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GT350 FORScan Tweaks

Spart

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Actually as Spart previously stated, you do NOT want to blindly change an entire as-built line of code without knowing what you're doing. While you might want to just change a single thing, switching the entire code will change multiple things, potentially causing unwanted results. However trust worthy your source is, posting an entire code from another car is not the correct answer to making changes.

I would HIGHLY recommend that everyone spend some time in the as-built thread over in the DIY forum to understand what each bit of code modifies prior to making any adjustments on your car. If you don't, you could end up causing yourself more trouble than happiness.
Exactly this. The part in that spreadsheet about the fake engine sound would be better served like this:

Engine Sound Enhancement

727-01-01 xxxx xAxx xxxx Enabled
727-01-01 xxxx x0xx xxxx Disabled

Though judging by the F150 spreadsheet (keeping in mind the ACM shares configs and might even be the same part) the correct digit for disabling that without affecting anything else may be 8 instead of 0, since 0 apparently has some effect on the tweeters as well.

This is a much simpler and more concise way of communicating these mods.
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Actually as Spart previously stated, you do NOT want to blindly change an entire as-built line of code without knowing what you're doing. While you might want to just change a single thing, switching the entire code will change multiple things, potentially causing unwanted results. However trust worthy your source is, posting an entire code from another car is not the correct answer to making changes.

I would HIGHLY recommend that everyone spend some time in the as-built thread over in the DIY forum to understand what each bit of code modifies prior to making any adjustments on your car. If you don't, you could end up causing yourself more trouble than happiness.
Exactly this. The part in that spreadsheet about the fake engine sound would be better served like this:

Engine Sound Enhancement

727-01-01 xxxx xAxx xxxx Enabled
727-01-01 xxxx x0xx xxxx Disabled

Though judging by the F150 spreadsheet (keeping in mind the ACM shares configs and might even be the same part) the correct digit for disabling that without affecting anything else may be 8 instead of 0, since 0 apparently has some effect on the tweeters as well.

This is a much simpler and more concise way of communicating these mods.
Who said anything about blindly changing information? I was providing historical context for the information conveyed in that spreadsheet. Many in this section of the forum have used this information successfully.

If you take the time to read through this thread, you’ll see there’s the same cautionary statements similar to what you repeated above. In addition, making copious notes, taking pics of the computer screen and printing out your AB info were also discussed as ways to correct if mistakes are made.

I am not arguing the format described above is the preferred way to convey this information.
 
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Spart

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If you take the time to read through this thread
The exact problem. Most users won't. This thread is almost 50 pages, the main S550 as-built thread is almost three times that. Just the failing of the forum format for disseminating info like this. The spreadsheet, being an often linked resource, will be one of the things that most users hopefully see. But they'll probably see it without context. Some of us who have been working at this stuff for quite a while will immediately recognize that the entire line of as-built isn't what's responsible for changing the one desired thing, but somebody with fresh eyes most likely will not recognize that.

ETA: Also take note that my original statement on the topic was offered as advice to someone new to this stuff who was asking for "a comprehensive list of the available changes", and my followup posts merely rebutting people who took exception to my advice. I'm not trying to demean your efforts.
 

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The exact problem. Most users won't. This thread is almost 50 pages, the main S550 as-built thread is almost three times that. Just the failing of the forum format for disseminating info like this. The spreadsheet, being an often linked resource, will be one of the things that most users hopefully see. But they'll probably see it without context. Some of us who have been working at this stuff for quite a while will immediately recognize that the entire line of as-built isn't what's responsible for changing the one desired thing, but somebody with fresh eyes most likely will not recognize that.

ETA: Also take note that my original statement on the topic was offered as advice to someone new to this stuff who was asking for "a comprehensive list of the available changes", and my followup posts merely rebutting people who took exception to my advice. I'm not trying to demean your efforts.
Most of the time it's more subtle even than that. People using Forscan have latched onto the hex values as having meaning, and they don't. It's just a way to compress binary values into less space, but it's the binary values that actually control things. Replacing a hex value with a different hex value is still not precise enough. Every bit does something, so changes are actually "add 2^(n-1) to the existing value" in order to flip the nth bit from off to on without affecting the other bits.

That's what makes AsBuiltExplorer so useful - you see bits as well as byte values.
 
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Tank

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The exact problem. Most users won't. This thread is almost 50 pages, the main S550 as-built thread is almost three times that. Just the failing of the forum format for disseminating info like this. The spreadsheet, being an often linked resource, will be one of the things that most users hopefully see. But they'll probably see it without context. Some of us who have been working at this stuff for quite a while will immediately recognize that the entire line of as-built isn't what's responsible for changing the one desired thing, but somebody with fresh eyes most likely will not recognize that.

