Hi Guys,
I'm sure someone here can help me and I did some research and can't find any info on this. Got a guy at work with an 09 FX4 and due to our current weather (-40C at night) he leaves the truck idle quite a bit while he's working. I asked him to make sure he was using the high idle and of course he had no clue what I was talking about. Problem is that he does not have the upfitter switches in his truck so how would he go about hooking up the high idle? I'm sure someone here has done this and I'm sure it's not really hard but am not sure where he would start. I assume the PTO wires run the same under the dash without the upfitters and just simply need a power source, or is it more complex than that? I was going to take a look for him but as I'm sure you can understand at these temperatures the less work I do outside the better. Any help would be appreciated.

 

I've never done it but I'm pretty sure it'd be much like you suggested.

I'd think you could pull 12V from nearly anywhere since it's simply a signal line to tell the PCM you want high idle. If it were me I'd wire it to the interior instrument panel lighting. Therefore whenever the truck is sitting with the parking brake engaged with the parking lights on it'd be at a high idle. Whenever the parking brake wasn't set or the truck was going down the road it would have no effect.

Never done it, though. Maybe someone will chime in who's actually pulled it off.

 

12 volt power source, 3 amp fuse or circuit breaker, toggle switch and proper color coded hi idle wire for your year vehicle. All of the permissives are already built into the scheme of things from the factory. Don't over engineer something as simple as a light swich.

 

Thanks for the info guys, the weather warmed up a bit and I finally got around to hooking this up. I bought a simple toggle switch, attached it to the PTO wire and then tied into an existing power and ground wire under the dash. Took me about 10 min and works like a charm. I'm sure there is a better way to do it to make it use it's own fuse but this way worked just fine and saved me time while working outside.

 

Nice job. It's very nice of Ford to make it so easy. Sounds like you need to get your friends to check out FTE too.

 

Just for reference - you can wire the PTO hot all the time since it only activates when the parking brake is engaged. I have mine wired to the upfitters but I leave the switch on 24/7 during the winter so its no different than having it hot wired.
I guess there is a little advantage to having the toggle switch for example if you were backing a boat down the ramp and set the brake, got out to untie it, etc. and didnt want the high idle to kick in. But I think 95% of the time it wouldnt be an issue if were always hot.

 

Yeah you are right rushejj, I think anyone that has a Ford should be on this site. The amount I learned since I joined and the headache and money I saved is worth it's weight in gold.

And thanks for the info caprang, I thought about that as well but I like the idea of being able to control it. A basic toggle switch doesn't take up any room so it just seemed easier to me to do it that way. I was also smart and tied into a constant power source so that if my friend uses his remote start the high idle will still work. With key power it would only work with the ignition on and would take away the benefits of having a remote start.