Has anyone here ever added a James Duff performance chip to their truck yet? I looked in the chips and computers section but couldnt find anything on them. They say that a 4.0 ranger like mine can pick up 45 ft-lbs so I'd like to have that. $295 US isnt too bad a deal either. Please lemme know!

Sean

 

On a ranger, bama chips is the only way to go, Doug is a ford guru, who only does ford programers. On other chips, you get what they give you, with bama, you tell Doug what you need, or want in your chip. I'm not saying Duff is bad, but why not settle for the best, when spending your money!!!

 

It depends on the year of the truck. Chips don't help as much on 1994 and older vehicles.

 

This is true, Doug mainly does obd2 computer controled vehicles, I think thats 95, and up, not saying he couldn't do an older one, you'ld have to ask him.

 

What about an OHV 4.0 in '99 Explorer Sport?

 

I'll have to write this up sometime in detail. Let me share my experience with EEC-iv's and chips. I would think EEC-V really no different results.

1993 Explorer, 4.0 5sp. headers, cold air intake and larger MAF sensor. SCT chip. Dyno run stock tune 137 HP, 198 Ft-lb. Chip is "fully" programable for A/F and spark advance. Tuner farted aroung 1/2 the day and got a final whopping 139 HP and 202 Ft'-lb of torque. All reaer wheel numbers, obviously.

SCT refunded my money since they had 19 HP, 21 Ft-lb gains advertised on their web site. Web site no longer posts any performance gain numbers...hmmm, I wonder why?

So in my opinion, Ford really has a good tune on these EFI systems. Really, to pass the more stringent emmissions, they have to be pretty close to optimal. Now if you add a cam, bigger pistons, stroked crank...these internal changes will demand more fuel and a custom tunable chip is absolutely required. The only way to make it work right - can't just add bigger injectors. So if your stock, don't waste your time. It wasn't SCT's fault or the tuner's fault...just that the stock program is already doing the same thing any chip can do.

 

Wendell, can you explain this to me?

"On my programer, I got a 87 octain for mpg, a 91 octain for torque, and a 93 octain for hp."

 

I'll take a stab at this. Doug at bama chips, can tune your vehicle for what you want. IF you want 87 torque you got it if you want 87 Performance you got it. He can tune which octane you want for how you drive even. If you only use the RPM's to 3000's he can tune it for that.

I have 1 tune 87 torque, and I know there is a difference maybe small but it's there even with my manual transmission. If you have an automatic it's even more benefitial, due to you can change the shift pressures and time.

Just go to bama chips website and ask Doug any questions you have he'll be happy to help you.

 

OK jorlee. Not exactly the response I was looking for though. Even your explantion makes absolutley no sense to me. 87 octane torque vs 87 octane perfomance. So what the hell is the difference?

I pulled this from Wendell off another forum:

"On my programer, I got a 87 octain for mpg, a 91 octain for torque, and a 93 octain for hp."

I am really besides myself to understand how 87 octane is better for MPG, how 91 octane is better for torque and how 93 octane (notice I spell the word correctly) is better for horsepower.

Horsepower is a factor derived from torque. The 2 are not mutually exclusive. What happens to one affects the other. If torque goes up, so does HP.

As far as MPG, the real answer is the more HP (or torque) the more you MPG given all else the same. The more power produced for a give gallon of gas will move the car that much further. It's really a simple concept.

You guys that think there is some master tuner out there that will give you all the best options for a given, mechanically fixed engine are just lost. You have no concept at all of electronically controlled fuel injection systems. And really no concept at all about 4 stroke engines.

Throw out the computers. You are left with a mass of metal that is thrown about trying to make power by the fuel it consumes. How do you optimize a fixed set of physical mass? There is only one solution. It is the relative A/F and timing advance tune that peaks that engine throughout it's RPM range. Period.

There is no better for this application, or better for thatapplication, when you are measuring power ourput. It is a fixed equation.

OK, external factors affect this. Elevation, humidity...Sure, you need to compensate for that. Modern EFI systems handle elevation no problem. Humidity somewhat taken into account by the O2's.

But when it comes to octane, all you get from higher octnae is the resistance to pre-detonate - ping!. All this means is that you can run a little higher advance and keep the A/F from popping off before the spark hits it. Sure this really helps you make power - no question. Pre-detonation is the #1 pareto item for steeling HP.

But there is no magical tune except the one that works best for the physical, mechanical aspects on an engine.

As far as transmission shifts and RPM and Speed controls, OK - those are different. These are all electronically controlled and a chip will help you there.

But beware anyone trying to sell you XYZ or "On my programer, I got a 87 octain for mpg, a 91 octain for torque, and a 93 octain for hp." type of differences in a chip.

 

Ok, ya long day after that response.

The Torque programs will give you more umph in the lower Rpm's with hardly anything in the upper RPM's.

Performance will give you more in the higher RPM's with not so much in the lower RPM's.

The mileage tune that he offers is susposed to help you out some on mileage (even though results are not guaranteed there).

 

I wish I could sell BS that good. I'd have my own business too.

You might get 1-2 MPG by leaning out the A/F mixture. Everyone knows that. Pretty simple concept really. And no one guarentees it because everyone's always putting their foot into it to see what this new chip can do.

You can not move a power band around on a 4 stroke motor as you suggest. A 2 stroke yes but that's an entirely different engine. The cam shaft and the engine's ability to breath more/less efficiently at any given RPM are fixed. Matching the spark advance to these parameters and the A/F mix to an optimum level, at each given RPM, but not too lean to inducing pinging, is all you can do to tune a 4 stroke. this is what you can do with a custom tune.