ETA: Also take note that my original statement on the topic was offered as advice to someone new to this stuff who was asking for "a comprehensive list of the available changes", and my followup posts merely rebutting people who took exception to my advice. I'm not trying to demean your efforts.
No need to go on with this, I appreciate the work you and others have made to further knowledge in this area. Do you know if anyone has determined whether Forscan can enable OEM Diff Cooler Pump operability in a ‘16 Base/Tech GT350?
 

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...Do you know if anyone has determined whether Forscan can enable OEM Diff Cooler Pump operability in a ‘16 Base/Tech GT350?
I have little doubt that there's a bit somewhere in one of the modules that will turn this function on. Pretty much everything else that's different between the two vehicles has been found, so this challenge will be solved eventually too.

The real problem is finding someone who will spend the time doing it. It's days of painstaking work for someone with a combination of reverse engineering skills and motivation to find the solution. That's how I figured out how to make the four-way flasher toggle switch and the exhaust mode switch work on the Sync3 upgrade to my 16 Track Pack.
 

Spart

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No need to go on with this, I appreciate the work you and others have made to further knowledge in this area. Do you know if anyone has determined whether Forscan can enable OEM Diff Cooler Pump operability in a ‘16 Base/Tech GT350?
Do you know if the pump is triggered by the PCM somehow?

I don't know anything about the issue and I don't have a car to test with, but FORScan has added a PCM vehicle data relearn function. The way I understand it, it triggers something that normally happens when you initialize a PCM to a car. I don't know what the equivalent function is in IDS, and I don't know 100% what goes on, but I do know that when you change your tire size in the BCM, you need to run that relearn for the PCM to pick up on it. Even though the BCM is what determines how the car "knows" what size tires it has, the PCM reads that info and stores it separately for it's own use.

We don't know what other info the PCM is reading and storing during that process. Just a thought.
 
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I like to disassemble things.
That's how I figured out how to make the four-way flasher toggle switch and the exhaust mode switch work on the Sync3 upgrade to my 16 Track Pack.
Now that you've admitted it publicly I'll respond in kind. Thanks for the legwork you did as you helped me to complete in entirety the factory 8" nav conversion I did on my '16 Track Pack.
 

Spart

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Most of the time it's more subtle even than that. People using Forscan have latched onto the hex values as having meaning, and they don't. It's just a way to compress binary values into less space, but it's the binary values that actually control things. Replacing a hex value with a different hex value is still not precise enough. Every bit does something, so changes are actually "add 2^(n-1) to the existing value" in order to flip the nth bit from off to on without affecting the other bits.

That's what makes AsBuiltExplorer so useful - you see bits as well as byte values.
Oooooookay.

The hex values definitely do have meaning.

Replacing a hex value with a different hex value is definitely precise enough. It's exactly as precise as flipping one binary bit.

This is because each hex character directly corresponds with four binary bits, and those four binary bits directly correspond with one hex character. In binary, there are sixteen possible combinations for a four digit number. There just so happen to be sixteen hex digits. That's what hexadecimal means. So there are no extra bits in there that the hex can't account for, by definition. All possible binary values can be represented with hex values.

But just to test the premise: 0000 in binary is 0 in hex. 0001 in binary is 1 in hex. 0010 in binary is 2 in hex. 0011 in binary is 3 in hex. No magic here, just counting in different bases.

Aha! say the numerologists. The difference between 0 and 2 in hex is actually the difference between the third binary bit being on and off!

Well, maybe that's right. All data is stored in binary eventually. Maybe the software that looks at those values is actually looking at the positional binary value. But it doesn't matter. Even if you're able to understand that each of the four bit values for a given hex value turn on and off four different things, you're no better off than if you had just mapped the sixteen hex values to the sixteen possible combinations of four on/off switches.

It double-extra doesn't matter because we've got to use hex to set the values in the first place. This is how FORScan does it and that's because it's how Ford does it.

One of the systems I recently programmed makes use of a base 30 number system for human-readable serial numbers with the final digit being a Damm algorithm check digit to prevent transcription errors. Not entirely unlike Ford's system for as-built! Of course, when you get down to it in the database, those serial numbers are transcribed to integers in base 10, not base 30 and the check digit is absent because it's not necessary at that point. And if you dig a little deeper, those integers are being stored as a number of bytes... which if you dig a little deeper, are translated eventually to bits. Where you're at in that process of base conversions doesn't really matter, the value comes out the same.
 

