i went to the track last week and i have to say it was a blast, no B!tching, excuses, for the most part i love the track because what you run is what you run and rather you run a 19 or a 10, everyone is friendly. lots of trucks there most running 16 and higher.
it like being in grade school again (i love watching this in my kids) you can walk up to anyone and start talking and by the end of the night you have 10 buddies and for the most part everyone appreciates what everyone run rather it be a stock truck or a blown big block.

$15 do you tech, line up, gu tsignals you to go forward, drive arounfd the water, ease forward, trip the first light, then the second , wait for the green and go.

15.1 with alot of pinging, 5196 lbs with me in it. (5.4 supercrew, lariat, running boards and all with aftermarket oversized tires and rims)

tale gate up or down ran the same, a/c on cost me about a 1/10th
puting on the brake and bringing the motor up against the convertor cost me a tenth. my truck will spin at the track and not on the street. adding 104 octane gas to about 8 gallons of 93 did not help the pinging. raced a extended cab with a few mods, he had a short slick 26" against my 32" tall tires and my truck was 200 lbs heavier and we sixty foot the same. i had him ny 1.2 seconds at the end. i figure the s/c was good for 1.4 seconds.

need a chip to correct the pinging and to get me a 14.8 or 14.9. i also can help but think that 300 plus hp thru a stock 2.5 exhaust has got to be hurting the top end.
has anyone else with a s/c added a chip with the s/c fmu installed?

 

Hi Dave,

First, I owe you an apology - I think I may have lost (I know, shoot me, please!) the email you sent me with your phone number, so if you wouldn't mind either shooting me that email again or giving me a call whenever you can, I'll be more than happy to go over all that plus this material in your correct post as well, in proper detail - thanks!

OK, on to your post.............

You're absolutely right, "stalling up" or "brake torquing" like that against the brakes will only slow you down in these (any most other non-race cars) vehicles. What happens is the tranny heats up (yes, just in that very short time) so it doesn't pull quite as hard in 2nd & 3rd from the PCM adding fuel & pulling timing in response to that load before you ever even leave the line, so it slows down a bit - for me, it's anywhere from 1-3 tenths, depending on how hard I stall it. Then of course the converter doesn't flash as high, so you don't leave *quite* as hard, and the combined effect is typically about a tenth, just like you found.

For your vehicle and most other street-driven automatics, even with slicks you usually get the hardest launch by letting the converter "flash" - sit there are idle & then just nail the throttle. It'll leave harder & give you a quicker ET. For the most part, only race cars with transmission brakes should stall it up.

Yes, we can certainly pick up some more power and help performance with a good tune on that powertrain even with the FMU in place.

And yes, running thru the stock exhaust certainly *is* hurting you, especially with a blower on there - the best scenario is longtube headers, high flow cats, X-pipe - a complete tru-dual setup like that will get you nice power gains, but that is *very* expensive. For openers, I'd suggest deal with the cat-back portion of the exhaust, and then if you like, shorty (bolt-on) headers. But first, deal with the cat-back area, and then later on, if you want to spend the money, you can go the headers or headers and cats & X-pipe, etc. route.

5200 lbs. is actually light for a Supercrew with a driver on board, must be a 2WD I'm guessing...............

Of course, the detonation needs to be dealt with, and yes, we *can* tune that setup with the FMU on there, not a problem. You can run it with the FMU on the stock injectors, which is how most supercharger manufacturers configure their kits so you can use the stock injectors & the factory program, or ditch the FMU & upsize the injectors - either scenario will work and is tunable. The most desirable configuration is to upsize (usually a set of 30#'s, but depends on your actual & planned realistic power levels) the injectors & run at stock fuel rail pressure, that gets you the best light-throttle power & response. At full-throttle, there really isn't much difference in performance, maybe a tenth or so quicker using larger injectors at stock rail pressure, perhaps.

We can tune it in either configuration - we've got significantly more F-150's out there running FMU's & stock injectors as compared to the number that have ditched the FMU & upsized the injectors, just to let you know - most people won't spring for the additional $$$ for a MAF & bigger injectors (at least, not right away) when they've just laid out thousands for a new blower - but either way, we can tune it no problem.

