Anyone personally tuning their 6 liter?

Petro · Jun 1, 2016

Been reading the 7.3 tuning thread and have read several threads on guys tuning their 6.4's with MCC but have yet to see anyone doing it with a 6 liter. Is the software available at a decent price? Are they harder to tune? Just curious why I don't see anyone else doing it, would love to play with tuning both of my trucks.

Chatham036 · Jun 1, 2016

I personally tune my own truck.

Petro · Jun 1, 2016

Lol figures.

DiehardFordguy · Jun 1, 2016

Interested as well. Chatham, do you use SCT or does PHP have something sweet for 6.0?

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nighthawk285 · Jun 1, 2016

I have the software but haven't done any actual tuning on it yet....there's a steep learning curve that I want to make sure I at least partially understand before trying my hand.

scparrish · Jun 1, 2016

What's the worst that can happen....

Petro · Jun 1, 2016

nighthawk285 said:
I have the software but haven't done any actual tuning on it yet....there's a steep learning curve that I want to make sure I at least partially understand before trying my hand.

Which software do you have?

strokin6L · Jun 1, 2016

It's the Pro-racer Advantage III software from SCT

Powerstroke Man 6.4 · Jun 1, 2016

HP tuners has a nice software for the 6.0s also.

Extended Power · Jun 1, 2016

See...I'm not sure about this, but I thought that if someone tuned your truck, the tune was "encrypted" and could not be read by anyone else...to then make changes to it.
If you tune...you would be starting from scratch.
But I'm not sure....someone can clarify it, that would be greaaaat.

KCTurbos · Jun 2, 2016

When you buy the SCT pro-racer software they give you a "base file" but it is not very good. You are essentially starting from scratch.

SCT tuning for the 6.0 is "piss poor" at best. There is no boost table and no Pulse width table which is what most guys would use to tune the trucks. With no Pulse width table it makes it really hard to get your timing correct (timing is usually based off of RPMS vs Pulse Width). So with no PW table you are taking a huge shot in the dark for your timing table. You have to do a lot of "guess and check" manipulation to other tables to get the results you want.

I think this is one of the reasons that custom tuning is so big in the 6.0 market is because it takes a lot of time to get a "good" tune dialed in.

As nighthawk said... there is a HUGE learning curve when it comes to tuning on these trucks.

Petro · Jun 2, 2016

Hmm not was I was hoping to hear but I assumed there had to be a reason nobody was doing it.

Gearhead · Jun 2, 2016

There is a steep learning curve to diesel tuning. I'm still learning.....

I had a 6.0 truck with a procharger and 175% nozzles on hybrid injectors on the dyno the other day. I succumbed to the limitation of the stock ficm tune when I tried to clean up the smoke. If PHP were to release some custom tuning software for the FICMs I could sell the hell out of them.... having to do it the backwards way we have to do it now to both get max fuel and reduce the fuel for bigger nozzles absolutely sucks...

strokin6L · Jun 2, 2016

Matt...wouldn't the PHp ficm tuner for larger than 30% nozzles have helped?

Luke@MillerPerformance · Jun 2, 2016

strokin6L said:
Matt...wouldn't the PHp ficm tuner for larger than 30% nozzles have helped?

On its own, it's okay. You mix it with a custom tune and weird things start to happen. I fought with this on my '03 before giving up, doing a stock reflash on everything and loading my tune from Matt.

Hp tuners has talked about adding FICM flashing to their software.

Cmont33 · Jun 2, 2016

Also very interested in this. I do a lot of UDC tuning as well as EFI live with and hate that I don't have my own tunes for my personal truck. Does anyone have any insight on the HP tuners software?

strokin6L · Jun 2, 2016

Depends on who you have doing the SCT tuning. Been using ficm tuning with sct custom tuning since 2008 with no issues. Ran ID ficm tuning and even the PHP ficm tuner with ficm tuner for larger than 30% nozzles...again, zero issues. Eric has the tuning for my truck spot on. I tried TSD tuning with the same ficm tuning and truck ran like complete crap. Reason why I stick with Eric at ********** Diesel for custom tuning

KCTurbos · Jun 2, 2016

I LOVE my PHP FICM tuner made for larger nozzles. It helps the truck to run much cleaner down low. It is also great to able able to quickly adjust top end fueling.

My PHP FICM tuner works great with all my SCT tunes. I have only had one issue and that was from loading and running a bunch of High HP SCT tunes along with a HERCULES FICM tune. They ran great together but I think the tranny learned the more aggressive shifts for all the extra power. When I loaded up my econo FICM tune without changing my SCT tune it shifted a little weird afterwards and would not go away. All I had to do was reload the exact same SCT tune and go through a tranny relearn and it worked fine afterwards.

strokin6L · Jun 2, 2016

KCTurbos said:
I LOVE my PHP FICM tuner made for larger nozzles. It helps the truck to run much cleaner down low. It is also great to able able to quickly adjust top end fueling.

My PHP FICM tuner works great with all my SCT tunes. I have only had one issue and that was from loading and running a bunch of High HP SCT tunes along with a HERCULES FICM tune. They ran great together but I think the tranny learned the more aggressive shifts for all the extra power. When I loaded up my econo FICM tune without changing my SCT tune it shifted a little weird afterwards and would not go away. All I had to do was reload the exact same SCT tune and go through a tranny relearn and it worked fine afterwards.

Yup, noticed the same with mine. ID's and PHP Atlas 40 and economy tune made the truck run cleaner with less smoke. Personally, I'd never run a 6L without ficm tuning mixed with custom SCT tuning. Both tuning pair great with one another and helps alot.