Finally got to go back to the track after a long wait for some cold weather and got a suprise. I ran a 9.66 a couple of months back when it was around 80 degrees and a little humid. Went back this past friday and only ran 3 times. First one was a 9.7? with spinning through first gear. So i let it cool down for about 30 minutes and went back at it again. Got in the other lane this time. Pulled up to stage and left the line at around 1400rpms. I didn't spin any but i thought i was so i didn't drill the gas like i know i could have. (i was running 28.5" nittos that were on my friends lightning). The bad thing about running these tires and rims are the height but more so the weight is over 60lbs for each tire/rim. So anyways i ran down the track and pulled up to get my slip. I got it and it said 9.44@73.05. Needless to say my face looked similar to . I did get one more run in but i boiled the tires and it jumped into second so i let out. This 3.55 OPEN rear end is starting to kill me with the cool weather we are having. Can't hook up for anything. Oh yea, the temp whe i run was around 50. There is no doubt what so ever that it would have went 9.40 flat but i left a good bit early b/c my girlfriend was getting too cold (high 9.30's weren't out of the picture either).

Mike T: You said something on a previous post of mine about upgrading my fuel system. What all would need to be upgraded or do you think it is nothing to worry about at this time? Also, the chip i have shifts around 5600 in 1st and 5500 in 2nd. I know the chip prolongs the shifts but if i let it shift at those RPMs, my times aren't as good as they are when i manually shift out of 1st at around 5200-5400rpms. I'm sure it is the same in 2nd too but i can't manually shift out of 2nd at WOT. To put it in english, the truck will and does "lay over" if it goes all the way to 5600. It will ocassionally go to 5700 too. What RPM are these chips supposed to be making the truck shift at? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

justin

 

HI!... JUST-RIGHT : Why can't you manually shift at WOT out of 2ND gea? I do it all the time. I never let my truck shift on it's own. I ALWAYS manually shift it. My truck is about 2-3 tenths faster in the 1/4 mile if I manually shift it. Also remember that the factory tacks are not even close to being accurate when at WOT. Most are off by about 300 rpm. Good times. When are you going to race on a 1/4 mile track?

 

Neal,

I thought the superchip made the shifts good so you dont have to manually shift it?

I try manual shifting, but when I switch from 1st to 2nd, it takes forever and I usually hit the rev limiter.

 

The SUPERCHIP does do a good job ...but Neal is a totally different breed of gearhead !!! heh heh.......I think he has his stuff set to EXTRA HARD and he's still going for more!!!! seen his video's DAMN !!! "have you driven a Ford HARD lately?"heh heh!!

 

Hi Justin,

Congratulations on your times!

On the shift points, the first thing to look at is your tach accuracy, as you can't *ever* get above a 5400 rpm WOT upshift point with our programs for these F-150's *unless* you maually hold it in gear past the WOT upshift point, we just won't set them that high, unless we have a signed waiver specifically. I seriously doubt that your engine is actually turning those rpms, your tach is just too optimistic most likely, we see that a lot in the late-model F-150 & many other electronic tachs in general.

We need to go over all of this over the phone, it's too much to cover here of course, so we should cover your fuel delivery system well as your WOT upshift points compared to ET's, etc., in detail with you, and we'll be happy to do that of course, please just give us a shout by phone when you can, ok?

Thanks, & keep up the great work!!

 

Hi Neal,

Your situation isn't like their's, they don't have the longtubes & exhaust setup or the race-built tranny & converter like you have. We do not advise shifting manually as you are to those with stock transmissions. You have far more modifications done to your transmission, you basically have a near-bulletproof 4R70W built for you there, and between that and your KILL exhaust setup front to rear, you can and are turning more rpms than these other guys should with their stock transmissions.

Over 95% of our customers leave the shifting to the Superchip, as that is how they run the quickest. We can dial yours in that way as well of course, and we need to get A/F's on your engine for final tuning anyway, so we can dial all that in at the same time too. Though I suspect you'll still always shift it manually anyway!

Have fun & talk to you soon!

