[Boostking]

Get comfortable, this will be a long read.

You may be wondering, what are OEM+ Turbo’s and what project is BoostKing talking about? Well boys and girls, I have finally got my hands on a set of Full-Race’s BorgWarner 11-16 upgrade turbos, aka GT Turbo’s on this forum. Why did I call them OEM+ then? These are OEM style turbos, with a bit more airflow potential, and OEM+ seems to make more sense. We can even call them Stage 1 turbos. I’ll make a poll in a separate thread discussing that.

Now that we have that out of the way, who is BoostKing, why am I reading this and why should I care? I’m about to let the cat out of the bag. My first name is Brett and I work for SCT/Bully Dog/Derive Systems. If you’ve been wondering why I seem to pop up on many SCT related threads with answers most don’t know, well now you know why. I am the Ford Gas preloaded tune calibrator and I also instruct training classes on how to calibrate various vehicles. I’ve been here over 6 years, I spent a little more than 2 years in tech support, a short stint in Quality Assurance, and I’ve been the training instructor for the last 3 years. I have been making the preloaded tunes on vehicles for about the last 2 years as well. I’ve spent the last 5+ years tuning basically every Ford that comes out, from little Fiesta ST’s, to new Raptors and GT350 Mustangs. I have thousands of hours on the dyno, experimenting with different tuning theories, working out the logic and finding what works best. I have worked with and assisted countless dealers, some of them popular tuning companies that you all purchase your tunes from.

I don’t tell you this info to gain praise or accolades. Maybe you don’t even care, and that’s fine. I just wanted to explain a little of my background. Also, it would be foolish of me to not make one simple request. Please do not start messaging me your issues with SCT/Bullydog. I do my best to scan threads daily and jump in to help, address issues that I can take care of easily. It is not my goal to become your technical support buddy. I use this forum for mostly personal use, to learn new things, share what I know, and help this community grow. Please do not PM me your issues. Tag me in a thread and that is fine, but I don’t have the time to be a personal tech support for this forum, nor do I want to spend my time doing that if I did. I will always do my best to help when I have time, on threads that already have a purpose. I hope we can all agree to that.

What’s the purpose of this thread? Well, if you’ve been here for a little while you may have noticed that there were a good number of folks who said they had a terrible time getting custom tuning for their upgraded turbos. Mainly drivability problems with tunes. There are entire threads discussing this floating around this forum. Others have said they had no problems getting tuning. It was hard for me to comment because I had never done them on a vehicle that I could drive and do everything I wanted to try. And that leads me to where we are today. The purpose of this thread is to provide as much feedback and data as possible. The other goal is to hopefully debunk the myth that these are difficult to tune, and to explain how quality tuning is achieved with this set up.

What did BoostKing do then?

I installed a set of Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos, a set of Tifosi ported manifolds that are ceramic coated, and all new hardware and such. I have dyno tested the truck in its previous state, before the turbos, and after the install is complete and tuned. Same dyno, same week, very similar conditions.

The ultimate goal here is to provide as much of an apples to apples comparison as I can, while providing a deeper dive into the tuning logic used and explain pros and cons of the upgrade along the way.


What is done to BoostKing’s Truck before the turbo upgrade? I am only going to list power related parts here.

• CP-E FMIC with TurboSmart mechanical BOV
• CP-E Catted Downpipes with Qck Spool coating
• Borla Touring Cat Back Exhaust
• XDI RTR +35% HPFP
• AFE Pro Dry S CAI

It is also worth noting that I have Method NV 20x9 wheels with Nitto Terra Grappler G2 (XL version) that come in just under 34” iirc. This wheel and tire combo is only slightly heavier than stock, around 6 pounds per corner.


What is BoostKing going to add for the before and after?

• Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos aka “GT Turbos”
• Tifosi Performance Ported and Ceramic Coated Exhaust Manifolds
• All new gaskets and hardware.

Nothing else will change except the custom tune.

I have dyno tested and datalogged various PIDs to acquire data to share. The stock tune, 93 preload, and my current daily driver custom tune have been dyno tested and logged.
The dyno is a 2wd Dynojet 224x with load control. The dyno cell is enclosed and temperatures remain fairly consistent, albeit somewhat hot here in Florida with a lot of humidity. Consistent test conditions are key here.

The following data is the culmination of over 70+ dyno runs with datalogging on my truck over the course of 1 week.

The stock tune used for testing is 98% stock. I know that sounds strange so let me explain. Some of my modifications, such as the downpipes and HPFP require a few settings to make sure they operate correctly. These changes are not for power, but help ensure the widebands are calibrated and fueling is delivered correctly. The only other thing I change is the converter lock up to keep it locked during 4th gear pulls, and removal of the speed limiter.

The preload tune is the same story. Exact off the shelf preloaded SCT 93 octane tune with a few tweaks for the above mods, but not designed to make additional power.

Before I go too far I want to give special thanks to a few people in no particular order.

Geoff @ Full-Race — For your awesome support and all you have done in this community.
GrimReaper — Hooked me up on some amazing Tifosi ported manifolds that he also had ceramic coated.
BlownF150 - For letting me help remote tune his upgraded turbos and learn a little on the way.
RBrown — For answering all my stupid questions and being at the forefront of pushing our platform far beyond what we can imagine.
My buddy BJ — For spending a very long day helping me install these.
TX Ripper - Why did TXRipper get a shout out? Because without his relentless complaining about how difficult of a time he had getting his old trucked tuned, I may have never done this. So, he gets a slow clap.