Sorry to hear you're having that problem with detonation - and the ultra-high octane not curing it tells you that it's most likely running lean - so it's probably not just a timing issue, in other words.

At any rate, we can talk about all of this whenever you like, just give us a shout when you can - and thanks for posting your results & the various details, it's very helpful for a lot of people to be able to see someone reporting the results from brake-torquing, the results from removing the tailgate, or say from folding in the mirrors (usually good for 1 tenth in the 1/4 mile) etc., etc. - it's the details that make the difference.

Hope to speak with you soon,

 

Congrats BROTHERDAVE, I wouldn't say that's bad at all. How many runs have you done with that truck? That's about what I ran the last time, which was more than a year ago. My best is a 15.0. My truck is lighter than yours and should be getting better times than what I've been able to muster. I think in my case it's mostly an operator issue, and the fact that this Mazda tranny doesn't shift for beans especially when you want it to shift quickly.

I feel pretty certian I can top my times. I've made a couple changes that should help to get me closer to mid 14's. There will always be something that could be done to make us faster but like you said, the track is just a cool place to be!

I'm using a Superchip flip chip in addition to the FMU. I haven't dynoed but I think that I've been pretty lucky. I think I got one of the good trucks, and a well tuned chip. I haven't had any fueling issues that I know of.

 

tripple post-server issue, my end

 

 

i will get with you some time this week mike.
in 1986 my stock 1986 5.0 mustang ran a 14.9 @ 92. i was thrilled that my 5200 truck ran a 15.1. however the worst thing that can happen at the track is to run a .0 or .1 something because you realise your that close to a different zone.

my plans are a bigger mass-air flow, electric fans, chip, magna cat back, an oil cooler to cool the oil before it hits the s/c and hopefully make a cooler temp and maybe just maybe there is a 14.5 there.

mike i think the first thing i will try is a set of the denso plugs and see if that helps, the people at vortech said to use stock plugs but when i pushed the guy, he admitted that a platinum plug was probably not the best choice and thought that the denso would help. i just have to deside what heat range to get. i have a chunck of $$ coming in december so i have a little time to line things up.

witton, this was my first time at the track with the truck and i have a thing going where it seem like the first run is alway the best. got there about 45 minutes before we could run, truck cooled of so that the temp guage was about a 1/4 was over and the s/c was warm but not hot. once i started hot lapping it the time were a little over a 1/10 th slower. best was 15.1 worst with a/c on was a 15.4. i am in the process of getting my firebird running good again and gettting it up to inspection rules so that i can get it inspected, figured out today that on of my injectors is stuck open. so its all about the time and money. i hope to have my pinging staighten out for when the track re-opens in spring and hope to run 14's at full weight.

 

Hi Dave,

Boy, did you ever get that one right - anytime someone runs a .0 or a .1, they're just that close to the next level, just as you said - and then the disease sets in, if it hasn't already. You wouldn't believe what Lightning owners will do to go from say, 12.20's or 12.10's to get into the 11's - you're exactly right!

On your plugs, use the Denso Iridium IT-20. The IT-16 is the stock heat range for these engines, and with the blower you need 1 heat range colder - which is the IT-20, so that is a simple choice. With the stock Ford COP ignition, run the plug gap on those Denso's at *precisely* .036 - don't use any kind of graduated feeler gauge, use old-fashioned feeler gauges to check the gap precisely & evenly. Yes, .036 is tighter than stock, but you now have a supercharger, thus much more violent & turbulent conditions in the combustion chamber, so it's necessary to prevent ignition lay-down in higher humidity conditions in the higher gears.

However, you've got a more serious problem, which is detonation - that *cannot* be allowed to continue (you already know all this, of course!), and must be solved immediately. If you can drive the vehicle in a manner that does not produce any audible detonation, then fine, you can drive it *gently* until you get that detonation solved - but if it detonates in "normal" driving, park it until it's fixed is my advice. Of course I'm not there so I don't know exactly what's going on, so at this point you know more about how it's doing and whether it's safe to drive or not, this is just some obvious FYI........

