have discussed many, many times. I, for one, was not aware that the factory shift settings included knocking out 4 cylinders for "x" tenths of a second.
May have missed it, but I do visit the board almost every day.

My question for now is, which chips do and which do not perform the function of getting rid of this setting in the program?

Personally, I am back to running a July 1999 vintage Superchip with the old RPM program (a flip chip). I also have a PSP chip of summer of 2000 vintage and I don't remember what version it is.

My observation, based on StruckBy99's post and subsequent posts on that thread, is that we may be creating a pretty big problem for ourselves if we constantly use the performance offered by the chip if the trannie cannot take the full 8 cyls plus the ignition advance plus the richer fuel mixture and line pressure.

I'm not trying to be "Chicken Little the Sky is Falling" here, but I do hope someone out there can come up with some hard info relative to does the factory program really cut out 4 cyls, do the chips take that parameter out and can it trash a tranny in fairly short order.

Bill

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99.5 Lightning
Build #247
PSP Chip/Filter
Bassani full system
White/normal options
2001 Focus Wagon
1992 Town Car
1998 Continental
1956 Ford F100 (2)
1969 Chevrolet (2)
E-mail: MOSTOYSINC@AOL.COM
Kennesaw, Ga (Atlanta)

 

bill

You have mail

 

Maybe Factory Tech or Sal can help us out on this. Is there a need to cut out 4 cylinders in order for the tranny to hold up? What is the logic of doing this?
Brian

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99 red lightning, bassani complete system #1610 of 4000
2001 Lightning, SVO throttle body
2000 super duty v10
Cobra "R" #131 of 300
Moderator
www.svtperformance.com
My vehicles http://www.zing.com/album/?id=4293160925

 

First off, I just wanna say it rocks to have Sal back! Secondly, just to back up what has been said here, the truck does indeed drop 4 cylinders during the shifts, and yes Sal's chip does fix it.

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2000 Black Lightning
#1326 of 4966
Born on 03/20/2000
PSP Chip
PSP Filter
Best time: 13.248 @ 104.4 mph

 

"...the truck does indeed drop 4 cylinders during the shifts, and yes Sal's chip does fix it."

I'm not so sure that I want to "fix" it if it results in periodically blowing up my transmission. I, for one, do not have a 12 second truck, but my tranny is screwed up, and it sounds like a messed up clutch pack due to disabling the "torque reduction" may be the likely culprit. Won't know for sure til we tear down the tranny, but I will advise the board of the results. If it turns out to be a bad solenoid then its no biggie, but if its a bad clutch then you can bet I will get my chip reburned to enable the cylinder drop again.

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I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

'84 Alan Record Carbonio, Aerospoke wheels, Campy brakes.

'00 SVT Lightning, silver, built 2/9/00, #133 of 4966, G-tech Pro, JBA headers, 4.10 gears, Swanson chip, Pro-M, NGK plugs, carbon drive shaft, Roadmaster suspension kit, TransGo shift kit,
13.39 @ 102.5

2001 Kevlacat 2400, twin 115 Evinrude FICHT, Raytheon VHF, radar, autopilot and GPS chartplotter/fishfinder.
http://www.zing.com/album/?id=429389...4647875&idx=15

gmvye@pacbell.net

 

Looks like its time for me to save $2600 for the 4r100 that www.LevelTen.com offers. If shifting on all 8 cylinders is what it takes to be fast, than thats what i'm doing!

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Black '99 #398 of 4000
SHM mass air/filter, SHM chip, Level 10 shift kit and converter.
13.71 @ 98.2 mph (stock)
13.34 @ 102 mph (chip/mass air)
Converter/shift kit to be tested soon!

 

Thanks for the quick and very informative replies.
I think I can live with the feature as long as I know that constant pushing the truck to shift hard puts me at risk for a clutch pack replacement. Actually, after almost two years of driving it, my bolt more often gets stomped on to get the supercharger noise high (Thanks Sal)as opposed to trying to break it loose in second all the time.
I suppose for those of you who race, the old maxim "You Mod, You Break, You Pay" is still as relevant as it was 45 years ago when I started doing that sort of thing.
Thanks again for clearing up the questions I had.
Bill

 

Hey, Bill M:

You wouldn't happen to have a vintage SuperChip with the old Street/TRAC programs on it would ya'?
Full-bodied flavor with only a hint of detonation.