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Do you know if the pump is triggered by the PCM somehow?

I don't know anything about the issue and I don't have a car to test with, but FORScan has added a PCM vehicle data relearn function. The way I understand it, it triggers something that normally happens when you initialize a PCM to a car. I don't know what the equivalent function is in IDS, and I don't know 100% what goes on, but I do know that when you change your tire size in the BCM, you need to run that relearn for the PCM to pick up on it. Even though the BCM is what determines how the car "knows" what size tires it has, the PCM reads that info and stores it separately for it's own use.

We don't know what other info the PCM is reading and storing during that process. Just a thought.
I won’t pretend to know this stuff for certainty but I have dug a bit into it. I’ll get back into it in a few weeks. Thanks for your perspective and suggestions.
 

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Spart

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That's how I figured out how to make the four-way flasher toggle switch and the exhaust mode switch work on the Sync3 upgrade to my 16 Track Pack.
Now that you've admitted it publicly I'll respond in kind. Thanks for the legwork you did as you helped me to complete in entirety the factory 8" nav conversion I did on my '16 Track Pack.
I'm not sure what leads people to keep this kind of stuff to themselves. Maybe it's hope for some kind of monetary gain like OEMRadio (Jesse) or to protect those like him.

Either way, what you guys are talking about has been public knowledge for a while, and it sucks to see that people still don't want to be open about this stuff. There's no reason that benefits the community (that helps you in return) to keep it a secret.
 

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Do you know if the pump is triggered by the PCM somehow?...
I'm blessed with having a lot of tools. I have the SCT pro racer package to tune the PCM, I have IDS to do things by the (Ford) book, and I have Forscan and AsBuiltExplorer to hack things in the as-builts.

From studying this problem a bit, just out of curiosity, I sincerely doubt that the decision to run the pump is made in the PCM. There are no settings in the SCT Pro Racer package that say anything about controlling a cooler - they're all engine related. That's probably why folks like Lund couldn't make it work either. They can work magic with the engine, but the actual control for the pump is probably in a different module.

I'd be looking hard at the IPC and the BCM.
 

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I'm not sure what leads people to keep this kind of stuff to themselves. Maybe it's hope for some kind of monetary gain like OEMRadio (Jesse) or to protect those like him.

Either way, what you guys are talking about has been public knowledge for a while, and it sucks to see that people still don't want to be open about this stuff. There's no reason that benefits the community (that helps you in return) to keep it a secret.
Let's be clear on this. Jesse gave me a spectacular level of customer service when I did my upgrade. Way above and beyond. So I paid him back by giving him something he could use. He's a small businessman trying to make a go of it in a challenging industry. I don't support the idea of an internet forum putting people like him out of business. That's not in my dna.
 

Spart

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Let's be clear on this. Jesse gave me a spectacular level of customer service when I did my upgrade. Way above and beyond. So I paid him back by giving him something he could use. He's a small businessman trying to make a go of it in a challenging industry. I don't support the idea of an internet forum putting people like him out of business. That's not in my dna.
I actually tried to give Jesse my money and he was unresponsive for months on end.

I also see now - with my own DIY Sync 3 swap in the rear view mirror - that he used these forums as a source of info on as-built mods without giving anything back, and countered with disinformation tactics to make people (myself included) believe that only he had the keys.

The reality is that he was hacking on the same stuff we all were. The info was out there to be found by anybody, and we did end up finding it all.

I'm not saying that a business can't claim information is proprietary. That's fine if you're under an NDA with that business. But you have to accept that people can independently find the same information. I also don't share your opinion of his ethics, apparently.
 

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Oooooookay.

The hex values definitely do have meaning.
From working on this stuff, it seems to me that each module is programmed by (mostly) 40 bit blocks of individual bits. For ease of presentation, Ford and Forscan present them as 10 hex values. But inside the module, each of the 40 individual bits does something that's different from the other 39.

For example, if you have a series of four bits "0000" (hex "0") on the car you're testing on and you find that you an turn on a function by flipping bit 3, then you end up with ("0010" or hex "2"). (I know I'm counting from the wrong end - it's convenient, though).

For this example, what usually gets presented to the public is "put a 2 in this location to get this function". But what if the settings on a specific vehicle start with "1101" or hex "D"? If someone follows the directions and changes their "D" to a "2", they're flipping all of the bits in that block of four, and it might work fine, or not.

Hence my statement that hex values don't have meaning. They're a convenient way to present binary values, and every individual bit is a special snowflake.
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