Don't get me wrong I'm happy with my truck and its tunes. I would like to come down and get it hooked up to the dyno again to see if its running lean. I love what you did to my truck, its an extremely great improvement over the stock. You will have to let me know when you are going to do a dyno day. You can count me in. I know the next 2 weeks though are bad for me, I'll be on travel until the beginning of Nov.

 

Just read thru the Datalog Parameters sheet I got with the Xcal2. If you find that you truck performs better on the towing tune or you suspect it's running lean, roughly how much does it cost to go into a local dyno shop and get the A/F ratio's and other useful parameters?

 

Hi Ski,

You know, after I posted what I did, I thought about it & kinda cringed, hoping that you didn't take it the wrong way - that is the *last* thing I'd want!

My intention in that series of posts was to go over this issue of how there are a few trucks that are doing the same thing your data shows - running a bit slower on their performance tune than on their towing tune. And that we have no datalogging from any of their owners so that we can review to see what's going on and make any corrections that may be needed.

Now in your case, you brought your vehicle in for the dyno and have us datalog it - and we found it was drastically off in stock trim, 15.0:1 - now with adjustments, it *did* respond. Then the intake kit went on it after it was off the dyno, and I didn't have any more data after that.

In retrospect, probably what I could have done was maybe find some way to talk you into staying over (or maybe us even getting you a rental car for a day or something), so that I could tweak again like I really like to do. I had a sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that it was going to go lean once the intake kit was on because it was so lean with the STOCK intake running on the stock tune - it also took a larger-than-normal MAF TF adjustment to dial it in when it was on the dyno, prior to the intake being installed - and all of *that* combined was really why I said to you that day that I was probably going to want to do some more changes and email them to you.

Now since you got those changes & had a chance to do your accel times, we're seeing this pattern of running quicker on the towing tune, even though it's got lower upshift points and a richer commanded A/F - which tells me that it's running leaner than required for best average peak power on the performance tune. The only way to know is to datalog it, of course.

In fact, in another thread, the guys have talked me into another Dyno Day, looks like we're going to schedule for Saturday November 19th (and if need be, hold it over to the 20th, too). With that in mind, do you think you might make it back down? If so, that would give me a chance to datalog it again and really take a look & see what it's doing now in it's current configuration, and get it where we know it should be. I also suggest that we get a new original factory Motorcraft fuel filter on there ASAP (before the dyno), just in case that present filter is a bit clogged - they need changing every 15K miles anyway.

We are also going to be carrying spare 3-valve engine MAF sensors with us at every Dyno Day too - Marc Carpenter's truck, the one that went on just before you and that held yours up so long because we pounded on his truck for 4+ hours the first day? His truck turned out to have a BAD MAF sensor on it - So we'll have spare 3-valve MAF sensors on hand each Dyno Day from now on.

If you *can't* make it to this next Dyno Day on Saturday November 19th, then we need to go ahead and get more data on it - the XCalibrator 2 can datalog everything except the A/F ratios, and we do carry low cost portable wide-band A/F recorders that will even allow you to record your own A/F's, so that between the XCal 2 and the LM-1, you could datalog *everything* any time, any place you wanted to, and easily double-check each change we make.

I greatly appreciated your posting your data, and I'd like to do some more dialing in, as I feel the truck either has a problem or simply needs more tweaking, and more datalogging will tell us which. I suspect it's easily fixable via tuning, and at most a fresh fuel filter & MAF sensor, as it's running pretty darned strong with 7.1 second 0-60 times in a 3-ton truck on the **towing** tune!

I hope that explains things a bit better, and Anita & I send our best to you & your wife!

 

Other than data logging or throwing a lean code, what else can you use to determine if your truck is one that "must" have further tweaking? I realize it's not custom until you data log. I just installed the 87 performance tune on my TEM7 truck and do notice a difference. My issue is that in order to data log I'd not only need to rent dyno time but also I'd have to buy a PC. That's kinda cost prohibitive. I've got about 300 miles on the 87 perf tune with noticeable increase in power and no CEL's. The only mod that I've done is the AF1.

 

As of now I should be able to make it down. Actually I was hoping that it would be on the 19th, cause I may be on travel down to quantico that week and I can just stop on my way back home. It would be great to get the truck hooked up to the dyno and see what it is putting down. I wish I could've stay the other dyno day but the wife wanted to leave. This time I'm comming by myself. My buddy might be comming down too, I think I got him really interested in a Xcal2.

 

*moved*

 

please explain? Does it have to be taken in and reflashed by a dealer? Mine ran fine before the Xcal2, and better afterwards.