Now the IT-20 plugs, due to being a heat range colder, will pull another 70-110 degrees C out of the combustion chamber - sometimes that is just enough to quell *light* detonation by drawing a bit more heat out of the combustion chamber - so the plugs should go in regardless, but curing the detonation is the #1 priority.

At 5200 lbs. running the kind of ET you did with that blower on the stock factory program was pretty darned good! With just a proper tune we should be able to put that truck well into the 14's (under those same conditions you ran the 15.1) no problem. When it's detonating, the knock sensor hears it & the PCM is pulling timing, so you're down on power due to that - and down even more due to the uncontrolled combustion (detonation). When we do *not* have any of those problems, we usually will pick up anywhere from 20 to as much as 30 more HP at the wheels with a proper tune on blowers running FMU's, for example.

However, you mention having a Vortech supercharger, and Vortech blowers usually come with a *coupon* for a custom tuned Superchip - unless something has changed recently, that's the way it's been for years, as most of the supercharger manufacturers actually call Superchips in on the tuning R&D for their systems - like Allen Engineering & Magnuson on the AED supercharger, Vortech on their units, and many others. SO it's a bit odd that you do not already have a custom tuned Superchip - the way it works is, you install your blower, then fill out the custom program worksheets & send in the dyno data (power plots & A/F graphs) and then Superchips does the custom tune from there - and that is normally *included* in the price of the Vortech supercharger. Now I don't know exactly what the deal is in *your* situation, but that's how it has been done traditionally.

At any rate, best of luck Dave, & please do feel free to call or email me anytime & I'll be happy to spend some time with you going over everything in detail, if you like.

Have fun!

 

THANKS MIKE.

the chip is a mystery because i have the parts list as well as the installation manual and there is nothing in there about a chip, i have talked to a few others with the f-150 kit and they no nothing about a chip either. vortech referred me to someone else to make the chip but it was a strange phone call to vortech and the chip person they sent me to seemed ok but i would rather go superchip.
the denotation that i can hear is oly from 4800 rpm on and i can keep it to under 4000 for a while. i think shifting at 4000 would still take care of another stock truck.

the 15.1 was with a 2.3 sixty foot! its a pig off the start and i have to think that tuning would help, i will be talking to you..

 

Hi Dave,

Hmm, sounds like Vortech has changed that, and no longer includes a custom tuned Superchip. That's a bit odd, I was just down at Superchips for about a week, and one of their (Vortech) calls briefly interrupted one of my meetings there.

Well, perhaps something may have changed in the configuration of their supercharger kits or in their relationship with Superchips, as for years & years Superchips did their custom tuning and the Vortech supercharger kits for these vehicles actually included a coupon for a custom program in a Superchip, which was included in the price of the supercharger kit.

But from your case, and your comment about talking about this aspect with other Vortech owners and they didn't get a chip either, something has indeed changed so they aren't including custom tuning any more..............that's a shame, all aftermarket add-on blowers will need a good custom tune to maximize performance & in your case, quell the detonation, too.

Good luck & talk to you soon!

 

I noticed your in Houston Texas. If I remember right Houston Raceway Park (HRP) is open year round for Friday Street Nights and Sunday Instang Green nights.

Every Friday and Sunday from 5pm - 10:30pm they are open.

Figured you'd like to hear that. Enjoy the cooler weather.

 

its been a while since i went to the track often and i seem to remember them closing december and january but you might be right.
friday night they dont show times, i went on a Wenesday.
the cold weather actually seems to make my problem worse! when i got there and ran the 15.1 with low 80's and then the temp dropped to mid 60's i thought i would see a 14. oh well as i told a guy as i was helping him push his car on a trailer "now this is racing"

mike, my experience with vortech might have been with an inexperienced person or someone that has a deal with the other chip guy, so dont take my word for it. I only had contact with one person there.
i ordered the plugs so i will start there first. you have one of the most painless e-commerse sights i have used,
Good Job

 

Hi Dave,

Thanks, & thanks also for shooting me another email - I meant to call you today, but time ran out as my wife was going out of town - so I'll call you tomorrow & we'll get caught up!