Sure, anyone can make different tunes. You can have a crappy one and a good one and tell someone the crappy one is low performance but good on fuel economy, when it really isn't. And then a good tune closer to what I said above and say - hey look at this great performance tune I gave you. See how good my product is? And then you can alos have a tune that runs so lean you'll be ruining your engine. So beware of that. Keep the A/f at 12.5-13:1 is safe. Getting to 13.5-14:1 you're pushing your luck when you get on it.

Put it on a dyno. Look at rear wheel HP and see the difference, stock vs performance tune. I think you'll be amazed at the BS you've bought. Of course every car is different, and there might be cases where Ford really missed a tune (I understand deisels to be like this), but far and wide I think that stock motors and PCM's are fairly optimized right out of the box.

 

I love not being able to link. I would show you a chart of a 2001 2.3 Duratec Ranger that gained 14 horsepower and 20 ft torque, and that was on 87 Octane. That max gain was not at 5000 RPM either.

I have bama chips 87 torque tune for my 2001 4.0 It made a noticable difference to me. It does not rev above 4000 RPM as freely as it did before. It's tuned for up to 3500 then it basically provides very little benefit above that.

I'm just repeating what other people that have bought from him are saying. I haven't heard anything bad about his tuning, but every vehicle and driver is different some will see more gain than others. I think that's why the tuner needs your computer code to give a good tune.

What vehicle is that chart for?

 

Exactly. That's why I'd like to see the before and after dyno pulls. I'm sure you can have a tune that drops off at 4K. You can set the rev limiter at 4K if you want. That will kill it for sure.

My point is that the cam pretty much fixes the power ouput for any given RPM. Why not have a tune that maximizes power at every RPM? Why tune it bad at upper R's and good at lower? It's just dumb to do that. We are talking about street vehicles right? No special race or competition regulations to have to worry about. Just give me all the damn power all the time. And if this means a timing advance that borders on pinging, I'll accept that and go to 91 octane.

The smaller motors, and being in a truck with looser emmissions requirements, may have more potential to be gained. Like I said, all cars are a different. So if you got good gains at lower R's, why not all around the band?

My 93 Explorer is a Ca car. So it had real tight emmisions to begin with. It might be that Ford had to highly fine tune this PCM and as a result, the tune was optimized as stock. It's a 4.0, obviously - only motor available. But SCT advertised the 19/21 HP/toruque improvements that just didn't materialze. Maybe it would have on a 1991 Fed car with MFI. I've got SFI so I think it's a little cleaner running. The tuner cranked up the timing to 30 or more and it did nothing to the torque curve. Had 91 octane but it never pinged. No sense advancing the hell out of it for no power.

As far as PCM codes, they create a database of the downloads. You gotta have one to start and pull the tables out of it. So if you're running a business, mail order, you will eventually need to have one in your hands for every PCM code that someone orders a chip for. I had to find a spare PCM with the same code on eBay - took 6 months of searching. Finally got one and sent mine to SCT and they pulled the tables. Now my PCM is available in their data base.

I'm not saying this is happening here but it's certainly possible, the worst thing I could see is some mail order tuner setting your stock program to crap and then using the same stock or a very similar tune as the performance tune. So if you flash back to stock you say, gee this really is poor - I guess the chip really helped.

As far as bama, I don't really know. I spent about 30 seconds on his web site and saw SCT flash modules all over it. I'm not sure if he's an exSCT employee or what. SCT been having some shake-ups internally. One of the original programmers, Brian, recent left so who know's what's happening behind the sceens.

 

Jorlee - thanks I got the file. I see a 5 HP and 5 Ft-lb gain. That's roughly what the SCT chip did on my 4.0. Mind you, they were advertising 19 HP and 21 Ft-lb in their literature at the time - big difference.

So yeah I believe what you have here. 5 HP and 5 ft-lb gains are at max output. This is what the ratings are for. i see where the cursor line on the graph is located....somewhere in the middle the stock tune had some trouble where the brama tune cleaned it up. This in of itself is probably worth the chip investment. But I was never talking about a clean power curve, just the max output.

What I posted above was my stock dyno run. See how clean the curve was. And it would have been even cleaner if I didn't have big ole 31 inch tires on it bouncing the dyno up and down. At 110 MPH, those things were bucking like a racing slick. Anyway, the only slightly off data on my chart is the A/F mix. After these stock runs, I found a gapping hole in the cold air intake tube where the alternator pulley wore through it. So the final stock A/F was probably more like 12.5:1 not the 13 shown. I can make a new graph with the chip tune and the stock runs if you want to see it.

So I do see your point on cleaning up the mid range. The stock PCM tune was definitely messed up there. If it were my truck and under warranty, I'd bring it back and ask for a new flash. It almost looks the the guy let of the gas pedal a little during the dyno run. Hey - what a way to sell your product huh?

 

Ya, we might never know the absolute truth to it all. I'm just going off information that others post and say he does a good job. I'm still wondering if I wasted my money on a used tuner and 1 tune file, but I don't have the higher octane tunes that people say is where it really wakes up the motor. Who know's. I've seen other people post their own dyno graphs online with a before even flashing and after and they seem to be happy. I don't know. It's a real sketchy topic. Wish I had a dyno nearby and extra money laying around. oh well.

I know something is different with the cold startup stuff, it goes to 2100 RPM right off the bat and hangs there longer than it has before dropping down to 1400 RPM. I'll let ya know after a get a few tanks run through it and switch back to the stock programming.