 

Hi Wheelerfreak,

That's the point of datalogging - that's how you know.
Not having a CEL tells you nothing other than you don't have a CEL light flashing, it doesn't tell you what your A/F ratios are, only datalogging does. Now in closed loop (lighter loads), you can look at fuel trims to see the % correction the PCM makes to achieve stoich A/F - but that still doesn't tell you the A/F's in open loop.

I don't agree that it's any kind of significant additional expense to datalog, not in the least - Here's the reality: A set of 3 pulls with A/F's on a dyno costs you maybe $75 to at most $100 - that's not going to put a dent in the budget of *anyone* who can afford to own & operate on of these F-150's and modify it. And anyone who frequents F-150 Online obviously has ready access to a PC - it doesn't have to be a laptop, any PC running Windows XP does the trick. The financial reality is very simple - anyone who can afford to own and modify one of these new F-150's can very easily afford a trip to a dyno and 99.9999% of the time is going to already own a PC - or worst case, easily afford to put $399 on a credit card for a Dell PC to get into the 20th century with the rest of us. If that is not the case, then that person is living WAY beyond their means and has far bigger problems than datalogging. Sorry, but the argument that it costs too much money to datalog doesn't fly with me - the XCal 2 datalogs everything but the A/F's, all that is required is a Windows XP-based PC - which can be found at virtually any dyno as well.

In terms of "which" vehicles should be datalogged, in general, figure that *any* 3-valve engine really should to be datalogged, because the factory MAF transfer function varies so much in some of them - and you can't tell which ones until you datalog. Ski's truck is an excellent example - a brand new very low mileage TEM7-code 2005 that is well maintained, a beautiful truck, and a code we've tuned hundreds of times - and that one shows up running 15.0:1 lean, with no CEL - just as Marc Carpenter's 2004 truck showed up running 14.2:1 on it's stock program & stock factory intake system - only datalogging will identify that.

Regarding Raider's post that he (to his credit) deleted - forget applying any factory update, that would not help you. Not only that, but if your PCM gets reflashed with an update, it will would cost you a fee to have us make a whole new set of tunes to match the new factory program. If you change the factory program in a PowerPC-based PCM as is used in all 2004 & up new body style F-150's & many other newer FoMoCo vehicles, then you also need all new custom tunes made to exactly match the completely new strategy/computer code for the vehicle to run correctly. Some people (including some major chipmakers, unfortunately!) are under the mistaken impression that if it's the same basic strategy (the first 5 digits of the strategy), you can still use the same performance tunes, but that just doesn't work well in PowerPC-based PCM's - and sometimes won't even allow the vehicle to start at all. You can get away with that in some of the older EEC-V PCM vehicles (like th 1996-2003 F-150's, for example), but not in PowerPC vehicles. So generally speaking, the custom tuning must match the exact and complete PCM code/strategy for the vehicle to run right, is basically the deal. Therefore, we recommend forgetting any factory "updates," as we're already fixing their problems that have to do with powertrain operations.

The *ONLY* time we advise having a factory "update" flashed into your PCM in a 2004 & up F-150 is if there is actually a significant and obvious existing problem that is absolutely going to be cured by the reflash - and that's *extremely* rare in these new F-150's. In the 2004 & up F-150's, the only update we feel is worth having applies only to early build 2004's with full dash computers where the outside temperature display was way off - there was an update to fix that on early build 2004's with that feature, if it's way off. Otherwise, Id' say to just leave the PCM revision alone, and not incur the additional expense of new tunes to match the new code.

One last point on datalogging that I think will make you happy to hear - very soon there will be a firmware update available for download for the 9400 (XCalibrator 2) that will allow you to datalog a certain number of parameters **on-board** the unit - it's limited to a maximum of 300K storage space in terms of it's internal memory, but that is enough to datalog what's needed at the dyno, while the dyno is getting the A/F's simultaneously. Now you still need to transfer that info over to a PC of course, so send us that data, but that does indeed help. As soon as that is thoroughly tested & available for general public release, we'll let everyone know here with a post.

I hope that info helps a bit!

 

Hi Ski,

That sounds great, we'll be happy to see you again, and please do feel free to bring along a friend, etc!

Just remember to call us to schedule in, and we'll be happy to check everything out & make any adjustments needed - sounds like it probably needs a bit more tweaking to the MAF TF, we'll take a look at all of that & dial it in spot-on.

