a friend of mine has a 97 4.6 he has put on a powerdyne charger, cat back and headers. Will the edge programmer benefit him or will he need a custom tune?

 

A custom tune all the way. With Troyer on board here to help and do the tuning, or a few other great tuners , he will have plenty to choose from. Have him give Troyer or any other reputable custom tuner like Bamachips, etc. a ring.

 

I ran that set up for a couple of weeks ( no headers ) until my custom tune came from Troyer. The Edge performance tune worked OK. I have a wide band air fuel ratio gauge, so I was able to monitor the a/f's, which were on the lean side with the Edge program, but not life threatening.
I also have a 190 lph fuel pump installed - a mandatory upgrade!!
When I installed the Troyer tune with bigger injectors and larger mass air meter, it all came together.wow. That is with a " baseline " custom tune which will be refined shortly.
Custom tuning is the only safe way to go with forced induction, and it is quite gratifying as well.

 

hey thanks a lot you guys have been a big help.

 

Hi 99blk150,

Yes, your friend will definitely need custom tuning -

And just so everyone who reads this knows, nobody should ever attempt to use ANY "off the shelf" tuning product with any supercharger - that is a recipe for potential disaster, no matter what the A/F ratios read.

People who are not experienced tuners do not know this (of course, just like I couldn't be a dentist!), but one of many bad things that happens when running a supercharger with either a stock factory tune, or any off-the-shelf tuner, is that you vastly exceed the load tables of the PCM! And of course, Powerdyne, like many supercharger manufacturers, historically hasn't done a damn thing for tuning in the 1997-2003 F-150 supercharger kits. Instead, historically they have said it's perfectly safe to run it on the stock tune - wrong answer. This is also something that no off the shelf device can correct for, and using an off the shelf device of any kind is a great way to potentially damage an engine that has a supercharger installed.

Your friend will also need more hardware, as Powerdyne does not even provide for an upgrade to the stock fuel pump in the 1997-2003 F-150's. They (Powerdyne) take literally every shortcut in the book (and not just them, many supercharger mfg's take shortcuts to lower the cost of their kit so they can sell more of them), which is why they are the cheapest - and consequently, they put their customers in potentially dangerous situations for the engine. Perhaps one of the reasons why they recently changed ownership, and are not doing well at the present. In fact, Powerdyne has approached us time after time to carry their line, and we reject them out of hand as they just don't come close to *properly* configuring a supercharger safely for these vehicles. Unfortunately, some people see that they are so cheap, and rush out to buy them, thinking they got a bargain - and then have to find out from tuners like me who actually *do* know what is required that they are just at the beginning of what needs to be done to make it safe/right.

Additionally, many supercharger manufacturers are still doing stupid things like using FMU's instead of proper sized fuel injectors - another recipe for disaster, as FMU's have an unacceptable failure rate - and even when they don't fail, if the vacuum line just happens to come off under boost, you can kiss that engine goodbye thanks to the immediate gross lean condition that results. Some FMU's last for years, while others last 2 minutes - I literally saw a very expensive race engine in a Mustang literally blow up on the dyno in just a few runs because the owner took it to a shop who installed an FMU, instead of using the correct sized fuel injectors, proper tuning, etc. The FMU malfunctioned during a full-throttle pull, and that was an expensive lesson I don't want to see anyone have to learn.

Now on newer vehicles, like the 2004 & up F-150 with their fully returnless type of fuel system, can get by just fine **with proper custom tuning** with stock injectors & fuel pump **up to certain power levels**. They have additional capacity that can be used by a skilled tuner in a fully electronic returnless fuel system. But for any vehicle with a return-style fuel system, which is 2003 & earlier in the F-150, that cannot be done with any safety.

Please feel free to give your friend our phone number, which is listed below, so he can call us to go over this in more detail - then he'll have a thorough understanding on this, and know what he needs to do to get his truck set up correctly - he will also make more power this way as well.

Thanks very much for dropping by to check out & get correct info on this - that was a very smart thing to do, and we wish your friend the best of luck with this project - our phone number is listed below for your convenience!