 

Mike T: I figured from all of the talk on here already that the factory tachs are off. What i do know is this, by putting in the Superchip, it raised my WOT shift points about 300 RPMs. Not only does the digital tach say this, i can hear it rev a good bit longer. But on a question from Neal, is it possible to shift my transmition (stock) out of second gear manually before it usually would. If not then it revs too far. I need to somehow make it shift about 100-200rpms before it normally does. Shifting out of first a little earlier is no problem. But if you don't get to answer this on here, then i'll call ya as soon as i get a chance.

Neal: You probably think i am trying to make it shift at a higher rpm. I'm kinda trying to make it do just the opposite. I need it to shift a little but earlier because if i let it shift where it does now, then it lays over or you might say it just runs out of power until it finally shifts. Do you have any suggestions as to what would make me have more power up in the higher rpms. I had a chevy before this and i know they make a lot of power up top. Just wondering if you have any ideas of what would make it any better? I dont' know when i'll get to take it too a 1/4 mile track but i am hoping it will be within a month. I'll be out for Christmas holidays then. What does a 9.4 roughly calculate into in the 1/4?

justin

 

Hi Justin,

What the digital tach says (converting the digital odo in the 1999 & up trucks into various digital gauges) will be basically about the same as what the tachometer in the dash says, they get their signals from the same place, & we generally don't see much difference between them. Sometimes the digitals are even a bit slower to respond, but usually they're pretty close to what the "normal" tach indicates.

With regards to getting it to upshift a bit sooner on the 2-3 @ WOT, you can do that by shifting manually with a shift kit installed, but that's not always very consistent. If it's laying over on you, then we should adjust the WOT 2-3 upshift point (and maybe the 1-2 as well) in the program for you so it will give you the best performance just leaving it in Drive with the Overdrive turned off. That way you can focus on driving the vehicle & cutting a good light, and just let the Superchip take care of the WOT upshift points for you as it should. Give us a call to go over the adjustmetns on this, ok?

In terms of getting more power on the top end, basically you can forget about making more power above a true engien speed of about 5400 rpm *unless* you're willing to go to the expense of porting the cylinder heads & changing the cams. The cams are precisely matched to the cylinder heads, so a cam change alone won't get you anything, cylinder head porting and cam change is required to make good pwoer up there.

Neals' setup on his 5.4 is using our longtube headers, high-flo cats, X-pipe & dual mufflers, and that works very well for him in his setup, giving him more power *everywhere*, but it is very expensive, and still doesn't change the power peak by much, it's always going to be limited by the heads & cams.

The single easiest thing to do to get more power at higher rpms (remember, your power peak even with open intake & exhaust is only about 4900 to no more than 5000 rpm with stock heads & cams!) is to install a good X-pipe, as that can be worth as much as 15 HP in a mildy modded motor, and it will help on the top end as well.

The camshaft profile is the primary determining factor in where your peak power occurs, and you can affect that to a small degree with intake & exhaust mods, but not by a lot, you won't shift the power peak up by more than a coupla hundred rpm at best, unless you have the heads ported & new cams installed.

If you get a chance, give us a call & we can go over all of this with you in detail, we'll go over all your mods & where it's laying down now, and then we can adjust your shift points & make the recommdations on getting you more power up top as well.

Good luck!

 

hey man, to get your transmission to do what you want it to, just put in a good shift kit. factory shifting sucks a big one and i don't believe the chip does a lot for that. for example with my nitrous, even though the superchip tells it to shift out at 5200, it still wraps way past. so i put in the transgo and it knocks it out.
when i put the shift kit in, it started shifting at what it is SUPPOSED to shift at.

as far as getting more power up high, i wouldnt worry about that, your torque is down low and thats what you want man. that 5.4 doesnt do a whole lot past 5000 unless you are hard core.

while manual shifting works good, especailly with a shift kit, i never do it simply because i have too much else to worry about running nitrous. its inconsistent too....so my best advice is get the shift kit and don't worry about electronically controlled shifting. a wise man once told me the only way to make a transmission shift better is to change the parts inside of it

 

Hi Bullit,

Your point about the shift kit is indeed valid, I agree, but not because the Superchip "isn't doing much," as that's not the case at all; once the program sends the signal to the transmission, from that point on it's up to the *transmission* to actually execute the command correctly and on time. So it's very important to remember just what is actually responsible for what, and not blame the Superchip for the transmission's hardware issues.