This time things will also go significantly quicker than last time you were down, as we won't be doing all of that comparative testing that we did last time, where we were testing the off-the-shelf tuning versus our tuning, etc - this will strictly be a custom tuning session to tweak everyone's tunes for a final dial-in.

We look forward to seeing you!

 

[QUOTE=Superchips_Distributor]Hi Wheelerfreak,



I don't agree that it's any kind of significant additional expense to datalog, not in the least - Here's the reality: A set of 3 pulls with A/F's on a dyno costs you maybe $75 to at most $100 - that's not going to put a dent in the budget of *anyone* who can afford to own & operate on of these F-150's and modify it. And anyone who frequents F-150 Online obviously has ready access to a PC - it doesn't have to be a laptop, any PC running Windows XP does the trick. The financial reality is very simple - anyone who can afford to own and modify one of these new F-150's can very easily afford a trip to a dyno and 99.9999% of the time is going to already own a PC - or worst case, easily afford to put $399 on a credit card for a Dell PC to get into the 20th century with the rest of us. If that is not the case, then that person is living WAY beyond their means and has far bigger problems than datalogging. Sorry, but the argument that it costs too much money to datalog doesn't fly with me - the XCal 2 datalogs everything but the A/F's, all that is required is a Windows XP-based PC - which can be found at virtually any dyno as well.

I'm not living beyond my means by anyone's definition, I just don't think going out and buying a PC for the sole purpose of datalogging is a wise purchase. It's $400 ( more like $500-600 for a "cheap" PC notebook) that will be worth abour $50 in a year. I'll stick with the bullet proof reliability of my Mac, and I guess a generic tune. I'll be honest up front, I read about the Xcal2 and tuning on here and don't remember reading about the "necessity" of data logging. I may have missed seeing those posts though. From my limited understanding, datalogging was only for finer tunning of a truck or for tuning trucks that were heavily modified. I'm happy with the improvements I've gotten outta my Xcal2, but If I had known that the costs would have included about $500-700 more in additional expenses I wouldn't have done it. My truck isn't an investment either, it's simply a tool to do a job. I just can't leave well enough alone, hence the intake, tuner and the other mods that have already been done on a 3 month old truck ( as well as entering the 21st century with a Mac and having to wait for the rest of the world to catch up )


I'm not trying to be a d1ck or start a fight about tuners, and I'm definately not trying to slam MT or his product. I'm just saying that if I had known going in that I'd have to spend that much more I wouldn't have done it. I F'd up in my research and reading and for now will just run the stock tuning that the Xcal2 came with. Is there a potential for damage by doing this?

As an aside, I'm curious how many people have done the data logging Vs how many just run the stock tuning that came on there Xcal?

 

Would this be the Mako 3.0 which we have heard about? I know some tuners went out with the 3.0 before you found the issues at the last dyno day and changed back to the old style programming. My xcal2, AFAIK, doesn't use 3.0. I just got it on the 10th of OCT. So I'm looking foreward to the added abilities of the 3.0, as well as the ability to datalog with the tuner itself.

 

Not sure who was asking or talking about getting the factory reflash done, but I did have it done before I became aware of MT custom tunes. Let me tell you that it hardly made any difference in my truck, the factory reflash that is. It did help it out a little. Once I went down and hooked up with MT and his custom tunes, now there is a HELL OF A BIG difference in my truck. Granted it probably needs some more tweaking, that's why i'm heading back down. That day was hectic with all the comparison tuning he was doing. Mike I'll be calling tomorrow to make sure you got room for me on the 19th.
Again on the factory tuning if you any of you are planning on getting custom tunning done DON'T DO THE FACTORY TUNE. My ford dealer didn't put the sticker and thanks to MT he figured out what flash they did. Hope to see some of you all down there on the 19th. Hey Marc don't forget to bring your detailing equipment hehe.

 

Just looking for a little clarification. I didnt think that it would be odd to have a 0-60 time faster on the tow tune vs. the perf tune due to the added horsepower kicking in at a lower RPM. Now had Ski said his tow tune was faster in the 1/4 mile, that would have seemed odd to me. Should the perf tune run a faster 0-60 then the tow???

 

Hi datsF150,

I've already explained in those multiple posts above - so I would suggest going back and re-reading them, as it's too much to type out all over again.

 

Mike I did read it and then re-read it. I wasnt looking for the long answer describing the importance of datalogging and explanation on trucks running to lean. I asked the question because the above quote touched on 1/4 mile performance but did not specifically explain the 0-60 times Ski came up with. I will assume by the responce the short answer is yes, perf tunes should have a faster 0-60 time with correct data logging.