How far we've come with tuning.

[Power Hungry]

Originally Posted by wolverine724

I've enjoyed my time working at Ford. For the trans calibration, I was pretty happy with it completely stock. I still know a lot of the 4r100/5R110/6R140/10R140 trans calibrators so I also know who to gripe to! I'm just assuming with all the engine and trans hardware changes I'm doing I may want to end up tweaking some things. I have a co-worker in the aforementioned calibration area who ended up putting a Suncoast triple clutch converter in his 7.3 Excursion and said the lockup was really harsh. His locked to locked 3-4 shift was also bad enough he ended up calibrating out his 3rd gear lockup, which I'd rather not do since I tow a lot with my F-350. I can't remember which company's friction plates he went with, but I'm going with GPZ clutch plates and a DPC triple plate converter, so when I get it all put together in the next few weeks I'll see how good or bad it feels. I've seen some of your posts where it looks like you have quite a bit of tuning experience with current hardware. I may need to pick your brain, as my experience is limited to OEM hardware and calibration tools, which in this case - RCON/VDAS, J3-buffer boxes, are long gone! I do have some binaries, definition files, and a pretty good understanding of what things do what at least

Phil...

To start off, I will say that it's quite interesting to see someone with your experience and pedigree in this setting. I've dealt with many Ford calibration engineers in the nearly 24 years I've been tuning, and most of them have had a great disdain for what we do and wouldn't be caught dead near anyone that does aftermarket tuning. Of course, I've also dealt with some really cool folks and they have been able to contribute time and knowledge to helping people like us to provide the best product possible to our customers. (Without resorting to anything that would be considered unethical, I might add... )

At one point in time, I had RCON/VDAS5 and a J3 Buffer board. I still have copies of the software and pics of the J3 Buffer board (photo), although the device has long since been lost to history.

When I started working at Superchips in early 1997, we were using Racelogic emulators with modified chips (photo) and some very clunky, HEX based tuning software. When those emulators dried up, we switched to the Romulator emulators, still using the same modified chips. Tuning software evolved from standard HEX editors into full 2D/3D Mapping software, which we now sell as Minotaur. It's sort of like ATI Vision in some sense, only the GUI is more refined. Over the years, I've acquired a number of VRF files (old RCON stuff) from which I was able to extract the mapping of the RAM and ROM parameters and was able to turn those into some pretty solid definitions. This is what we still use for tuning today.

Emulators have changed considerably, and now we sell a chip-style emulator (manufactured by Moates Technologies) that integrates with our Minotaur software and allows for live tuning of the vehicle, much like the old RCON/VDAS setups. Using other tools, we can map and datalog RAM data directly (MUCH faster than calling PIDS for data), and includes data that is not accessible via PID (like Start of Injection) and a few other useful values.

As I've said, I've been tuning Fords for nearly 24 years and have a specific focus on the Power Stroke Diesel. I love this platform and really enjoy being an active part of the 7.3L Diesel community. Of course, I've also worked with the EEC-IV, Power-PC (MPC-555/556), and Tri-Core stuff as well, but I still love the simplicity and flexibility of the EEC-V. The live emulation is also a bonus. I do also have a full Dev PCM for the 6.0L Black Oak (photo) series using the ATI hardware and Vision software, but don't get it out of the box much. Of course, the old VRF files gave way to Vision A2L files, and this is what all the newer stuff is based on, but we still like to use Minotaur for the basic tuning so we now convert these over to our definition format.

We completely understand your limitations and certainly don't want for you to put yourself in any position that would be deemed questionable. As a technology company, we also understand the need to keep things confidential. With that said, we have an exceptional understanding of the workings of the EEC-V PCM, at least as how it applies to the Power Stroke, and I think we would be able to have some really good conversations in regards to tuning without putting you in a compromising position. I definitely have suggestions on how to address the excessively harsh 3-4 shift w/converter lock as my Excursion has a heavily modified transmission with aggressive friction clutches (I can't remember the brand, but similar to what's used in the 6R140 if I'm not mistaken) and I've dealt with those issues.

Anyway, it's good to have you with us and I hope that you'll find us to be not only knowledgeable, but personable and friendly as well.

From one engineer to another, welcome to our humble forum.

Merry Christmas!