I have a 1997 f150 2wd with a 4.2 v6 and I have a flowmaster catback exhaust system and a MAC intake system. I am planning on adding und. pullies, EFans, Mac headers, a new camshaft and XCAL 2 or 9100 tuner using mostly 87 perf. tune.

My question is, will I get a very significant increase in horsepower and torque with this setup, or should I spend the extra money and buy the performance pack from Super Six Motorsports.

Help from Mike Troyer and all who have experience with these mods is greatly appreciated.

MY TRUCK PICTURES

 

Hi a33bigpapa,

Actually, the smart thing to do would be to give us a call, as you are going to have to get up to speed on what all other things are going to have to be upgraded in order to support "significant" power levels.

For just one immediate example, the fuel system will need upgrading - the 4.2 V6 has only 6 tiny little 19# injectors, which are only good for about 250 HP (and that's at the FLYWHEEL, not at the rear wheels) at 100% duty cycle (and you really don't want to exceed 90%, and doing it "by the book" calls for not exceeding 80% capacity!) to begin with!

And that kind of power level is easily achieved or even exceeded with just our tuning and intake kit and a cat-back exhaust system - so that that point, you can take on any stock 5.4 260 HP F-150's and outrun them, as you will be significantly lighter.

To that, you can next add our underdrive pulley & electric fans kit, you won't need any more fuel injector for those parts and that will get you another 20+ HP at the rear wheels, giving you the ability to easily walk away from just about any close-to-stock 5.4 2V F-150 V8.

Then next up comes our fuel system upgrade, including injectors, MAF meter & the fuel pump, at which point you have gained another 15 HP, but more importantly, can support quite a bit more power from other additional power adding modifications.

And it doesn't' stop there, we can literally keep going on and on to take that 4.2 V6 up to whatever power level you want. So before you go dropping money on ported manifolds, cylinder heads, camshafts, etc,, you first really need to know what is possible with more simple bolts on's, as well as the fuel system upgrades that are quickly needed on these 4.2 V6 F-150's when you add any really significant power gains - we specialize in this platform, so w know all of that.

I would really start off with our Stage 1 kit and add our electric fan kit to that, as you are going to add roughly about 55-60 HP and well over 70 lbs./ft. of torque - at which point you will be able to show your taillights to a lot of vehicles you didn't think possible.

Then there's always headers & high-flow cats, a set of 4,10 gears, and if you want, then we can get into porting the manifold, cylinder heads, a hotter camshaft, etc., if you don't care that much about fuel mileage

The bottom lien is, we can take your truck just as far as you want to go, and that is what we specialize in - making these Ford F-series vehicles *rock*.

Heck, most of those 4.2 V6's can't even go Open Loop from the factory, meaning they can't even make their STOCK rated power - which means that most of our 4.2 customers see larger -than-normal power gains just from our tuning alone from fixing that issues along with everything else we do tuning-wise. And of course, there are ignition system upgrades which those 4.2's respond to nicely - and on and on, and on.

Needless to say, we can take that truck just as far as you want to go, so I would suggest giving us a call & working with us on a performance package to start getting that truck's performance up to where you really want it to be at - we specialize in the Ford F-series platform,and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at what we cna do for you. Our web site shows maybe 2 % of what all we do, as I do everything on the web site myself, and just don't have the time to post up everything due to the amount of demand we have to work on customer cars - and our customer cars come first before all the pretty marketing materials we'd love to have, so don't let that give you the impression that all we do is what you see on the web site - not by a long shot! We basically do anything & everything that improves the performance of these vehicles, from mild to wild.

Just give us a call whenever you get a chance & I think you'll be happy with what you hear - and you make your decision from there, of course.

Best of luck whatever you decide!

 

Thank you for all the advice and information Mike Troyer. The reason I want to do all this is because I want the FUN TO DRIVE factor to be there. My truck has zero pull off the line and I think that is due to have 275/55/20 tires on the truck and I don't want to regear because that would kill my gas mileage. Again thank you for the information Mike Troyer.

 

You're very welcome of course - but don't give up altogether on the idea of re-gearing, that is the single most common mistake people make when they throw on taller tires.

Re gearing actually **helps** to IMPROVE fuel mileage, performance, driveability and top speed because no the engine is no longer laboring so far below it's power band.

While tuning & other mods will help power, NOTHING aside from re-gearing will once again allow that engine to turn enough RPMs for a given speed & gear like a gear ratio change.

What yo have done is the same as if you just threw in s set of 2.59 gear in the rear end,and killed your basic torque multiplication in the process
- and that should be cured.

So many vendors that sell taller tires fail to tell the vehicle owner "hey, you HAVE to change gears too, otherwise your truck will run like a pig, because you are ruining your inherent basic torque multiplication." And so many vehicles owners do it just for "the look," without ever giving thought to the actual consequences.

Gears don't cost that much to be done right, and that will once again allow the engine to tune the same number of rpms for a given speed & gear that it did before, thus restring the basic torque multiplication the vehicle needs. Then once that is done, you can go over to improve performance much further with some simple performance mods.

Generally speaking, if you have up to about 33" tall tires, then some good performance mods will help enough so that you can really enjoy the vehicle - but if you have 34 or 35 inch ties on there, then a gear change should really be considered a must - just a general guideline, if that might help you.

Just some food for thought......

 

Everything your saying sounds right. If I get the tuner I believe I would be really impressed by what everyone is saying, but if I also want to get the camshaft and ported heads can I still use the tuner or would I have to get a dyno tune.

Thanks again for your time and patience.

MY TRUCK PICTURES

 

Yes, with ported heads and a cam you're going to need to at least do thorough datalogging, to evaluate to see whether further tuning is actually needed - and it is in many cases with ported heads & a cam change on a computer--controlled vehicle.

HOWEVER - it really depends on just how radical the cam profile is, as many times we don't have to to anything other than just make sure the MAF transfer function is OK so the A/F's are on target and the fuel delivery system has been sufficiently upgraded to handle the new fuel needs of the motor.

Those 4.2 V6's have *very* little excess fuel delivery capacity, with only 19# injectors stock and a weak fuel pump, they need upgrading pretty quick - once you take a bone-stock 4.2 and add our tuning, an intake kit & a cat-back exhaust, the only other things you can do are an underdrive pulley & our electric fan kit before you have to upgrade the fuel delivery system - that's how it is with many vehicles these days, the automakers aren't going to pay for fuel delivery systems with 100% extra capacity - it ain't like the old days of fuel pumps running of the eccentric on the cam and letting the carb run lean @ WOT!

These are modern computer controlled vehicles, and when you make major mods like ported heads, a camshaft change, etc., the PCM needs to be tuned properly in most cases - never assume that it will just be OK.

Even back in the days before computers, those who made those kinds of changes rarely did it right - few ever really had their vehicles tuned properly, as they virtually never had a proper recurve of the distributor (which means doing it on a distributor machine) and then track or dyno test and datalog the A/F's or EGT's to properly re-jet the carb., determine optimal plug gap, etc., etc. Which is precisely why our cars and our customer vehicles generally out-run competitors vehicles with the same basic mods.

NO job is complete without the final tuning - and that was never more important than now, so that's the basic thing to keep in mind. Anyone who is not willing to get on a dyno has no business taking the valve covers off to do ANY internal mods.

One last thought - remember that with our XCalibrator 2, you can datalog everything we need (except the A/F's, which are easy to get for under $10 at a dyno) so that we can see just what that vehicle is actually doing and email any tuning changes that are needed.

Every vehicle should be dialed in to the "nth" degree if the owner wants everything he/she can safely get out of it - just FYI from a hard-headed tuner!