Best one so far...IMHO

Rich

[This message has been edited by TampaSVT (edited 04-13-2001).]

 

Bill, this is an excellant question, and one I've been gathering info in as of recent. I believe that I was the first eliminate the cylinder drop or "Torque Reduction" as it's called by Ford. I was told to do so by both one of the head trans calibrators at Ford, as well as one of the trans calibrators on the Gen2 Lightning project itself. Both of these people said the torque reduction was just an extra safety measure put in by Ford, and by shutting it off, it would increase the trucks performance. I was not told it would cause any harm. As far as line pressure goes, the more the better These transmissions can handle a ton of line pressure, and the more the better. The faster you can make the truck shift, the less clutch pack slippage, and the less heat you have. But the stock calibration is close to max, that is why a chip alone won't give you mega shifts like on the older Gen 1 trucks.

The problem now that has been arising, is it seems some trucks have been burning up clutch packs. In all honestly, I know of maybe one or two, and most of the stories going around the net, are related to these one or two same trucks. After seeing a post made by Pat at Level 10 about this, I gave him a call. He said that on the faster trucks out there, and his definition of that was mid 12 and quicker trucks, that the amount of power they make is causing the clutches to slip before completing the shift because they cannot hold the massive amounts of torque. For trucks running 12.5 and slower, he thinks they should not have a problem. He is now offering internals with extra clutch discs, to help this problem, but that obviously requires a rebuild.

Like I said, I have only seen one or two trucks with this problem, and these trucks have been out for over 2 years. The "faster" trucks that I personally know of, have not reported any trans problems related to this. So I don't really know any "hard" facts on whether it's entirely true or not, that is why I'm trying to gather data on it, to make my own assesment. That's about all I have on the subject. Hope it helps some.

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SAL - TEAM PSP

 

I ran Sal`s flip chip for about 40000 of the 50000 I put on the black 99. The shifts from the factory program were exceptionally slow.
Sometimes so unnoticable that one would think it was direct drive. I hammered the truck often always running it up to redline and shifting into overdrive when I was pushing it in on the open road. The only problem I ever had was a code set in it which I posted about. Can't recall the code number but it was about a 3-4 shift problem I believe. had it wiped with the STAR brakeout box and never had the problem again. I did run the plug in pressure riser made by...Forgot...it set a code and the light was always on. It is in the garage somewhere.
The 01 seems to shift crisper without a chip than the 99 did. I think Ford optimized the program to firm up the shifts or at least speed them up. Maybe the 8-4 firing thing has been cut to 8-6...laugh.
Anyhow it does seem to shift firmer,guess it could be the 3.73's that make it feel so. Anyway 50000 miles on the 99 without any work or fluid/filter changes. Granted I drive this to work and back. More Hiway miles than around town. I never jerked it into gear or rolled back and mashed it.
I still have the larger tranny pan I planned to install on the 99 and the Synthetic Mobil 1 tranny fluid. I'm sure it will get put on this truck. I am considering a level 10 shift kit or some other pressure riser..Sal`s chip made a big difference in the way the 99 shifted. I should have his 01 burn today.

 

BTT

 

This has not much to do with the Lightning shifting question, but here goes anyway.

In late '96, I leased a '96 Taurus SHO and in late '98, I leased a '98 Continental.

In both cases, I was trying to lease a "performance sedan" on the cheap. Both cars were radically discounted as the next year models were already on the lots.
As an interim postscript, I wish I had done that with the Lightning as opposed to ordering it and waiting 8 months for it and paying full list.

Anyway, the two above mentioned cars, based on my learning experience on this board and others, must have been the most compromised cars in the land as regards the PCM "detuning" the engine at shift points.

The SHO was so bad it felt like a stick shift with a bad clutch between shifts.
Easily a half second to complete a full throttle shift. The Conti is not quite so bad but it totally ruins the feel of what would otherwise be a really nice European style touring sedan.

The SHO is long gone and I have a year left on the Conti lease and in the meantime I discovered "Chips" thanks to this BB.

In both of the above cases as well as the current debate on the strength of the Lightning Trannie, it is really sad to me that there is not total coordination between the engineers, the marketing people and the bean counters when it comes to offering a total performance package.

As a BTW, my '92 Town car with 210 hp shifts quite firmly or maybe normally compared to the cars I owned in the '60s and '70s before I installed shift kits which I almost always did.
Bill