I have an 06 Screw with the 4.6. Is it worth getting a tuner as far as performance and fuel efficiency? I am looking for something safe and reliable not too much into total customization just minor improvements all around.

Thanks,
M

 

edge evolution is a good one. 3 "out of the box" settings. it can also be customized like a lot of the guys on here have done. noticeable differences in power, a slight and i do mean slight increase in economy. there is also the troyer tune with the Xcal tuner. don't know too much about that one, so i'll let someone else chime in on it. good luck with your decision, i'm sure you'll find all the help you need on here.

 

edge x2

 

Hi turcomora,

Actually, what will do a far better job for the performance of your 4.6 truck is to go with our Troyer Performance custom tuning loaded into the XCalibrator 2 - it is cheaper than the Edge unit, and of course reads & clears codes, has the world's fastest datalogger built in etc., and you will have the benefit of our Troyer Performance custom tuning, which not only gets you significantly better raw power and performance gains, but also better overall driveability.

In fact, once we tune that truck, with no other modifications at all it will put down at least as much horsepower to the rear wheels as a stock 5.4 3V F-150 does - if not more. We have done many of these, and they do respond well, but the 4.6 tuning in these newer trucks has to be done very carefully to really get proper results from them.

Please feel free to give us a call at our number listed below & we'll be happy to go over all the details of this with you - and of course, we carry the Edge & other "off the shelf" canned tuning devices as well if you prefer, and if that is what you want we'll be happy to provide you with that unit - but our Troyer Performance custom tuning will get you a significantly better result.

I hope that brief info helps, & please feel free to give us a call to go over all the details on this so you can make your decision from a fully informed position.

Thanks for your post & best of luck with your truck!

 

Hey Mr. Mike, how about a Edge buy-back/trade in for the Xcal2, maybe we can get somemore work for you guys. I'm in.

 

Mike,

I have an order with you for your Superchips Custom Tuning 5-program 4-bank Performance Chip with the 87 & 93 tow & performance. I have an 02 Screw 4.6L K&N FIPK, & FlowMaster 40 Series S/I D/O, will this Chip get me about the same as the 5.4? I know every truck is different. What is the HP at the rear wheels of the 5.4L? Looking forward to getting that chip. I might want to add your Performance Dual 16" E Fans as well! Thanks for all you do!

 

Hi beckerjs,

EDIT:

We would love to be able to do that for people, as there are a lot of owners that would rather have our Troyer Performance tuning in either the LiveWire or the XCalibrator 2.

However, manufacturers have cracked down on their minimum selling price programs, to get rid of the Internet operations that know nothing about the products and offer no real tech support, etc., and only sell based on price, which meant custoemrs were not getting the kind of knowledge from the dealer they should have, it was like they were selling rubber bands or something. A lot of them were (and some still are) just kitchen-table type operations with nothing to offer but price alone - and that never works long term, it destroys the consumer confidence in the product, etc., etc. Manufactures must have distributors that KNOW the products and back them properly, so there has been a big crackdown, so to speak, on the enforcement of thee MAP pricing guidelines from many different manufacturers, including Edge, SCT, Superchips, etc., here just very recently, and that makes it extremely hard to do that type of thing.

What is happening now is that when a distributor sells a new product for less than MAP pricing, they lose the line forever in most cases - and that we obviously cannot do.

The only thing I am allowed to say on this is that you need to call us, and see if something can be worked out - we cannot just offer a "program" that does this, as that violates those MAP policies and would cost us the product line - but if you give us a call, we can discuss this further.

Thanks for your post!

 

Hi PowerHorse21,

Thanks for your order!

Generally speaking, if we take a stock 5.4 and a stock 4.6 F-150, and we tune the 4.6 for premium gas, then we generally can get the rear wheel horsepower to about the same level as the 5.4's.

Now when we talk about the newer 2004 & up trucks, we always get the 4.6's up to a bit higher RWHP level than a bone-stock 5.4 3V.

Now torque is another matter - due to the much longer stroke of the 5.4 engine, there is no way we will ever get as much low-end torque out of the 4.6 as we get from the 5.,4, but we can get roughly the same about of rear wheel horsepower from the PI 4.6's (2001 & up in the F-150) as the 5.4 makes in stock trim.

The 5.4 2V's power at the rear wheels varies, and by quite a bit - some are as low as 150, and some are as high as 175-180 or so in bone-stock trim. It depends on a number of things, such as if it can go open loop on it's factory tune, which driveshaft, 2WD versus 4WD, which wheels & tires (as this affects rotational mass, and the more rotational mass in the rear wheels & tires, the less HP gets to the ground), and so on - just to give you a rough picture of how this works and what numbers we see on those vehicles.

The key thing to remember is this - the single best bang for the buck mod is always thorough in-depth tuning, as nothing else for the same or less cost will improve the performance of the vehicle as much. So I am not nearly as concerned about what a vehicle makes on the dyno as I am with how the vehicle actually performs. Dyno queens are easy to make, but a truck that actually accelerates the quickest and pulls the hardest is another matter altogether - dyno numbers are nice, but far too much emphasis is placed on them IMHO. For example, a few years ago I used to do demonstrations where I would take a Lightning that was tuned by another tuner, and I would re-tune it to make about 30 less *peak* horsepower, yet still be slightly quicker down the 1/4 mile than the tune that made about 30 more peak HP. It was just a demonstration we used to do a few years back to make a point in the Lightning performance world to show that the highest peak HP does not always get you down the track the quickest - not that it was desirable to make 30 less HP, just that you want to make maximum *safe & sustainable* power, and then make the performance as god as is possible without hurting general reliability. I only mention that here to make the point that while it's always nice to see a bigger dyno number rather than a smaller dyno number, what matters more is how the vehicle actually performs after tuning compared to how it performed before the tuning.

