pmor4243
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Recently placed an order for a Procharger HO Kit with a P1X for my 19 Mustang GT PP1 10 speed and have been looking into some tuning options while I wait for the kit to show up.
I had one of the reputable tuners tell me they would not tune the car with boost on pump gas (would only do race fuel or E85) due to the 12:1 compression. Didn't seem to run into this response from a couple of the other tuners I reached out to but it did prompt me to want to double check and make sure I'm not missing anything here.
I'm in Utah at roughly 4,500ft and we do not have access to E85, just 91. There are a few stations near me with good quality 91, which at this elevation I've been told is comparable to 93 in other places. I went with the HO kit due to wanting a modest increase in power on my purely street-driven car. So with mild power goals in mind (sounds like 550ish at the wheels max is what many with the canned tune were making), roughly 8psi of boost if Im lucky at my elevation, and a conservative tune, is it really that unreasonable to run this set up on pump gas? I am also completely fine with adding boostane or octanium to add in some additional safety. Seems strange to me that you could buy a brand new GT with a Roush blower on it and it more or less runs fine, but a low power Procharger kit in the eyes of this tuner on gas is a dumb idea.
I know there are always risks when adding power to a car not designed for it, but with that being said, am I really risking blowing my motor here if I decide to run it on pump gas?
Update (3/23/22):
I wanted to provide a quick update of where I ended up after this process and some things that I learned. I got a lot of good info from others in this thread with similar set up and that was very helpful.
I ordered the HO kit from Beefcake and got it installed on my 19 GT; the install was about as expected. Good directions are provided and nothing in the process is really hard, just time consuming. The HO kit I received did not come with any fueling upgrades and uses the stock fuel pump and injectors. This was one big area of confusion since just about everything I read said that no one would tune the setup with out injectors and at least a BAP. I talked with Procharger on this and with their stage one kit staying under 7 psi of boost, they say the stock fueling is fine. I ended up getting tuned by Wengerd and he had the same thoughts. I also found a handful of others on 18+ GTs that had done exactly what I was doing and did not run into any problems. At the end of the day, I figured that part of what I am paying with a custom tune is the feedback from them tuning hundreds of similar set ups an knowing what the system can and cant handle, so I trusted what Wengerd recommended.
This brings me to the tuning and arguably the biggest thing I contemplated in ordering process. I ordered the complete kit which included a tune from Procharger. My biggest concern with going the "canned" tune route was drivability issues especially with the 10 speed and I was actually ok with giving up a bit of power with a more conservative tune as long as the drivability was there.
Unfortunately the tune from Procharger was just not instilling a lot of confidence. The power was actually not bad and drivability was just fine, but after logging every singe drive after the install so I could see how the car was responding, the fueling was constantly off by quite a bit and I was seeing it go way rich in some areas and lean in others (particularly under boost). It all seemed like something was not scaled correctly in the tuning be that MAF or injectors, but the amount of correction the fuel trims were calling for had me actually chasing a boost/vacuum leak to make sure nothing was loose. After a few back and forths with Procharger (they did provide several revisions and were responsive) they ultimately said everything was good to go. Unfortunately there was very little change in the fueling between the first and last revision.
I ended up going with Wengerd on the tuning for this so that I wouldn’t have to be worried about losing the motor due to tuning. He confirmed that as long as I stayed under 7psi, he could tune the car just fine as is. We had to do one initial revision to get the MAF scaled correctly and with the first revision of that tune, the car was looking 100x better than it did with the Procharger tune. No more crazy corrections on the fuel trims and solid power across the rpm range. I had heard a lot of feedback suggesting that the Procharger tune would be conservative and safe, however, knowing what I know now, I would absolutely have gone with a custom tune out of the gate. It seems most do this for max power, which you definitely pick up some, however I was looking more for correct tuning for a more reliable motor. The Procharger tune had me constantly feeling like I was right on the edge of having some major problems. Wengerd's tune seemed to be right on the money and so far has been driving great. So keep in mind, this is all on the standard HO kit with stock fueling and my max boost being 6.5-7psi at redline. I did have to change the provided pulley to achieve that boost as the pulley that came with the kit barely yielded 4 psi at redline.
All in all, this set up has plenty of power to spin the 275s I have on the car and pulls strong just about everywhere I normally drive. Due to how the power comes on and since I have not gone too crazy on the power levels yet, it is pretty easy to put the power down. The 10 speed makes for a nice match to the power as it has the ability to constantly be in the power band if you want it to be but also has the ability to just put around like a normal car.
