2018-2019 Ford Performance Ecoboost Tune Released

[FreePenguin]

2

I've been watching these engine failures. They seem to really have the same failure mode. They are catastrophic. I believe several factors are causing it, but, I see this and now believe the biggest one is LSPI.

I told myself I wouldn't do it, but, I decided to become an Amsoil user. They just have the best protection against it. I'll just pay the extra $100 per year in oil changes along with the extended range Mobil1 oil filter. Probably need to look into that Ford catch can as well.

I don't know how yours is 100 bucks,

its 10 dollars a quart for amsoil signature, and 14 for the amsoil filter. it came out to like 70-80 dollars for me shipped to me. I am going to personally run this sig+filter for 15k miles and do a test on the oil analysis myself.

I did install the ford catch can, I intend to check it every 5k miles.

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[krack999]

2

I don't know how yours is 100 bucks,

its 10 dollars a quart for amsoil signature, and 14 for the amsoil filter. it came out to like 70-80 dollars for me shipped to me. I am going to personally run this sig+filter for 15k miles and do a test on the oil analysis myself.

I did install the ford catch can, I intend to check it every 5k miles.

Yeah, that's what I paid. I'm going with Amsoil Signature as well. However, I decided to go with the Mobil1 exteneded oil filter. It had a high pressure rating and was able to hold a lot of filtered debris. I know the oil pressure is high in these cars on startup. It just makes sense. I plan on running this combo for 10k miles. So far the Ford dealer has been changing my oil (Motorcraft synthetic). I'm also going to change the MT-82 to BG SynchroMesh II. Gotta improve that transmission.

 

[Cardude99]

I've been watching these engine failures. They seem to really have the same failure mode. They are catastrophic. I believe several factors are causing it, but, I see this and now believe the biggest one is LSPI.

I told myself I wouldn't do it, but, I decided to become an Amsoil user. They just have the best protection against it. I'll just pay the extra $100 per year in oil changes along with the extended range Mobil1 oil filter. Probably need to look into that Ford catch can as well.

Same here I use amsoil for that reason too. Cheap insurance

 

[FreePenguin]

Yeah, that's what I paid. I'm going with Amsoil Signature as well. However, I decided to go with the Mobil1 exteneded oil filter. It had a high pressure rating and was able to hold a lot of filtered debris. I know the oil pressure is high in these cars on startup. It just makes sense. I plan on running this combo for 10k miles. So far the Ford dealer has been changing my oil (Motorcraft synthetic). I'm also going to change the MT-82 to BG SynchroMesh II. Gotta improve that transmission.

my transmission shifts like butter when warm, like 10000X perfect. but it only shifted great when I got a hybrid barton 3 installed, it fixed the notchyness and everything. Now it can have one notch each shift in freezing weather, like less than 50* til its warmed up, but after a few minutes, she's butter baby smooth.

 

[PTM5.0]

May I ask how much a crate engine is? Incase mine blew up. How much to get installed and everything?

I'd have to go back through my receipts but if you do a search for my posts, I know I posted the cost. I wanna say the crate engine was $3,200 and $2,500 to instsll? I almost ordered a built longblock with upgraded turbo but I just couldn't bring myself to stick that kinda money into the car.

Not sure what you mean by "over the air," but I'm also confused by @PTM5.0's situation. I also thought all Ford Performance tunes were the same, so I'm unsure how you can get a "bad" one. It's also often referenced as the "safest" option, as it's reported to be somewhat on the conservative side. I'm wondering if there wasn't perhaps some other defect at play that happened to coincide with the tune, or for whatever reason was exacerbated by the tune. I think I would have explored it further, before dropping in a new engine out-of-pocket, but I understand that it's his daily driver, and obviously he chose to absorb the financial hit.

First, it was a bad tune for sure. Logs showed it wasn't adding any fuel at all or pulling timing when going into boost. Remember I drove this car from the STL area to Myrtle Beach for vacation and back without any issue. Literally as I got back into town, the tune got flashed and it popped one week later with less than 100 miles since the tune.

Second, i have three daily drivers and quite a few weekend cars. This car was parked the entire time I was waiting for my crate engine to be delivered. I opted to buy the crate engine out of pocket because the engines were already backordered for 5+ months due to so many other failed engines needing replaced and I didn't want to have a long drawn out fight to get it replaced under warranty which could have caused the car to take even longer to get fixed.

Bottom line is you gotta pay to play. I shouldn't have ever decided to mess with the wife's weekend car. I should've left it stock but I didn't and I wrote the check to fix it.

 

[shogun32]

Literally as I got back into town, the tune got flashed

are you suggesting that a new tune got applied to the ECU without deliberate action on your part? Or that the laptop downloaded a new file from FP and you didn't realize it had self-updated and when you went to flash the car it was a defective release? Sounds like a cut and dried case of a FP negligence in releasing a bad file and they owe you a refund on the engine

 

[PTM5.0]

Btw I want to give a huge thanks and shoutout to Eric Brooks at HP Tuners for personally unlocking my ECM and uploading a stock tune file to it after the FRPP tune locked my ECM and destroyed the original stock file.

 

[PTM5.0]

are you suggesting that a new tune got applied to the ECU without deliberate action on your part? Or that the laptop downloaded a new file from FP and you didn't realize it had self-updated and when you went to flash the car it was a defective release? Sounds like a cut and dried case of a FP negligence in releasing a bad file and they owe you a refund on the engine

I'm saying we downloaded the FP tune to the laptop, uploaded it to the car, and the last logs on the FP tune showed that in boost there was no added fuel or ignition timing pulled out. The FP tune also destroyed the stock file and locked the computer. If Eric Brooks at HP Tuners hadn't been able to unlock the ECU and upload a stock tune file to it, I'd have had to buy a new ECU also.

