A shout-out to Troyer Performance
A shout-out to Troyer Performance
Just thought I'd share my recent experience with Troyer Performance with everyone...my head's a little fuzzy this morning, so bare with me...
About 2 months ago I received my custom tunes from Troyer via email; I flashed my truck and, although my mid-upper performance felt great compared to stock, the low-end and throttle response just felt kind of off. Just to preface this; my truck was an extremely early build 2004 model. My PCM code, BME6, was never even released to the vendors, apparently. As such, my tune was built around BME9, which technically should have been fine, as there wasn't much changed between 6 and 9. I finally shot an email off to Troyer about 2 weeks ago with my concerns; they replied back shortly with some basic troubleshooting steps to try, just to make sure it wasn't something simple. After responding back with the same issues, the following day I got a call from Mike. Mike spent 30 minutes on the phone with me going over the problems I was having. His concern was that the BME6 was causing problems and, since I'm only 3 hours away from their shop, he asked if I'd mind bringing my truck down for some hands on tuning. Full disclosure; he also wanted a mostly stock N/A truck to do some R&D on after getting my tune finished... hmm, get a bunch of dyno time to make sure my truck's dialed in right, at the cost of letting them play around with it for a few hours afterwards. Sold!
So Friday morning I left my house around 6am and drove straight down; it took a little over 3.5 hours since I-66 turned into a parking lot going over the mountians. I got down to Troyer's around 9:45 and was greeting by Anita, Neal, and (other) Mike. Mike Troyer was up in his office trying to "put out some fires" on the boards, and was running a little behind. When he did make it down, he was very apologetic, and we immediately began discussing the truck. They flashed it back to stock, and updated my PCM strategy to the latest the Ford IDS system had for it. Once that was done, Mike showed me the procedure he uses for building a new base tune. Having dabbled in some tuning before on both my old 94 Cobra (EEC-IV based, using a TwEECer RT) and my Triumph Daytona motorcycle (SAGEM based, using a TuneBoy), I was still blown away by the sheer amount of parameters that the new drive by wire Ford PCM's have. Mike explained all the changes he was making as he ran through things at a mind blowing pace. 30 minutes later, we had three new tunes to load on my truck.
With the truck strapped down to the dyno and the wide-band hooked up, Neal went ahead and loaded the new 93 octane tune while Mike setup his datalogging parameters. The first pull netted 229rwhp, with A/F's scarily in the 14's. Bare in mind, my truck's otherwise stock, aside from a Magnaflow SISO catback and an Airraid Jr intake (basically just a drop-in filter and larger inlet tube, stock airbox). That in itself shows how sensitive these drive by wire trucks are to air intake changes; essentially just a larger diameter inlet tube made it dangerously lean at WOT. Just something to keep in mind; just because an intake kit doesn't throw any codes doesn't mean it's safe, these trucks should be tuned for what you're running! Mike made some changes and a couple of pulls later had a dead nuts 12:1 a/f with a peak of 238rwhp. This was with some really crappy gas, too; there should be another 5hp or so with some quality gas. That in itself was decent, but the big change was the driveability issues I had originally complained about (poor throttle response, weak low-mid range) had vanished. It felt like a totally different truck when I was driving it home; and power delivery was smooth and linear.
About 2 months ago I received my custom tunes from Troyer via email; I flashed my truck and, although my mid-upper performance felt great compared to stock, the low-end and throttle response just felt kind of off. Just to preface this; my truck was an extremely early build 2004 model. My PCM code, BME6, was never even released to the vendors, apparently. As such, my tune was built around BME9, which technically should have been fine, as there wasn't much changed between 6 and 9. I finally shot an email off to Troyer about 2 weeks ago with my concerns; they replied back shortly with some basic troubleshooting steps to try, just to make sure it wasn't something simple. After responding back with the same issues, the following day I got a call from Mike. Mike spent 30 minutes on the phone with me going over the problems I was having. His concern was that the BME6 was causing problems and, since I'm only 3 hours away from their shop, he asked if I'd mind bringing my truck down for some hands on tuning. Full disclosure; he also wanted a mostly stock N/A truck to do some R&D on after getting my tune finished... hmm, get a bunch of dyno time to make sure my truck's dialed in right, at the cost of letting them play around with it for a few hours afterwards. Sold!
So Friday morning I left my house around 6am and drove straight down; it took a little over 3.5 hours since I-66 turned into a parking lot going over the mountians. I got down to Troyer's around 9:45 and was greeting by Anita, Neal, and (other) Mike. Mike Troyer was up in his office trying to "put out some fires" on the boards, and was running a little behind. When he did make it down, he was very apologetic, and we immediately began discussing the truck. They flashed it back to stock, and updated my PCM strategy to the latest the Ford IDS system had for it. Once that was done, Mike showed me the procedure he uses for building a new base tune. Having dabbled in some tuning before on both my old 94 Cobra (EEC-IV based, using a TwEECer RT) and my Triumph Daytona motorcycle (SAGEM based, using a TuneBoy), I was still blown away by the sheer amount of parameters that the new drive by wire Ford PCM's have. Mike explained all the changes he was making as he ran through things at a mind blowing pace. 30 minutes later, we had three new tunes to load on my truck.
