Bill @ PHP rolled mine back to VXAM7N2.

 

For years I've had 10 tunes from one SCT vendor/ company for my trucks strategy.
Currently returned the Truck to stock and just made the change to Innovative's tunes. This will be interesting to see what the difference is between different companies that offer SCT tunes.

Still unsure if I need to change out my original flash of VXCF0XX.

 

I was kinda hoping he would chime back in at some point.

 

Have you noticed any changes in performance, mileage, etc that can be directly attributed to the roll back?

 

I did atlas 40 at the same time and it improved about 2 mpg.

 

I don't remember, but apparently there were some shifting issues with certain flavors of VXCF0 or VXCF1. My opinion: If ain't broke, don't fix it.


If your truck runs awesome and yields good power and fuel economy, leave well enough alone.



Ford overwrote it for a number of reasons, two of which you happened to hit the nail on the head....


Due to type of fuel available at the time the EGR valve and EBPS would clog because of the 500ppm low sulphur diesel available at the time. This would cause the truck to buck, stall, and sometimes not even start because it relied heavily on that sensor (and the MAP sensor) to determine fueling and boost. After talking to one of the engineers who originally wrote the PCM and FICM software (for Ford and Navistar) from pre production to the end of production, he advised that Ford would sometimes have them use software to fix a hardware problem. Ford making the EBPS inferred, was a way to save money on warranty costs.


With the Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel available today, soot and particulates clogging the EBPS are MUCH less frequent, so depending on how you drive, you may need to clean it once a year, if that...


As for the headgasket issue...


These trucks made incredible power when they were first released. I was there during the early days of the 6.0 and guys were reporting 15-17 mpg in town and as highway mileage in the lower 20s. Bone stock, some people would blow headgaskets all because of QC and QA issues at the Navistar plant. One such example came from the injector debacle: After doing some research they found that C93 (IIRC) injectors were defective due to a flaw in the design. This eventually got to the top brass and once they were able to figure out which engines were affected, they grabbed anyone with a set of hands, and had them changing injectors. More often than not, they weren't torqued correctly and/or O-rings were damaged during installation which led to a lot of warranty concerns for Ford. Headgaskets were because more often than not, they had customers who had a tuned or chipped 7.3 and loved it, so they would tune or chip their 6.0. Well....this would lift the heads over time since truck was already making an incredible amount of power stock. So again, Ford wrote the power back some, to prevent heads from lifting from people either programming their truck or towing too much of a heavy load.


They also did something else when they scaled back the power some...


As I previously mentioned, injectors were always an issue with the 6.0, the main cause being stiction. If an injector developed stiction with the early strategies, the PCM and FICM did very little to compensate for it and you knew if you had a bad injector. With the latest strategies, Ford introduced inductive heating for the FICM. What this does is it preheats the injector coils, simulating a hot start (generally 150 degrees EOT) until the temp actually got to 150 degrees EOT, then it was turned off since the injectors no longer needed the "hand holding". While this promotes great cold starts during the winter, it has another effect that worked well for Ford, but not the consumer: it covered up stiction and compensated for bad injectors.


It covers up stiction because it preheats the injector coils, sitction is blatantly obvious during a cold start. So a customer who has stiction and is under warranty, gets a truck back that starts great in the cold winter. Problem solved with software as opposed to hardware. The hardware solution is to replace the injector since there really was no way to fix stiction until 2006 when Lubrication Specialties developed Hot Shot Secret. (even then, no one knew much about it and didn't trust it) The latest versions of the PCM and FICM work together to compensate for weak or failing injectors using one of two strategies


How does this happen?


-Lets say that injectors 1 and 4 aren't able to keep up with the demand of fuel as commanded by the FICM (the gatekeeper of fuel). It makes one to two injectors on opposite sides of the bank overfuel to make the crank spin faster, effectively making it easier for weak injectors 1 and 4 to keep up.


-If the situation is worse and you have 3 or more injectors failing, the FICM takes note and brings the other 5 good injectors down to a level the 3 failing injectors can properly operate at without misfiring. This leaves you with a truck that runs great, but gets crappy mileage and has low power. It's not until you hook an IDS to it and turn off FICM compensation where each injector gets an equal amount of fuel, that you see the bad injectors. The worst part about this is that the PCM strategy is programmed to keep it's mouth shut until you hook the IDS to it. It won't even throw a code. I saw this on my own truck last winter when my #6 injector failed.


Fast forward to today, we have solutions like Archoil 9100 and Hot Shot Secret that clean the stiction off the spool side of the injector and eliminate stiction. So the need to have inductive heating (to me atleast) is no longer required. This is why I run a non-inductive heating flash on my truck and run 5w40 (almost not needed) during the winter to help with cold starts. Even so, running AR9100 with even 15w40 has produced great cold starts in the dead of winter, so as far as I'm concerned, having a non-inductive heating flash, is a non-issue.


Per the others VXAM7N2 will serve you well tuned or stock for a 2003 truck. Per Bill at PHP, it's the most stable, trouble free, and powerful flash that still yields good fuel economy provided you have a healthy fuel system and injectors.


Depending on how you plan to use your truck, the Atlas 40 will serve you well also. For example, if you plan to rarely tow with your truck and plan to leave it stock, the Atlas 40 works well. However, if you tow heavy regularly or even occasionally, you'll need gauges, specifically and EGT gauge to keep an eye on things per PHP. This is more so true if you tow with a tune, again, depending on the weight.


More often than not, the Atlas 40 is what will be suggested and recommended, just make sure you have gauges because every truck is different.


Sorry to write you a book, hope this paints a clear picture for you!

 

I have no problem with egt's with any of Bill's tunes but KEM's tow tune runs a good 150* hotter and can hit 1200* easily on a hill. I won't run it out of the state of FL. Bill's run 850-900 on the flats towing.

 

Are you running a PHP or KEM FICM tune?

 

PHP atlas 40. MPG wasn't as good on the KEM tunes either.

 

Ah, I figured as much...


Because of the way PHP FICM tunes are written, Mike strongly advises not running his tunes with any of the PHP FICM tunes.


While I could get into technical particulars, I'll spare you the techy side and say that there is a distinct difference between a KEM and PHP FICM tune and KEM tunes should never be mixed with PHP FICM tunes.

 

T.D. WOW!! Great post. That taught me ALOT Thanks.

 

Yeah, Ford was acting like a squirrel.

 

So is it advisable to roll back strategy?

 

They never mentioned that when they sold me the tunes and I told them it had atlas 40 in the spec sheet they require.

 

Great posts! I wish there was a way to pull them and put it in the tech folder. I'm also curious about rolling back strategies.