 

[shogun32]

The FP tune also destroyed the stock file and locked the computer.

that is one royal f-up by FP. Or some kind of pathological data corruption during download or during flashing the ECU, that was not validated before declaring success.

 

[TicTocTach]

So I found the folks at the local dealership that are willing to install the FP tune on my '18, but I still don't have a great feel for how well they really understand the process. Big part of the issue is that the sales guy selling the service is not the technician doing the work, and I haven't been able to talk with the technician yet. Is there a thorough walk-through of the process out there that I can compare to my instructions to make sure I'm not missing anything? I've seen some of the videos on the LMR site, but those don't have much detail... I also understand that I need to bring my laptop with me so that the stock tune can be downloaded to my computer to be available in the future if I ever go back to stock.

So far, I have created my FP account & downloaded / installed the software, but I haven't done anything beyond that. If I'm getting the job done this week, is there anything else I need to do on my end before my appointment?

 

[stratocaster]

Follow up from an earlier post of mine back on 4/26/2019 regarding getting ping after the FP tune install. I currently have about 14,000 miles on the car. First oil chance was at 7,500. Second oil change at about 13,500.

I tried various types of gas and finalized on using Shell. The ping was minimized - but not eliminated. The ping could be gone - sometimes for many, many days - then all of a sudden on WOT it would be back as I feathered or backed off the throttle. There was no rhyme nor reason to it.

I'm limited to 91 octane, and did not want to use an octane booster.

I considered colder plugs. I bought them, in fact. But I never installed them. I was told stock plugs should work by FP (though the dealer recommended colder plugs).

I installed two FP oil catch cans on both the turbo and pcv side to minimize the potential of oil droplets causing pre-ignition.

I couldn't reflash the tune to set octane adjust - that option was disabled.

I had considered putting the original stock tune back in, then try to re-apply the FP tune and see if octane adjust was then enabled. Never got that far with it.

I submitted and received an oil analysis - no apparent engine damage could be detected from the sample. In fact, I was told the engine break-in was proceeding nicely. As a side note, there was no oil in the turbo catch can and perhaps 3 or 4 tablespoons worth on the pcv side after about 6,000 miles. I don't race the car - just a few WOT from time-to-time as circumstances allow.

Then I tried something I should have done first thing - I checked the spark plug gap. These were all factory gapped plugs, and they were all wrong. Spec is .28. All plugs were gapped somewhere between .30 and .31. After correcting the gap I've put about 200 miles on the car and haven't had any ping. Time will continue to tell, but so far I'm optimistic.

Unfortunately, I disconnected the battery before I started to pull the plugs as I thought I'd need to pull the coil wiring off the coils first. Turns out that wasn't necessary. But I don't know if disconnecting the battery threw a wildcard in there.

 

[TicTocTach]

Got my tune installed today at the local dealer - the same one that wasn't sure they could do the job when I first asked about it 8 months ago, but asking someone else found that they have a pretty active accessory division who could handle it. Took a little over an hour, mostly because the tech had problems with my account & PW for the login, but I was able to walk back and enter all that myself. The car runs pretty well - I drove it around 20 miles after the job to make sure nothing glaring was wrong, but I didn't really pound on her. I'm also not sure if I got the stock tune back, so I need to check on that tomorrow so I can go get it if it's missing. Fingers crossed.

 

[TicTocTach]

OK, I was finally able to get back to the dealership and retrieve the file that was downloaded to the tech's laptop. Took 45 minutes of talking plus a 2 minute walk back to the accessory service area to get the tech to bring his laptop out to me outside (wouldn't let me in this time), and then it was like "OK, I'm telling you it's not on the machine, nothing downloads to the machine, show me where it is". So, I followed the instructions in the Procal download and found my file in 15 seconds. Downloaded it to my flash drive and brought it home to store in a safe place. However, the downloaded file is exactly the same as what I pulled from the car yesterday when I went back through the connection process.

At this point, I'm wondering just what the hell I got done... Here's the filename of what I have:

JR3A-FPMEA-UJ1_<VIN_NUMBER_OF_CAR>_24D6.pc3 Size of the file is 6,030KB

Again, the file name and size is exactly the same for this file that I pulled from the tech's laptop and what I downloaded from the car yesterday.

From what I read in another Procal thread, the "stock" file should be about 2x the size of the Procal tune file because the stock tune is copied entirely into the Procal tune and saved to the HD. I kind of think the tech downloaded the Procal tune and then somehow didn't install the tune to the car. How can I tell for sure if this is the case?

Thanks in advance... TTT

 

[krack999]

I have to tell you... my dealership apparently did not know what they were doing when they installed the FRPP kit. They got the intake right and the licensing correct. However, they just connected the dongle to the car and said it was programmed. I remember driving 20 miles and thinking to myself, that there wasn't a difference.

Sure enough, they did not program the car at all. At that point, I didn't say a word, I just downloaded and programmed the car myself. I took the stock file and put it on my google drive and on a thumb drive in the glove box. I have the receipt showing that they performed the job in case any warranty issue comes up. It was honestly the best situation in my opinion. You will know right away by how the car drives whether the FRPP is installed.

 

[TicTocTach]

I have to tell you... my dealership apparently did not know what they were doing when they installed the FRPP kit... You will know right away by how the car drives whether the FRPP is installed.

Im hoping that’s the case here... the car’s performance is pretty much the same as before as far as I can tell. If I can get some feedback on how large the stock tune and FP tune files are for the 18-20 cars, it Will give me another datapoint to compare. I may just try to DL the FP tune file later this AM and see what I get.

I figure as long as I have the receipt from the dealership, I’m golden.

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