Tuning 101 - Thread Merged with Injector Posts

[mandkole]

Charles, im surprised you cant get help from php on this minor issue-- even if you had to pay a little something.

I am of the same opinion as Charles, in that the losses in revenue would probably be miniscule with all of the other platforms that guys also tune out there. These trucks are such an old platform that this is just the kick in the pants it needs.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

We all agree that our needs are minor in the world and we wont ruin the business by sharing experiences or getting some help 'for free'.
However;
- what makes this minor, is also what makes those who are the most dedicated to the 7.3 for income hold on tightly to their info and they wont participate in the forums.
- the current 7.3 tuning community believes they know what is necessary to know and no more effort is being put in unless being paid.

This thread came 10 years too late-- everyone realizes the self tune needs now and look at how quickly CR tuning threads popped up.

Guys, we're on our own but lets keep going.

 

[TyCorr]

Id help more but I dont depend on my truck everyday. Its parked, dismantled inside, and its been snowing and cold as ***k here. Not the best time of the year for me to jump in to tuning although id love to.

 

[sootie]

Hey Charles, don't know if this would help your cold start questions...

http://powerstrokearmy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31194

there are some good posts in there from Golfer on manual pcm cold start issues.

 

[cleatus12r]

Irrelevant....especially with him in Georgia and when automatic PCMs in the same truck do the same thing in much colder climates than that. (my experience, not his).

 

[Charles]

On the advice of nearly everyone, I took a long hard look at the "Fuel Pulsewidth Multiplier" and found that it was not stock, as well as one other thing unrelated to cold-weather cranking.

After putting this table to stock, the truck smokes easily half what it did, if not less right off the bat, and stops smoking entirely in most situations I've noticed after running a while. The sound out the tailpipe is totally different as well. I would like to put the truck on the scope and see what is ACTUALLY being changed, aside from pulsewidth, and to what degree.

This same table seems to also have held the key to how the truck idled and felt after up to temp. A strange thing I noticed was that in this same table, as the engine approached operating temperature the values that up to this point had been dropping toward 1.00, start to rise again, to notably higher values down near idle rpm. From what I saw today..... cutting these values off once they hit 1.00 near operating oil temp had a dramatic effect on making the "injectors" run the same once up to temp as they did cold. I think I may have found the reason trucks want to start running ragged suddenly as they come up on temp. They get tossed too much pw because of a multiplier, specifically as they climb past 150 or so degrees F.

I'll keep noting how the truck runs daily, as it may change once we have some warmer weather again, but today the truck was perfectly the same from a cold start, all the way up to operating temp in terms of idle. The only thing I changed tonight was to keep the stock values (above 1.0) at ICP values above idle, as the truck actually lost power once up to temp today as the multiplier settled down to 1.0. Pedal went flat and the truck took a lot of right foot for the same result.

Near as I can tell, the table works much, much better stock, but..... the injectors aren't ACTUALLY varying in their operating nearly as much as that table is compensating. The injectors are damn near constant in output from operating temp down to pretty low temps. It doesn't seem to be until the oil starts looking like a breakfast syrup that they seem to need a little help.

If this file pans out I'll upload an updated version for AEB.

 

[Charles]

Driving to work this morning I feel pretty good that this is working the same as it seemed to yesterday. Last night I captured the values at around 150 or so degrees where the break over point seemed to be where points beyond started climbing again, and pasted those exact values all the way out to the 290 or so degrees the table stops at.

This has totally cured the changes the truck (and every other truck I've worked with) from running worse fully up to temp than they do when they are midway warmed up.

It also seems to have cured the issue of beating on the engine a little, then coming back to idle and having the truck run ragged. I'm starting to think that was all a function of the EOT rising after you run high power and pushing you into these moronic pulsewidth multiplier values, running your minimum pw too high. With the truck fully warmed up (driving for over 45 minutes) I nailed it full power (lifting for shifts obviously) up to around 90mph and when I came down to idle at a red light the truck was just sitting and purring like a 5.9. I have NEVER had that happen.... EVER.