As we can see in your own case, with no change to the Superchip's program, just the installation of the shift kit now has the transmission properly responding to the exact same commands it's been getting all along from the Superchip. What does that tell you? It tells you that the transmission was not flowing enough fluid *volume* quicky enough, thus the clutches couldn't fill quick enough & grab tight quickly enough especially when you threw the nitrous at it (which it was never designed to take) to prevent a drawn-out upshift, something the powertrain program has absolutely nothing to do with. And now with the shift kit in addition to the Superchip, there is no more drawn-out upshift, which tells me that your truck just happened to have a tranny that was not capable of flowing enough fluid volume, as now that this has been fixed, it's shifting right on time.

We have to remember, the Superchip cannot fix *mechanical problems.*

There are very significant production variances in these transmissions, especially the 4R70W's coming ot of the Livonia transmisison plant. The Superchip can't fix transmission issues such as failure to flow enough fluid volume or clutches that are worn, we run into that especially in older trucks that have significant mods & get drag raced, etc. We can only "bandaid" that kind of problem by altering when we send the signal to command the shift, we can send it earlier than it should normally be sent, and by playing around with that hopefully get the tranny to finsh up the shift before the truck noses over, but having that kind of scenario as you have described is not the failure of the Superchip, that tells you clearly that the problem is *mechanical,* and not in the Superchip.

To say that the Superchips does little for the transmission shifting it inaccurate, there's far more going on there than you may be aware of; it's removed the upshift delays, as well as the 8-15 degrees of timing retard and dialing A/F back to 16:1 during the WOT upshift that costs you 40+ HP in the 4.6 during that shift, just for starters! And none of that is corrected by a shift kit or a valve body change (though both of those mods can show nice improvements in shift execution times of course), only *program* changes can take care of those issues.

Installing the shift kit allows the transmission to be *capable* of doing what it's being told to do when it's told to by the Superchip, basically. Remember, the Superchip (actually, we should more correctly say "the powertrain program") can only provide the instruction, the *hardware* has to be able to execute, and in stock form, obviously your valve body just wasn't configured for flowing enough fluid *volume*, and *that* was the actual issue at root here in your vehicle. The clutches can't fill quick enough or grip quick enough, & thus the shifts get dragged out to higher rpms. There is quite a bit of variance in these transmissions, one tranny will shift much better than the next for example, the quality of the parts going in vary as well as the assembly quality varying widely, and that affects the results quite noticeably.

Ideally, we like to see both the Superchip and some form of mechanical modification done to the transmission, so that all those issues are dealt with for maximum performance. In your case, with your transmission, it was necessary to install the shift kit to make the transmission capable of doing what it was being told, basically. In this kind of situation, it's easy to form the opinion that "the Superchip isn't doing much" for the shifting, but that is actually in error. Though you couldn't see that until after the shift kit was installed, now that it's there, the tranny is now doing as it's been told all along, and working correctly.

The bottom line is, this wasn't an issue that was the fault of the powertrain program, nor could the powertrain program fix this problem; this was clearly a hardware issue that was resolved with the installation of the shift kit. The vast majority of our customers do not have any drawn-out upshifts, in fact, they get just the opposite result, the transmission starts shifting firmly & quickly for them. There are a few that don't get that result, either due to manufacturing or assembly tolerances or wear, or a combination of both. Sometimes a shift kit will take care of it, and sometimes it takes a proper rebuild. In your case, looks like you got lucky, so to speak, and the shift kit's installation was all it took to get your transmission responding correctly to it's commands, & we're just glad it's working correctly for you now, of course.

Have fun,

 

Mike,

I got my programmers yesterday! WOO HOO!

Two things:

1. You mentioned that it is your opinion to install a shift kit to compliment the Superchips program. *I* would love to keep improving the trucks performance, but my wife would not be very happy if the truck was a head jerker when she drove it (which is about 10% of the time but regardless

So, will the shift kit make the truck *hard* shifting? Do you sell shift kits to go with the chips?

