Custom FIT transmission tune

[HwyCruiser]

I took the day off and made the 200 mile trip down to Springfield to visit Dave at Injected Racing, Greg's Diablo tuner, to do some tweaking on the shift and torque converter lockup schedules. I don't know if it was more the 5% increase in rpms vs. mph due to the 4.10 to 4.30 swap this spring during my axle/diff upgrade or if I just felt the need to do some fiddling, but oh boy she was a lot more fun to drive on the trip back.

Thanks goes out to John (TooManyFords) for sharing the shift schedule he customized to his FIT Procharger kit with 4.30s with his SCT ProRacer software. Initially I didn't have the intention of totally overhauling the Diablo shift schedules, but since John volunteered his experience with dialing in the same basic setup I was going in with I went for the gusto. John's input of what I can imagine was several hours of road-tuning his Marauder saved us a lot of time and guessing. Thanks buddy!

If you put my schedules next to John's there is probably only 6 or so points under wide-open throttle that are different, and not by much. Dave and I tweaked and road tested the new shifting schedules a couple of times. I also had him make one adjustment to the 3rd gear torque converter lockup at moderate throttle that made a world of difference with the Stallion tc IMO. We finished up by making some minor adjustments to my timing tables for a 91 octane gas tune that still kicked butt in the 100 degree heat.

During the 200 mile trip back I took notes on a few very minor additional tweaks that I'll sent off for an email update, but my 9 hour round trip and $100 for the in-car tuning time was well worth it. The shifts are much more aggressive when in the throttle but still maintain there street manners. 2nd gear hangs in there up the on-ramp without having spool up full boost. Overall the pedal feels much lighter now. Overdrive is still available during street cruising above 38 mph, but it doesn't take much to downshift into 3rd so it's more or less for those Geritol moments.

Just before I left I told Dave to be expecting some phone calls. Use your tuning privileges my FIT brothers. I bet you'll feel some pretty nice changes in this update!

[snowbird]

JD,

Glad that you found some noticeable improvements. After a safe tune, i started to find the transmission side much more apparent to the enjoyment of the car when those shift schedules are optimized.

Still a mystery on how Ford screw up initialy on that. I bet they lost a few sales on around the block rides with potential customers !!

[MarauderTJA]

Sounds great JD!. Glad to hear that you are satisified with the outcome of the adjustments. Good to hear that you have worked out everything with the 4.30 gears.

With the setup I am going with on the new motor and D1SC, it looks like for now, I am going to leave the 4.10's in the car. But with the setup that John and you have established, damm, there is some temptation to switch them out .

[SergntMac]

Congrats...Always nice to have things your way.

[HwyCruiser]

Sounds great JD!. Glad to hear that you are satisified with the outcome of the adjustments. Good to hear that you have worked out everything with the 4.30 gears.

With the setup I am going with on the new motor and D1SC, it looks like for now, I am going to leave the 4.10's in the car. But with the setup that John and you have established, damm, there is some temptation to switch them out .

I would think the new transmission schedules would work well with 4.10s since the difference in rpms vs. mph is pretty minimal (5% less). That being said, this definitely isn't an economy shifting schedule. Downshifts come sooner in the throttle and upshifts hang out for more rpms in the lower gear, which is what I meant by the pedal feeling much lighter.

The max upshift speeds are set to correlate to 5800 rpm with 4.30s, which resulted in aggressive throttle position shifts right before 6000 rpm. With 4.10s it would shift at about 5525 rpms, so the upper end would need to be raised a few mphs for a given gear to gain back the rpms.

My main concern was with a little lugging between the gears and a too-firm tc lockup at moderate throttle in 3rd. The changes have really seemed to do the trick. Having eyes-on experience with how the transmission schedules are programmed in the Revolution software was a real neat learning experience. I'm sure Scott could take a look at our changes and dial them right in for your application.

[MarauderTJA]

With my last (recent) tune with Scott Beer he made some changes in my shift schedule, TC changes etc., which overall, I have been extremely satisified. When I get home from this roao\d trip I will e-mail you and John the tune so you can look at what he did with my tranny schedule. Maybe it can help you guys further. It also would be interesting to see exactly what he did. I honestly do not get into the actual stuff you guys are into with this tranny stuff. I am more of a motor guy. That is the primary area I have been concentrating on for now. My tranny has been even better with this last tune Scott did than any other before. He has worked on more than 200 Marauder tunes. So I have been receiving the benefit of his expertise.

I am looking (and will have to go to this sooner rather than later) at a new super -beefed up tranny for my car down the road from www.fbperformance.com with manual valve body shifting. I don't have my 5 speed Mustang anymore, so won't mind shifting this auto manually. Check it out.

[HwyCruiser]

Tom, you can't go wrong shifting it yourself... just keep it off the rev limiter.

A lot of where the automatic upshifts and downshifts are at what throttle positions are personal preference. I wish Diablo had an end-user version of the Revolution software like SCT has with the ProRacer package, although I know they've been talking about it for awhile. Until then it's really convenient to have a guy like Dave an email away for the small stuff or a comfortable cruise away for the more involved tuning that requires in-seat tuning on the dyno or asphalt. He's my Scott Beer in the midwest and can consult with Scott for the really high-level stuff.

For you FIT guys not using Dave's talents, don't be shy. Every Predator purshased via FIT comes with lifetime email tune adjustment privaleges (on-site tuning is at a very reasonable hourly rate). It's a pretty good deal, and I'm not at all shy about using it!

[tmac1337]

Sounds good JD.

I wouldn't mind comparing your current tune to what I am running now. I let S. Beer drive my car for over a week...and when I got it back the tune was totally different than when I gave it to him. Most changes were road testing.

See you in Orlando.

[HwyCruiser]

Sounds good JD.

I wouldn't mind comparing your current tune to what I am running now. I let S. Beer drive my car for over a week...and when I got it back the tune was totally different than when I gave it to him. Most changes were road testing.

See you in Orlando.

Now that's the way to do it. Flip him the keys and tell him to call you when he's happy with it. Awesome. I can just see us driving each other's cars around in Orlando to check out the different personalities, lol. I'll send you the revised tune when I get it back from Dave.

[MarauderTJA]

I can just see us driving each other's cars around in Orlando to check out the different personalities

Yeah, we all need to have a couple of beers and shots and take Johns car for a cruise to see how many road kills we can get with them fatties.<John, us >