A Question for Bill
 

Sorry Bill, I know you're busy, but something I saw in one of your posts on another forum makes me curious.

Are the tuning files you create checked for errors after being loaded into the Gryphon? This is something that would/could be done by Pegasus, I think.

I believe it was a fueling map for a diesel engine that had weird spikes in it that got me thinking about this potential problem.

- Jack

For those of you who don't know about the post to which Jack is referring, I'll give you a little background. There is another tuning company who is fairly well known for damaging 7.3L engines. For a few years, there have been posts on various forums about their 80 Economy file, which seems to be the one people are running when their engines go *BOOM*. :bomb: Some people have speculated (many rightfully so!) that there was something wrong with the file. As it turns out, this file has crossed Bill's desk on different occasions. (Knowing of his vast experience in the tuning industry, people have asked him to look at their files and give his opinion.)

Bill found an inherent problem with the 80E base calibration from which custom calibrations had been created. He tried to let this other tuning company know about it; however, we were abruptly told to mind our own business.

After yet another thread about the 80E issue had been created, Bill finally explained what he had observed about the faulty file. The owner of the tuning company still hasn't contacted him about it -- we doubt he will, but one of his dealers did, so we assume that the problem is being fixed. Since Christmas Eve, that post has had over 15,000 hits, if that tells you how important the issue about this file is to 7.3L customers! :omg:

As for our own files, I know that the canned calibrations are verified before we send out the programmers ('cause I do that part!), but I don't know exactly at what point Bill does it for the custom tunes :shrug:, so I will let him answer when he has a minute.

And, to clarify my original post, I'm not concerned about errors in the files created by PHP. While we're all human and CAN make mistakes, I have full confidence in Bill's skill and care when he develops his tunes.

What DOES cause at least mild concern are possible errors induced by either the download process from the server to Pegasus in our PCs, or, another possible source of corruption that could happen as the files were written into the Gryphon.

I know there is some kind of error checking such as LRC or CRC performed during the server download process, so I'm not too concerned with the server download either. But, does Pegasus check to see if the file it is uploading into the Gryphon was actually written correctly?

I seem to recall some kind of "checksum" validating going on in the Gryphon when it finally prepares a file for upload into the PCM (or am I imagining something here)?

Hope I haven't caused any misunderstandings with my question, and thank you Corey, for contributing.

- Jack

We perform a number of validation and safety checks, including checksums for data transfers, in order to make sure that the files we send are not corrupted. About the only place we could possibly have a problem (outside of messing something up in the files as they are being built) is if the tuning software was to become unstable and cause a file to not be saved correctly and we didn't catch it before compiling. However, I think that is a pretty remote possibility.

I know it was brought up in another thread about the possibility of the device not being programmed correctly, but our evidence suggests it was a calibration fault, not a defective or improperly programmed device.

Take care.

Ah, I see - you were being very "diplomatic", as usual. :) Those were pretty horrendous spikes though! :yikes2:

There was another thread in the f150 forums that is now locked, because the OP just couldn't shut up, that complained about an E85 tune from Troyer that was performing very poorly in his truck. The OP finally said that Mike had sent him new files that cured the problem and that the original files had become corrupted somehow. (At least I think this is what he said - some of what he was saying was not too clear). ;)

So, that post on top of the one Corey has mentioned here that I also read made me wonder just how easy it would be for a file to get altered in some manner sometime before the PCM was finally written. I wasn't losing sleep over it, but was mildly curious. Thanks for answering, Bill.

- Jack