TheLion
Well-Known Member
- Thread starter
- #526
What altitude is SAE test? 1kft? It was a really good point as to why a stock car was putting down 303 ft-lbs at the wheels instead of around 280ish we would typically expect, but then again it could be a combination of that particular car, on that particular dyno at that very ideal altitude. If your saying the car is actually stock during the first dyno run then I have no reason to not believe you. Those numbers are pretty impressive then for the FP tune and not that far off from Livernois.91 and only 100-ish feet above sea level. I think it was in the high 90's that day.
It's like back when Cobra guys were popping motors after doing a pulley swap. They go out to Mexico or wherever and go bury the speedo in the top of 5th or 6th gear like when it was still stock. Too much heat expanded the pistons too quickly and you ended up with a toasted motor, even though they can hold 600+ hp.
I asked about the sound symposer if it was disabled.. but never got a solid answer back. I really can't tell. Maybe I'll flash the car back and take a drive with go pro with some comparisons.
Regarding your comment about the cobra guys, that's what you get when you push the limits, they either did not have adequate cooling or pushed the tunes too hard and didn't test under those conditions, hence the failures. That's one of the limitations of custom tunes, while you can push the boundaries, you also have a much higher risk of stepping over those boundaries as it's difficult to thoroughly and fully test under all conditions that car might actually operate under...then kaboom!
My cylinder head temps going WOT in gears 2,3, 4 and even 5th when the road opened up enough, up hill with another 200lb passenger in 91F ambient never went above 200F, which is 15 degrees lower than a bone stock car, however unlike most people on this forum I have significantly upgraded cooling. I'm running a large FMIC, a 2" Mishomoto Radiator and 160F thermostat. Most people stop at just the FMIC.
Interestingly enough however, summer isn't the most dangerous, it's actually winter. The very cold, high density ambient air produces much higher torque and power, consequently greater heat in the chamber. That's when people tend to throw rods, which seem to be the weakest link on the 2.3L where the pistons seem to be the weakest link on the 2.0L. This is one of the advantages of running software that has been thoroughly tested over a broad range of operating conditions and having that inside access to Ford's R&D Engineering department like the above mentioned big name companies. Yes, if your going to run reliably under such a dynamic range of conditions your going to give up some performance, but for a DD car I don't see why you would go any other route. For a weekend toy or track only car a specific tune makes more sense since your goal is to be the fastest you can be.
I think the whole point of Ford Performance, Livernois, Roush and Montune etc. is to provide performance boosts for street cars. Some of them do offer car specific tuning services as well for those who are interested in making a track car, but their "canned" tunes are intended to be a high performance version of the OE software.
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