Towing Tune
I'm glad to hear that the towing tune seemed to provide a better result this trip. I have tried a bunch of different options this summer towing since I got our travel trailer and I thought I'd share some ideas on what has worked best for me with you from my experience. I tow a 31' Coachman Captiva ultralight with my 06 supercrew 4x4 6.5' bed with 5.4 & 3.73's & 38k miles. I live in TN so basically tow at sea level or slightly above. The only mods I have are a gryphon and an MBRP exhaust. The difference between towing my camper stock vs. with the gryphon and exhaust on level 2 is extremely noticeable. The camper weighs ~5,700 dry and probably closer to 7,000 when we head out to go camping. The biggest difference I noticed with the tune is the improved shifting. I hated the stock shifting when it would downshift so hard at 60mph to 2nd gear. When the truck did that I'd just wanted to let off the gas and get back to a normal gear no matter how slow I'd be going at the top of the hill. I usually baby my truck and I hated having no idea how that was impacting my transmission/motor. I tried everything from varying my speed to using O/D to turning it off prior to hitting a hill or after I started up a hill. I just wanted it to pull the hill in in a gear at about 3k rpms as I felt that was the easiest on my truck and really could care less if I was only going 50 at the top of a hill. I was disappointed with my trucks towing ability prior to buying the gryphon and thought I had purchased too much trailer for an F150 even though Coachmen advertised pulling that exact trailer with a stock Ford Expedition. (I picked that trailer as I thought it would be easy on the truck compared to the 9k # fifth wheeler the dealer was trying to convince me buy b/c my F150 was rated to tow 9,100 lbs). Now that I've got the Gryphon all of that is behind me. On flat ground I can tow with the O/D on without any hunting and on most gradual hills it will just shift gears smoothly (from about 1800 rpms to 2300 rpms) and pull the hill without a problem. If I'm going up a long/steep hill I'll let it shift to the 2300 rpms and then turn the O/D off. The rpms climb to 3000 and I can pull any hill at 65mph. On a recent trip from Bristol back home I pulled up the plateau which is about a 6-7mile nonstop incline at 65mph without any issue. Tranny temp got up to 186 and it was 92 degrees. I'm not sure why, but if I let it shift up one gear to around 2300-2400 rpms and then turn off the O/D to get the rpms up to about 3000 - 3200 it pulls much better than if I just go from 1800 rpms or so and turn off the O/D. I'm sure someone on here can explain that, but I don't have an explanation for that.
I just got my custom 87 towing tune from Bill as well as my custom 93 towing tune. I'll let you know how those work as soon as I get a chance to tow the trailer which should be in the next couple of weeks or so. If the custom 87 performance tune is any indication I will be very happy.
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