Could have been coincidence, but the truck is just driving so consistent right now after making this change day before yesterday. I think this may be more self-inflicted drama manufactured by a keyboard jockey. The injectors don't seem to actually vary in operation. The only variance I'm seeing is the table purposefully put in place to change injector operation as the truck warms up.

Lastly.... all diesel engines need starting fuel allowance for cold weather. Not just Heui injectors. My little Deutz I built on my irrigation pump has a little push button that slides the rack for additional starting fuel. Can't blame that on thick oil...

 

[mandkole]

What was your observed cold starting PW with the old multipliers vs. the new ones? Did you check or measure that?

 

[Strictly Diesel]

How about some before and after screen shots of the table?

 

[Charles]

How about some before and after screen shots of the table?

I can't open the files on this desktop, no tuning software. Can you do multiple machines with the same license?

Otherwise, when I'm at home where my laptop usually sits, I'm running full speed doing other things.

 

[Charles]

What was your observed cold starting PW with the old multipliers vs. the new ones? Did you check or measure that?

I'm thinking about trying to locate some of the 42 pin connectors and making a small breakout box that will feed a video signal into my head unit like a backup camera where I can have live timing, pw and icp on the lcd like a huge tuner monitor.

Because the values the scanner gives me don't really mean anything to me. Scope or nothing. The PCM is a habitual liar.

Besides, the laptop has to be in the truck, hooked up and connected to the obd port to use it. By the time it's hooked up and not flaking out every 10 seconds and disconnecting I've usually forgotten why I even cared, or what I wanted to see.

 

[PsdPullerJr]

What's your thoughts on setting the multiplier table to 0 across the board and usin te pulse width table to control or do you think the multipliers are needed for cold weather and cold oil?

 

[brewer]

the values the scanner gives me don't really mean anything to me. Scope or nothing. The PCM is a habitual liar.

What do you mean by this?

Without trying my hand at tuning yet - Is there anything in the OBS PCM's that would make any of these tuning strategies/adjustments have to be different? (i.e. not having the same multipliers, maps, etc.)

 

[Charles]

What's your thoughts on setting the multiplier table to 0 across the board and usin te pulse width table to control or do you think the multipliers are needed for cold weather and cold oil?

Zero wouldn't work, the universe would implode.... but 1.00 would.

I would actually like to do that if it weren't for the fact that aside from that table and the "adder to pulsewidth multiplier" table, there's no way to achieve a starting fuel allowance that doesn't also translate into more fuel when up to temp.

If you bomb the program with tons of pulsewidth, this is a non-issue. The truck smokes like a train and cranks fine no matter what. If however you set the pulsewidth correctly for the power you intend to make and the truck sprints around clean.... it won't have enough available fuel to crank quickly and reliably in cold weather. It's like having no choke on a gasser. No way to increase the fuel FOR CRANKING ONLY.

And yes.... there is an "Adder to pulsewidth multiplier". Yes, that is a modifier table, to modify a modifier table, that's modifying a table.........

:doh:

I wish the fuel pulsewidth multiplier table was simply EOT vs RPM, then the problem would be solved. Cranking fuel out the wazoo and nothing more.

 

[MeTo]

Charles, I would like to thank you for your time and perseverance.

I have owned my first truck and diesel for 3 months now, I'm 58. So, I don't know
much about them. I do have a few years (~30) in IT.

Much can be achieved mucking around with tables and such. Is it possible to take tuning
to "Stage 2" by tweaking actual code? I would assume the code is in machine? But as for Ford's proprietary considerations, would they care if technological ancient code would be "massaged" a little? If so, one could reverse engineer the code and insert a conditional subroutine in to manage specific parameters until say eot has reached a given value? Control would then be handed back.

I have read this entire thread, IMO, I don't believe enough money is involved here to motivate Ford into placing anyone into purgatory for making THEIR truck run a little better?

 

[bluedge8]

Charles, I would like to thank you for your time and perseverance.

I have owned my first truck and diesel for 3 months now, I'm 58. So, I don't know
much about them. I do have a few years (~30) in IT.

Much can be achieved mucking around with tables and such. Is it possible to take tuning
to "Stage 2" by tweaking actual code? I would assume the code is in machine? But as for Ford's proprietary considerations, would they care if technological ancient code would be "massaged" a little? If so, one could reverse engineer the code and insert a conditional subroutine in to manage specific parameters until say eot has reached a given value? Control would then be handed back.

I have read this entire thread, IMO, I don't believe enough money is involved here to motivate Ford into placing anyone into purgatory for making THEIR truck run a little better?

Good post, just a little clarification, we are not talking about Ford helping at all, but people on the forum that have "tuned" these pcm's meaning modifying what Ford gave us. Also there are quite a few professional tuners that will write you tunes based on their knowledge of this platform.

 

[Charles]

Good post, just a little clarification, we are not talking about Ford helping at all, but people on the forum that have "tuned" these pcm's meaning modifying what Ford gave us. Also there are quite a few professional tuners that will write you tunes based on their knowledge of this platform.

He's talking about changing not the variables Ford wrote in, but the functional code itself that is running the engine.

And yes, it's doable, it's all in hex as far as I know.

And no, nobody at Ford is going to care what 5 people do with a 7.3 now or ever.

I wrote code that totally bypassed the PCM one time and ran the fuel delivery from my own code on a stand-alone piece of hardware put together, installed and run in a race truck by others. It was so nice KNOWING what the fuel was doing. It would be much easier for me to make my own PCM than to reverse-engineer theirs if that kind of time and effort were available, and I still cared that much.

I'm now sitting here wondering if curiosity and desire to have what I want to happen actually HAPPEN when I say would ever motivate me enough to build my own PCM....

It's possible. The PCM has an easy job. Dead easy. It's the IDM that's tricky, and integrating with it has already been done and the code is sitting in my file cabinet right now, lol.

 

[Charles]

This file cranks confidently and quickly. Only been 15 degrees here so far, but it cranked immediately.

Idle has been smoothed some more and generally the engine is more tame still.

Still PMR's and stock trans with 300/200's as the setup this program is written on.

 

[Charles]

This file cranks confidently and quickly. Only been 15 degrees here so far, but it cranked immediately.

Idle has been smoothed some more and generally the engine is more tame still.

Still PMR's and stock trans with 300/200's as the setup this program is written on.

 

[Gearhead]

Don't forget about the injector delay table.. it also compensates for changing mechanical delay due to oil viscosity.

 

[Charles]

Okay..... got some REAL good cold weather testing.

On top of Beech Mountain at 5,506' right now.

Yesterday, temp was 19 with 32mph wind, do NOT underestimate the power of wind!

With my tables set up at 4ms of pulsewidth and 2500psi for cranking the truck would sputter along but not lite off.

I had to crank the pw multiplier at that temp so that my final output pw was 6.5 before the truck would spin and WACK... crank right up with a ball of black out the pipe.

Fast-forward to this morning. Same elevation, but temp was .5 and winds were 32mph. At 6.5ms of pulsewidth the truck would not even sputter.... nothing out the pipe!

I had to max the pw multiplier at 3.05 IIRC, and then toss in another 1 at and below 650rpm for a total multiplier of over 4, and a total pw of over 8.5ms before the truck hit and fired off with another roll of black.

This is with the truck not plugged in, just sitting out in the yard getting bombed on the top of the mountain. And I mean TOP..... about 100 feet away is the sheer cliff off the back to the little town in the valley below.

Reason for all the pw multiplier is that my max pw value in the file is 2.12 for full power with a 200 nozzle on a PMR. So for cold weather cranking, you waste a massive amount of pw just letting the oil get in and actually fire the injector. In contrast, at the same cranking icp for a stock AEB file, the pw is over 3.5ms. So the stock multiplier gets you plenty of fuel. I had to crank them up because multiplying 2.12 is hard to get up to 9 or so ms.