I just got a 1714 tuner and installed the 91 octane tune and can tell almost no difference except for the shift points and at 30 moh there is a lil less hesitation is something wrong?? or is that it??

 

You get the best performance from a custom tune and not the programmer. The programmer is just a general tune. You need to drive it a drive it awhile so the computer gets used to the new parameters. Did you take the neg terminal off the battery to reset the computer?

 

reflashing the PCM with the new tune resets the computor, you don't need to disconnect the battery. It also uses "adaptive learning", meaning if you drive like "grandma" that is what it learns. DRIVE IT!! If you use WOT a few times it will start to learn that you really like it and increase the timing and A/F ratio's to match along with the shifting. Drive it a week then go back to stock. You will be able to tell the difference then. I've had the same tuner at one point, custom is better but the 1715 will work---Drive it hard a few days, don't break any land speed records and stay safe, but stay in the throttle when you can and it will do the rest.

Randy

 

Hi Fx4Man,

You have a 3-ton+ truck there - don't think that a simple off-the-shelf tune is going to give you some big seat of the pants difference, that isn't going to happen. NEVER try to judge ANY performance product by the seat of the pants feel - that is the single worst mistake you can make when modifying any vehicle, especially something like a 3-ton+ Off Road (FX4) 4x4 F-150.

Spend some time here using the SEARCH feature to retrieve any of our many past posts to learn how to properly identify the actual results of any performance part, and you will quickly see that you have indeed gained nice power and the performance is improved. The typical result of a 1714 on that type of F-150 is about 4 tenths off the 1/4 mile times, which is very significant in a 3-ton truck - but that still isn't going to make what I'd call some big seat of the pants difference in such a big heavy vehicle - that kind of feel takes a supercharger.

Also, you are not going to get the results from that 1714 that you get with our Troyer Performance custom tuning - what you see people raving about here is our *custom* tuning, not the off-the-shelf tuning products. Our custom tuning does a much better job than the 1714 does, but even at that, you shouldn't expect just a tune to make some big seat-of-the-pants difference in the way that 3-ton+ tank like a new FX4 feels.

This is simple math - for example, your power to weight ratio is terrible, and hasn't changed by much. With a 6000 lb truck that is using the 5.4 3-valve 300 HP engine, that motor has to haul around 20 lbs for every horsepower - 20:1 - that's a terrible power-to-weight ratio! (Actually, that's expressed in a weight to power ratio format, but we always refer to it as "power to weight".) Up that to 330 HP with the 1714 and you have only changed that power-to-weight ratio by a small amount, from 20 lbs per hp to 18.18 lbs. per HP, and you also didn't get the kind of throttle response and driveability improvements that our in-depth custom tuning yields, either - that makes a significant difference in seat of the pants feel.

Assuming that you ran all of the 87 octane fuel out (running it down until the low fuel light warning comes on) before putting in 91 octane and then installing the tuning (so that the premium gas isn't being diluted by 87 octane gas), it sounds like you are simply making snap judgments based on immediate seat of the pants feel, and not giving the PCM any time to adapt to it's new instructions either. That scenario doesn't work very well, just so you know.

You also need to drive it for awhile to let the PCM adapt. Drive it for a month with that tuning installed, and then return it back to the stock tune and drive it for another 2 weeks - do that and you'll feel the difference and never want to go back to stock again.

Good luck,

 

Thanks allot for your help. I am considering selling this tuner and using some of my money to buy an Xcal for my truck after hearing some people rave about how well it works. Thanks again for your help.

 

You're very welcome - I do suggest giving it some more time, too - it really needs 500-1000 miles and a dozen or so drive cycles to really get the full impact from that 1714, with some full-throttle bursts during that time to let it rip a bit while the PCM is adapting to the new tuning.

For example, when we were doing our initial 5.4 3V tuning R&D back in December of 2003, we found that just getting a couple hundred more miles on it after flashing the PCM gave us an additional 10-12 Hp at the real wheels in terms of peak power made. That's pretty common with these 2004 & newer F-150's.

One last comment is that in some cases, disconnecting the battery for a few minutes after flashing the PCM helps - now flashing the PCM *is* supposed to fully clear out any previous adaptive strategy adjustments, but in some cases we do find that the PCM doesn't fully re-set, and doing the battery disconnect after flashing the PCM does help. this is something we really find mostly on the previous-generation F-150's, but any time we have a case where the truck feels like it's not really responding like it should (and I have to confess that is virtually never in the 204 & up F-150's), we'll do a manual battery disconnect for a few minutes and then drive the vehicle for a couple of weeks, doing a few full-throttle bursts.

It's also a good idea to pick an area where the truck has to go up a grade, like a long hill or even a mountainous area, and try driving it on the stock tune, then flash it to the premium gas performance tune and drive that same route again,l and then flash it back to stock and make that same trip again - usually that reveals the differences pretty well.

These are all just some basic FYI tips - I really hate to see you not happy with the 1714, as it's a great product for it's cost, and even though it doesn't do as much as our custom tuning will do for the vehicle, our customers usually love it compared to the stock tuning.

Best of luck whatever you decide on this!

 

Mike's custom tunes are the Bomb!! You keep saying you can't expect to feel it "in the seat of the pants"...I can with the 93 Tow program. WOW!

 

Hi Jersey George,

I know, and most people can feel it in the seat of the pants, that is certainly true with our custom tunes - heck, to me, it feels like night & day, but as soon as I say that kind pf phrase, there will be those who see those words & expect the vehicle to turn into an explosive muscle car & feel like they just strapped on a supercharger and a 100 Hp shot of nitrous!

We just try to emphasize the fact that *some* people simply cannot feel it in the seat of the pants on such heavy vehicles, especially those who have done mods on cars - you know, much lighter vehicles, and have that kind of expectation - and that's it's just not a good way to judge a performance part of any kind, seat of the pants feel is just far too subjective from one person to the next. This gets back to things like how much experience people have with modifying trucks so they have a good sense for what kind of "feel" to expect, and with some people, just how much they are really "in tune with," so to speak, their vehicle.

For example - In a 5000 lb F-150, I can usually feel a 10-15 Hp difference most of the time - and I can *certainly* feel the difference between our custom tuning and the stock factory tune - but some people just can't. They either aren't really as in tune with their vehicle, or perhaps just don't have a proper concept regarding what to expect, sometimes are making snap judgments based on *immediate* results, etc. We can see all those variances in some of the posts here.

So we just try to warn people not to judge by the seat of the pants, as some people expect a 3-ton truck to suddenly feel like they just strapped a supercharger on - even though most of us will rave about the difference our tuning alone makes, there will always be a few people who just don't seem to "get it," so to speak, for whatever reasons - so as you can see in our docs that we provide with our custom tuning, we talk about that specifically and give several examples of how to compare the before & after differences, etc., to try to help with those kinds of things.