Lastly, I couldnt be happier with your product! The shifts in my truck are so precise and crisp now! ........Do I need a shift kit??

ON a side note, at WOT shifts, there is a little ...chirp sound.. when the truck shifts. It sounds like it might be the belt slipping a bit. Im thinking this might be the case with the sudden change in rpm. What do you think? heard of this before?

 

Yeah it's the belt ..the GOODYEAR GATORBACK belt seems to be fixing this problem..i had the squeal too untill i changed the belt...

 

Thanks for the peace of mind roush

 

Hi Bikenut,

Glad you're enjoying the Micro Tuner, it's a way-cool tool to get more performance.

As long as you are happy with your shifts, then no, you do not *need* to go to a shift kit.

In high-performance applications, such as Neal's situation or the other gentleman I was discussing shift kits with who got prolonged shifts with the shot of nitrous oxide he was using, and in situations where the driver wants the transmission to shift hard & fast enough to chirp the tires on the WOT 1-2 upshift, *then* we do recommend installing a shift kit along with the Superchip, yes. It's also a good idea when towing heavy loads, as the Transgo shift kit fixes the program of the Overdrive band not getting enough fluid *volume* flow to it to allow the band to grip the drum quickly & tightly, and this is something that helps 4R70W's to live longer.

For most people, that isn't necessary. Yes, it is true that *ideally*, we'd really like to see everyone using both, simply because that is better for the transmission long-term, and that can be done without having an intolerably harsh shift characteristic during "normal" driving so the family isn't upset. In fact, with the Micro Tuner, you have the ability to adjust shift firmness levels for each shift individually, and so a lot of guys use them with shift kits.

Usually you can install the Transgo shift kit on Level 1 and use it in conjunction with the Superchip tuning and have nice fast & crisp heavy-throttle upshifts, while still having a relatively smooth light-throttle upshift, it's not hard to achieve that.

In my discussion in this thread with BullitMcQueen, it's a bit different, as he is drag-racing that truck and using nitrous oxide as well, so his transmission is taking a real beating. His problem was obviously that his particular tranny wasn't flowing enough fluid volume quickly enough to shift on time under the nitrous, and it's a good example of how these trannys can vary in their performance from the factory. All it takes is a little bit of variance in the strength of a spring or two, or a orifice sized a thousandth or 2 too small, and bingo, you have a tranny that can't flow enough fluid volume to perform as per spec, especially once some modifications to raise power significantly & drag racing are involved.

I wouldn't worry about installing a shift kit at this point, the Micro Tuner is doing the job as it sounds like your tranny is shifting very nicely with no long, drawn-out upshift behavior. I'd say just enjoy what you have, and only install a Transgo shift kit if you want it to shift fast & hard enough to actually chirp (spin) the tires on the WOT (wide-open throttle) 1-2 upshift, or if you're going to be towing heavy loads.

On the sound you are hearing during the upshift, as Roushfan correctly mentioned, that is simply the low-grade factory serpentine belt slipping, and this happens during a full-throttle 1-2 upshift. That is happening because the transmission is now shifting much quicker with the Superchips tuning, as well as their being significantly more power available during the WOT 1-2 upshift thanks to delays & retards being removed in the factory program, and so the serpentine belt slips for s second or so on the pulleys. This is very easy to cure, just install the Goodyear Gatorback serpentine belt, and we carry those in stock as well.

Have fun,

 

hey i wasn't trying to step on toes or anything, just saying that i been there and done that and i want to help out a good friend of mine (justin). if i can save him some money i wanna try and help. i'm just convinced that my shift kit did what i needed it to do. i'm sure the superchip does all that its supposed to do but in my case i had to do a shift kit to get my transmission to perform like i wanted it to. and also saying if i had to pick between putting in a shift kit and getting my chip reprogrammed i would put in the shift kit. i'm convinced the chip knows when to shift, its just that the transmission isnt executing it. so i think a shift kit would solve this problem the best.

even if he gets the shift points changed, he would still have a slipping transmission wouldnt he? then it would just rev higher in my opinion. but like i said i'm not an expert.