Ok, now after all that, it's time for the data, results, opinions and feedback.

I’d like to start by giving some feedback on the turbo install itself. I consider myself a mechanically inclined person. I have a decent number of tools and I’ve turned a few wrenches over the years, but I’m not a pro. I had the help of a friend, and a full day to install.

The install is something that can be DIY, however prepare yourself for a very long day, lots of odd tight places, tons of bangs and scrapes, and lots of profanity.

The install took us about 18 hours. I’m sure it could have gone a little faster. I ran into a few small issues. I would recommend starting on the passenger side first because it was more difficult. There are more things in the way and it's a bit tighter in there with the wiring harness and other lines in the way. The starter was also in the way. My arms and fingers were bent ways I didn’t know possible getting things together. The driver side is a bit easier, but still a challenge.

Luckily, all my nuts and bolts came loose with relative ease. We didn’t break or lose anything. From that perspective the install went very smoothly.

All new gaskets and hardware were installed to ensure a high-quality install.

Quick Note: For the dyno graphs, I try to always show them with Power on the left axis, Torque on the right axis, and Engine Speed on the bottom axis. I noticed later that some of my pulls must have had issues with the tach pick up, which makes the Engine Speed look terrible. Some of my dyno graphs will be displayed with Vehicle Speed instead to provide the data.

Also, I always show these as SAE corrected with smoothing at 5. I don’t play games with STD correction and messing with the smoothing to make my numbers look better. SAE correction with smoothing 5 is pretty much the industry standard, and anyone showing it with STD numbers just wants their numbers to look better.

All pulls are in 4th gear with no speed limiter.

Onto the stock turbo data. Let’s start with some dyno graphs and then move to some datalogs.

Previous Bolt-Ons + Stock Turbo’s with Stock Tune:



As you can see, with my current list of mods, prior to the turbos, it put down 319 whp and 390 wtq on the stock tune. Conditions are 90.8 °F with 54% humidity and 29.6 in-Hg Absolute Pressure. This is pretty much the average temp/humidity all week during testing.

The interesting part about the graph above is how well the PCM does to control the power/torque output regardless of my bolt on mods. To compare, here is a dyno graph I did back in 2015 on the same dyno, however the truck was 100% stock.



• Blue = Completely stock
• Red = Bolt-On mods with same tune

You can see in the graph above that my truck did make a little more power with the bolt on parts I already had, however not much. The PCM regulates power/torque output so well that these mods only accounted for a 15 whp peak gain, with virtually no difference in torque. There is some power under the curve to be used, but not much.

This just highlights how important a good custom tune is for taking advantage of your modifications. Anyone just bolting on parts without tuning is not realizing their potential. If anything, you are wasting money.

Let’s look at some data from the stock tune with my bolt on mods.

The screen shot below will just show some of the more important data you are probably interested in. It’s very difficult to screen capture all the data I want to share, and to avoid putting up dozens of screen shots of logs, I’m going to include my logs in a file you can download later.

Log File Name: Stock Tune — Run 2.csv



Looking over the log above, like I said it's hard to show all the data I want to display so I’m going to point out a few key things.
• Boost — Peaks around 12.9 psi and falls to around 6psi at redline
• Spark — Max spark is around 12° but ranges anywhere from 4-12° throughout the pull
• Load — Max load is 1.68 at peak boost.
• Air Flow — Max is around 36.95 #/min.
• Charge Temps — Peak around 107 °F at redline
• Fueling — On this run temp protections were triggered which resulted in a richer than normal condition of .71 lambda. Normally around .79 though.

A few more interesting things to observe:



The top panel shows the Throttle Angle vs my Pedal. The yellow is what my pedal (foot) is doing. The teal/green is the throttle angle. As you can see the PCM closes the throttle quite a bit on the stock tune, almost never going fully open.

The bottom panel of the log above shows fuel pressure vs RPM. This is just for future reference so we can compare against the larger turbos later. I know it looks a little jagged but, this is how it is and nothing to be concerned about. Fuel pressure is considered “stable” with data like that. 2200 psi peak fuel rail pressure.

We should have a decent grasp of what is going on with the truck on the stock tune with my current bolt-ons. We know how much power it made and most of the key parameters are there for consumption.

Let’s move on to the SCT 93 Preload tune. This is right off the shelf with only tweaks for my exhaust and HPFP, but nothing to change power/torque/boost etc.

Here is the dyno graph on the SCT 93 Preload with my current mods:



As you can see, we have some modest gains. Peak power is at 360 whp, with nothing notable going on with torque. Let’s compare these graphs to the stock + mods graph above.



So, looking again we can see there are some considerable gains under the curve using the SCT 93 Preload with my current mods vs Stock tune. Power and Torque are both up, with a good amount under the curve in the usable power range for WOT.

Now let’s look at some of the data. File Name: 93 Preload — Run 2.csv



• Boost — Now peaks around 15.4 psi, but holds more to redline only falling to ~13 psi
• Spark — Peak spark advance is around the same, however more consistent throughout pull with more spark overall throughout the pull.
• Load — Max load is 1.79 at peak boost.
• Air Flow — Max is around 48.14 #/min.
• