Rough running with updated FICM

[sonic blue l]

I think you guys need to estabilsh a base line.

To do that you will also need to know what ficm version you had stock. The first inductive heating flash worked well at combating sticktion, however it supposedly causes ficms to fail. (hard to say for certain as i've replaced bad ficms that never had the induction strategy in the first place) Ford then came out with a softer ficm strategy.

Lets say you had a truck that had sticktion so bad it would start and stall, if you updated it with the original ficm inductive heating, it would usually fix the concern. Now lets say you program that truck with the later updated ficm strategy, well now it still starts better then the start/stall, however you will have misfires when cold due to it not combating sticktion aswell as the original inductive heating strategy.

So now if you had the early inductive heating or have a ficm with the original inductive heating and comparing to php ficm with the later inductive heating, then your not comparing apples to apples. Now if your ficm was the later inductive heating and your comparing to the php, now one can do a proper comparison.

BTW personally i feel your truck should run great before you start adding or reprogramming as if it does not, you may just be compounding the problem.

[sonic blue l]

Originally Posted by NHRA6002

Yes the truck was put back to stock befor taking it back to the dealer. And yes I have updated the software from Edge 2 or 3 times now as directed by GR at Edge. I have been in contact with Edge trying to remedy this if it is an Edge hardware issue also.
It is frustrating to spend the time and money on a programmer and FICM tuning just to have a stock truck with digital gauges. And now with this latest Ford flash the further worsening fuel milage.

The latest flash should not worsen fuel milage at all, infact the truck should be nicer to drive then the other versions and have increased fuel milage.

My truck had the vxcf5, vxcf7 and now the vxcf9, my truck runs perfect on the vxcf9 and has plenty of power. In fact im just running it stock.

I also have an evo and i updated it for the vxcf9, but i have not installed it yet, so i dont know if i would have any issues like yourself.

How does your truck run stock? If it does not run perfect stock, then you should probably address any of the conerns you may have stock before trying to modify anything.

[eabrust]

Originally Posted by sonic blue l

I think you guys need to estabilsh a base line.

To do that you will also need to know what ficm version you had stock. The first inductive heating flash worked well at combating sticktion, however it supposedly causes ficms to fail. (hard to say for certain as i've replaced bad ficms that never had the induction strategy in the first place) Ford then came out with a softer ficm strategy.

Lets say you had a truck that had sticktion so bad it would start and stall, if you updated it with the original ficm inductive heating, it would usually fix the concern. Now lets say you program that truck with the later updated ficm strategy, well now it still starts better then the start/stall, however you will have misfires when cold due to it not combating sticktion aswell as the original inductive heating strategy.

So now if you had the early inductive heating or have a ficm with the original inductive heating and comparing to php ficm with the later inductive heating, then your not comparing apples to apples. Now if your ficm was the later inductive heating and your comparing to the php, now one can do a proper comparison.

BTW personally i feel your truck should run great before you start adding or reprogramming as if it does not, you may just be compounding the problem.

Hi Sonic,

I couldn't agree with you more about knowing what we have and what we're starting with for comparison purposes. I do have a pretty good handle on what configs have been run in my truck, and what works vs what doesn't. I'll run through quick just for documentations sake, maybe it helps figure out the problem some how in the end.?

I'm the second owner of an '06, I bought it last July, so this is my first winter.
Based on the oasis report I pulled after buying it, the truck had never been in the shop for anything engine related... however I can't confirm what ECM and FICM strategies were when I got the truck. About 1 month after I had the truck, one injector died, and after that warranty work, the truck was returned with the VXCF7 ECM and FICM updated per TSB 9-7-11. Truck ran great, and I must say I could tell no difference in power/driveability from the truck I originally bought. During this period in the summer, I was running 15-40 dino oil, and could take off after startup immediately with no problems anytime (no apparent injector stiction issue).

So then I decided I wanted to try the FICM update, I bought a spare FICM, the seller claimed it had latest update in it per TSB 9-7-11 when I bought it. After getting it, I put in my truck and ran it for a full week plus before sending it into PHP. During this time, the truck ran no different than my stock FICM. All seemed good (no apparent stiction issue), off the FICM went to PHP.

Upon return (with PHP tune), in goes the modified FICM, start up and the truck chugs/lopes and smokes like a pig. Mind you, it's still August and the ambient temps are still in the 80s-90s here. Truck ran great with PHP FICM once hot, but I can't sit and wait 10 minutes everyday for the thing to smooth out, and it was obvious that it chugging on startup was dumping fuel and killing my mileage. Is it purely injector stiction, or something else? I don't know, so... Out with the PHP FICM, in goes stock, no problem, runs great. Out with stock, in with PHP, problem is back. I pull the access covers off both, verify both FICMs have 48VDC output. I give up on the PHP FICM for time being and shelve it (to wait for updated software per messages I've had back and forth with Bill).

So now as winter approaches and temps drop, even running stock starts to show some injector stiction/rough start issues (but not anywhere as bad as the PHP FICM was on hot days in summer...). By this time, I have an Edge Evo, I find that running the truck tuned with the Evo level 4 (with stock FICM) makes the truck start worse than with stock ECM strategy (VCXF7 still). So I revert back and pretty much ran stock all winter. I did switch to 5-40 synthetic in mid winter, and notice an improvement in how much warmup time it takes for truck to run smooth, but it wasn't a complete solution, as I still had a few minutes of warmup or about 1-3 miles of driving before the truck would really settle in to running smooth. That's basically where I'm at now.

So I'm still completely stock tuning wise (my EVO is at PHP to turn into a Gryphon), and I'm running the oil additive 'stuff' which is to clean out and solve injector stiction. For all intensive purposes today I can hop in my truck in the morning (30s-40s), and go immeadiately with no real wait or warmup.

I still haven't gotten back to the PHP FICM, perhaps in another week or two assuming truck continues to start great, or upon return of my Gryphon, I'll give it another whirl. However, I still don't have much hope, I have a gut feel that there is something just wrong with the updated FICM program that just isn't working with what ever strategy I had going. NHRA has basically taken the FICM hardware out of the equation, as he reflashed over the PHP tune with a Ford program to solve his problem. I'm confident on my situation also about the hardware end, as I tested voltage and ran the FICM a week before sending off. Seems it is a software glitch of some sort.

Long winded, I know, just trying to layout the facts as I know them in an effort see if others have the same issue (with same strategies?) and to get a positive resolution (ie, updated FICM tune that solves my startup issues). Maybe in the end it takes the Gryphon, with a custom tune by Bill, working in conjuction with his updated FICM software for the truck to run great. If thats the case, great, I can't wait to try it out !! I know for some, the issue is a big problem if they only have one FICM. For me, I'm rotating between a stock and tuned FICM, so I'm not hurting to bad. I'd just love to start using the tuned FICM for all the benefits it is supposed to bring!

NHRA, if you have any of the background knowledge of what strategies you had or have been through during the time you had the PHP FICM (and prior), could you share just for comparison sake?

regards,
eric

[sonic blue l]

well thats a pretty good comparo you have then. If you had switched to vxcf7 then you should have had the later ficm program. I cant quite remember when it came out but the best would be to check it with an ids, or something else that can pull that info to be sure.

If your truck ran fine with stock ficm vs php ficm then it does sound like the php tuning is at fault. What im wondering is how your truck runs with ficm correction disabled on the stock ficm. Thus if it was running how the php ficm does, then one may question if the php ficm drops ficm correction, or has a problem with it.

On a truck with no sticktion and good injectors disabling ficm correction should make minimal to no difference in how the engine runs, thus if some have great results with php ficm and others, not so much. Then perhaps there is an issue with their ficm correction portion or their inductive heating portion.

The thing that i also wonder about your truck is that, i've had my evo on my truck in cold weather -30 c, etc and i never had any problems on the vxcf7. Of course i had my truck plugged in when ever it droped below -15c and i run 5w/40 oil.

I'm actually debating about getting a download for the php ficm, my truck has the vxcf9 currently. I also have a ficm out of a 04 truck that i might put in and try first though. It has no inductive heating, but it may also be so early that it may have pilot injection (not sure if thats in the ficm or not). Just need to find someone who knows how to decipher what ficm cal amz2al09 is.

[Corey Cohron RIP]

This is definitely not my realm of expertise, so I will make sure that Bill sees this thread when he returns from Utah.

Just FYI... we had a customer send his FICM to us to be reprogrammed. Immediately upon re-installing the FICM, the truck ran worse! As it turns out, it had nothing to do with the FICM itself (I believe it was an injector issue); it's just that with a different FICM calibration, the problem became apparent. I can't remember which customer it was, but he posted about the situation on www.powerstroke.org. I'll search and see if I can find that thread.

Edit: Found it! http://www.powerstroke.org/forum/6-0...-question.html

[NHRA6002]

Thanks Cory

I sent a pm to Bill a few days ago, but have not heard anything so far. I hope we can figure this out as I don't even want to drive the truck the way it is.

[eabrust]

Originally Posted by Power Hungry

I'm in the process of redoing the latest strategies since there seems to be a timer issue with some of the code we modified causing the I/H portion of the strategy to either not engage long enough or possibly not at all. I am expecting to get in touch with 2 of our testers this week with new strategies and hope to have this issue resolved for good.

Take care.

Just wanted to give a bump and pick Bill's brain on if there was ever a bug confirmed in the FICM software that would cause the I/H (inductive heat) strategy to not work right? Sorry Bill, I know you're trying to get un-burried, just curious as it's been a while since you said you'd possibly be testing updated FICM programs.

Since weather has been getting nice here, and my truck is currently boring (set to complete stock since the EVO is at PHP to get Gryphon-ized), I put my PHP tuned FICM back in.

After playing with it the last few days over the weekend, and call me crazy, but I'd almost swear that the truck fires up OK and idles for maybe a whole second before it starts loping and smoking (yeah, I know a second is almost to short to actually tell, but....). Almost seems as if I/H works for a second then it quits? Like I said, call me crazy. All I know is this afternoon after leaving from work, I pulled the tuned FICM back out because I can't sit and idle/warm up for 5 minutes on a nice sunny 60degF day, blowing blue smoke and watching the fuel gauge drop.

There's no doubt once the truck is up to temp, it runs super great and I definitely feel a difference over stock FICM, but my truck is one of those that 'needs' the I/H to work

I'm hoping that if a new rev of FICM software is ready, when my Gryphon comes back I can try out the remote FICM programming

regards,
Eric

[NHRA6002]

Originally Posted by NHRA6002

Thanks Cory

I sent a pm to Bill a few days ago, but have not heard anything so far. I hope we can figure this out as I don't even want to drive the truck the way it is.

Why do I get the feeling of being ignored with the problems I have had with this upgrade, and that I payed for something that has caused more harm/money down the road than good?

[Jeremy]

I'm sorry this has taken so long, I posted a note in the moderators section to get Bills attention, hopefully he can come up with a solution for you and others. I'm sure he did'nt ignore you on purpose.

[Power Hungry]

In order to save retyping, please see this thread...

http://forum.gopowerhungry.com/2003-...when-cold.html