I had one of the reputable tuners tell me they would not tune the car with boost on pump gas (would only do race fuel or E85) due to the 12:1 compression. Didn't seem to run into this response from a couple of the other tuners I reached out to but it did prompt me to want to double check and make sure I'm not missing anything here.
I'm in Utah at roughly 4,500ft and we do not have access to E85, just 91. There are a few stations near me with good quality 91, which at this elevation I've been told is comparable to 93 in other places. I went with the HO kit due to wanting a modest increase in power on my purely street-driven car. So with mild power goals in mind (sounds like 550ish at the wheels max is what many with the canned tune were making), roughly 8psi of boost if Im lucky at my elevation, and a conservative tune, is it really that unreasonable to run this set up on pump gas? I am also completely fine with adding boostane or octanium to add in some additional safety. Seems strange to me that you could buy a brand new GT with a Roush blower on it and it more or less runs fine, but a low power Procharger kit in the eyes of this tuner on gas is a dumb idea.
I know there are always risks when adding power to a car not designed for it, but with that being said, am I really risking blowing my motor here if I decide to run it on pump gas?
Update (3/23/22):
I wanted to provide a quick update of where I ended up after this process and some things that I learned. I got a lot of good info from others in this thread with similar set up and that was very helpful.
I ordered the HO kit from Beefcake and got it installed on my 19 GT; the install was about as expected. Good directions are provided and nothing in the process is really hard, just time consuming. The HO kit I received did not come with any fueling upgrades and uses the stock fuel pump and injectors. This was one big area of confusion since just about everything I read said that no one would tune the setup with out injectors and at least a BAP. I talked with Procharger on this and with their stage one kit staying under 7 psi of boost, they say the stock fueling is fine. I ended up getting tuned by Wengerd and he had the same thoughts. I also found a handful of others on 18+ GTs that had done exactly what I was doing and did not run into any problems. At the end of the day, I figured that part of what I am paying with a custom tune is the feedback from them tuning hundreds of similar set ups an knowing what the system can and cant handle, so I trusted what Wengerd recommended.
This brings me to the tuning and arguably the biggest thing I contemplated in ordering process. I ordered the complete kit which included a tune from Procharger. My biggest concern with going the "canned" tune route was drivability issues especially with the 10 speed and I was actually ok with giving up a bit of power with a more conservative tune as long as the drivability was there.
Unfortunately the tune from Procharger was just not instilling a lot of confidence. The power was actually not bad and drivability was just fine, but after logging every singe drive after the install so I could see how the car was responding, the fueling was constantly off by quite a bit and I was seeing it go way rich in some areas and lean in others (particularly under boost). It all seemed like something was not scaled correctly in the tuning be that MAF or injectors, but the amount of correction the fuel trims were calling for had me actually chasing a boost/vacuum leak to make sure nothing was loose. After a few back and forths with Procharger (they did provide several revisions and were responsive) they ultimately said everything was good to go. Unfortunately there was very little change in the fueling between the first and last revision.
I ended up going with Wengerd on the tuning for this so that I wouldn’t have to be worried about losing the motor due to tuning. He confirmed that as long as I stayed under 7psi, he could tune the car just fine as is. We had to do one initial revision to get the MAF scaled correctly and with the first revision of that tune, the car was looking 100x better than it did with the Procharger tune. No more crazy corrections on the fuel trims and solid power across the rpm range. I had heard a lot of feedback suggesting that the Procharger tune would be conservative and safe, however, knowing what I know now, I would absolutely have gone with a custom tune out of the gate. It seems most do this for max power, which you definitely pick up some, however I was looking more for correct tuning for a more reliable motor. The Procharger tune had me constantly feeling like I was right on the edge of having some major problems. Wengerd's tune seemed to be right on the money and so far has been driving great. So keep in mind, this is all on the standard HO kit with stock fueling and my max boost being 6.5-7psi at redline. I did have to change the provided pulley to achieve that boost as the pulley that came with the kit barely yielded 4 psi at redline.
All in all, this set up has plenty of power to spin the 275s I have on the car and pulls strong just about everywhere I normally drive. Due to how the power comes on and since I have not gone too crazy on the power levels yet, it is pretty easy to put the power down. The 10 speed makes for a nice match to the power as it has the ability to constantly be in the power band if you want it to be but also has the ability to just put around like a normal car.
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