I hope that gives you some info & insight - and by the way, we are big fans (pardon the pun) of doing our E-fans kit, and we just re-did the mounting system and i am in the middle of writing all new docs for it as well, and those changes reduce the installation time by a good deal and make it easier, so I think you will enjoy that. It's not on our web site yet as I have not finished the new docs, that will take a little while, but we re-did a couple of aspects of it to make it easier for first-time installers, so when you do that mod, it will be easier for you.

 

What are some number comparisons between the xcal II and the edge? How does the warranty of the xcal II compare with the edge? Which tuner would be considerd safer?

Thanks,
M

 

hey Mike,

thanks for the reply, i had your E -Fans and new bracket installed yesterday by Ford, and they work great, i e-mailed Anita, and she told me it should be about 7 -10 days till I get the Tuner? Can't wait, take extra care of that one!

 

Hi turcomora,

It's not possible to give you that in terms of absolutes liek you ask for, for numerous reasons - not the least of which is the fact that you have not provided any specific vehicle info - no model year, no engine, etc - additionally, these trucks will vary from one seemingly identical vehicle to the next, and fuel quality make a BIG difference as well as numerous other factors - in short, there are no "absolute" numbers that will always be the same even for all vehicles of the same model year, engine & transmission, and anyone claiming that is incorrect - though it's true that a lot of people & companies in this business make exactly those kinds of claims.

However, the bottom line is that nobody else makes the kind of power & performance gains that we do, as we have specialized in these trucks for almost 16 years - in fact, many of the major chipmakers have come to *us* for help in their tuning, as do other major OEM's, supercharger manufacturers, and many other companies due to our expertise on this platform. Now I would also say that we're not the go-to people to tune a Honda - but for F-150 performance, you'd be hard pressed to do as well as what we provide, because of our many years of specializing in this platform

No "off the shelf" type of device can ever do what we do - we sell them too by the way - off the shelf devices give you only a partial strategy match, and only alter a few tables compared to how far in depth we go - we make changes in *hundreds* of areas in every tune we do.

Additionally, it's *not* just about peak HP numbers - that kind of thinking is dead wrong, by the way, even though we do generally out-power everyone else, that is not what we are aiming for solely as there are things I can do in the tuning to make more power, but that are not sustainable over 150-200K miles. A dyno number is not everything with how a vehicle actually performs, what it's about is getting the best safe & sustainable performance - not making a "dyno queen". And due to variances between dynos, testing conditions & methods, one day to the next, vehicles, fuel quality, etc., *nobody* can say that "x" tuner will give you "x" HP, and some other tuner will give you "x" Hp as any kind of absolute - that simply is not possible.

This is also why you do not see that kind of thing on our web site - meaning we do not say things like "Edge only makes 12 Hp and we make 30 HP" - even though we have in fact seen that happen on the same vehicle in some tests, dyno testing is really relevant only to that type of dyno, and the conditions present at that time - for example, even though there are correction factors, no dyno can make up for the effects of variances in humidity and what happens to the ignition system as a result - as humidity goes up, the ignition system's job gets much harder and power goes down.

The bottom line is, what I can tell you is that we will make more safe & sustainable performance compared to any off the shelf type of tuning device - this board is full of our customers posts showing that, many of whom have come to our dyno day events and sen us test for those very types of things in properly controlled back to back testing and seen the difference.

So I am not going to blow smoke and say we're going to gain "x' more hp than X-brand, as that simply cannot be claimed as any kind or absolute, what I *can* tell you is that we always make more safe & sustainable power & performance gains, and better driveability as well - nobody else has our experience tuning these vehicles, that is what we have specialized in for almost 16 years now - and is why so many vehicle owners and major companies come to us for help on these vehicles, due to our expertise.

I will say this - a few years ago we did some testing on a public dyno day of off the shelf tuners versus our custom tuning - and we typically out-powered the best of them by a minimum of 15 RWHP - and in some cases by as much as 27 RWHP - not one ever made what we made. But again, that is just a dyno number - I have also done demonstrations where we took a competitors tuning for a Lightning and ran it on our dyno, and then we did our tuning and set it up to make 30 peak HP LESS than our competitor - and when we took it to the track, we *still* ran almost 3 tenths quicker in the 1/4 mile on that same vehicle with our tuning making 30 less *peak* horsepower compared to the other tuning. So while it's always nice to have a high dyno number, that is not always the be all & end all of performance.

I hope this post helps to give you some perspective on this rather than tend to confuse you, and if you'd like to know some real info about what we can do for *your* vehicle, please give us a call and we'll be happy to go over that with you in proper detail, OK?

Thanks for your post!

 

Mr. Mike, I have a 2007 Ford F-150 STX Supercab with a 4.6L 2v 4X2 V8 and have the following modifications:
75mm BBK Performance Throttle Body
A K&N FIPK Cold Air Intake
JBA Stainless Steel Shorty Headers
4.88 Gears in the Rear
And A Magnaflow Split at the Rear Catback

and was wondering if the X3 would be good for my truck, and I was also wondering about those dual electric fans for 2004+ F-Series Trucks

 

That post you are replying to is over 2 years old. Mike Troyer, though still a sponser is rarely on the site these days. Your best bet would be to call or email his office with your questions.

 

I live In Tennessee. And have a 2005 f150 4.6. And called a performance shop and they told me my truck was to old to tune. I need a little more power out of it . Any help would be appreciated.

 

I suspect you could buy a tuner from Superchips or others for a stock engine. If you have modified it, you need a special tune. You can probably buy one off ebay but just make sure it isn't vin locked.