New experience for me, and maybe it’s just me,
I got the dongle and the app working on my tablet. It’s a fun gadget to look at the gauges.

Dongle is connected.
A few weeks back, I left at 4 am for a long 12-hour drive to Cape Cod with my fifth wheel. It was 44 degrees outside that morning. I hurried outside as soon as I woke up to start it up and grab a few last-minute things. I could have sworn it didn’t go through its usual cold start routine, like shutting the damper and revving up the engine.
Last week, I needed to use the truck to go to work for a week. I was fixing my F150 again. The weather was cool, in the 40s. I never noticed the cold start process happening. Plus, it kind of sounded like one of the injectors was failing, making a banging noise. Normally, these trucks make noise when they’re cold, but this was unusually different.

I started thinking, last Thursday I left again for a short trip with my fifth wheel. I took out the dongle before starting it, and boom! It went through the cold start process. Everything sounded normal and it acted fine for the whole long weekend.

So much for just being a simple reader! I thought I bought a decent dongle. Is it really not working well? Is the problem with the torque app or the dongle?

It might just be in my head. I’ll tinker with it again once I get caught up with everything.

 

I use the same dongle, always connected, and the truck does go through the warm up routines when needed. I use FORScan though, and have not had good luck using Torque Pro. That app has stalled my engine in the past, so I no longer use it, though I prefer its gauges.

 

I kept the dongle connected all the time. I just remembered that last week when I noticed how it was acting. I wasn't even switching on the tablet before leaving for work, so I'm not really sure if the torque app is the problem.

I think I’ve spent more than 40 hours driving the truck, and it has never shut down on me. The only issues I've noticed are when starting it up in the cold. Or maybe there’s another problem that’s beginning to appear, which might be linked to when the new dongle was installed.

 

I also use the same dongle with Forscan and have no issues.

 

The OBD MX adapter will not cause any problems by itself. I have seen Forscan Lite (smart phone) cause some communication faults if I monitor certain PIDs. These faults showed up as "hill assistant not available" messages. I think Forscan was trying to read a critical PID too frequently and when there was a network conflict the fault occurred.

I don't remember the PID and it was not on a Ford truck anyway. Since this event I have read forum posts with the "hill assist" fault and the reason was a problem that affected the network (probably HS CAN).

I routinely use Forscan Lite to continuously monitor many other PIDs without any problems.