With the truck strapped down to the dyno and the wide-band hooked up, Neal went ahead and loaded the new 93 octane tune while Mike setup his datalogging parameters. The first pull netted 229rwhp, with A/F's scarily in the 14's. Bare in mind, my truck's otherwise stock, aside from a Magnaflow SISO catback and an Airraid Jr intake (basically just a drop-in filter and larger inlet tube, stock airbox). That in itself shows how sensitive these drive by wire trucks are to air intake changes; essentially just a larger diameter inlet tube made it dangerously lean at WOT. Just something to keep in mind; just because an intake kit doesn't throw any codes doesn't mean it's safe, these trucks should be tuned for what you're running! Mike made some changes and a couple of pulls later had a dead nuts 12:1 a/f with a peak of 238rwhp. This was with some really crappy gas, too; there should be another 5hp or so with some quality gas. That in itself was decent, but the big change was the driveability issues I had originally complained about (poor throttle response, weak low-mid range) had vanished. It felt like a totally different truck when I was driving it home; and power delivery was smooth and linear.
Holy crap, didn't realize there's a 5000 character limit per post...
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Once Mike was satisfied (which was a couple pulls after I was already satisfied; he's a perfectionist), they went to work swapping on an AirForce1 3.5" intake kit to do some R&D. By this point it was getting late in the afternoon, but that didn't matter. They made some good headway into their "research project", although I know Mike would have loved to have kept the truck down there for another day, as he kept commenting. Sorry, but I really wanted to take my truck home that night, hahaha. We closed up shop around 7pm and I expressed my thanks to the whole shop, as I was extremely satisfied with getting my tune "fixed". They were even more appreciative, as they got yet more tuning information to add to their extensive database. One thing I noted was that they're never satisfied with "good enough"; they're constantly working to improve their tunes, even when customers might think they're perfect as-is. Having spent almost an entire day in their shop watching them work, it's apparent just how knowledgeable they are, and how much they do care about every tune they send out and every truck that comes into their shop. Having heard of some of the issues that people have called in for, I will say this: if you're having problems with your tune, PLEASE get some datalogging done and send it in. There is so many factors that come into play in tuning these tucks, it's ridiculous. These guys are a master of their craft, but are only as good as the data they have to work with! Wrapping things up, once again I'd like to thank Mike Troyer and the gang at Troyer Performance for their time and I'm glad things worked out well on both ends. If you're looking to get your truck tuned, I cannot imagine recommending a shop other than Troyer.
Oh, here's my dyno:
http://www.sbassen.com/pics/Vehicles/F-150/dyno.jpg
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Once Mike was satisfied (which was a couple pulls after I was already satisfied; he's a perfectionist), they went to work swapping on an AirForce1 3.5" intake kit to do some R&D. By this point it was getting late in the afternoon, but that didn't matter. They made some good headway into their "research project", although I know Mike would have loved to have kept the truck down there for another day, as he kept commenting. Sorry, but I really wanted to take my truck home that night, hahaha. We closed up shop around 7pm and I expressed my thanks to the whole shop, as I was extremely satisfied with getting my tune "fixed". They were even more appreciative, as they got yet more tuning information to add to their extensive database. One thing I noted was that they're never satisfied with "good enough"; they're constantly working to improve their tunes, even when customers might think they're perfect as-is. Having spent almost an entire day in their shop watching them work, it's apparent just how knowledgeable they are, and how much they do care about every tune they send out and every truck that comes into their shop. Having heard of some of the issues that people have called in for, I will say this: if you're having problems with your tune, PLEASE get some datalogging done and send it in. There is so many factors that come into play in tuning these tucks, it's ridiculous. These guys are a master of their craft, but are only as good as the data they have to work with! Wrapping things up, once again I'd like to thank Mike Troyer and the gang at Troyer Performance for their time and I'm glad things worked out well on both ends. If you're looking to get your truck tuned, I cannot imagine recommending a shop other than Troyer.
Oh, here's my dyno:
http://www.sbassen.com/pics/Vehicles/F-150/dyno.jpg
Originally Posted by i.ride.suzuki
3hrs of tuning, 9HP peak gain, 0TQ. 
What is the difference between the 1st and 8th runs?
What is the difference between the 1st and 8th runs?
Originally Posted by malexander52
I caught that you had an early 2004 F150. DO you have the 4.6 or 5.4?
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Those are some nice numbers there. I know this truck personally and something was not right with the mid range. its great to hear you have the problem fixed and I agree that troyer performance is a top notch company.
Time to go Dark Shadow Gray F150 hunting there Steve!!
Time to go Dark Shadow Gray F150 hunting there Steve!!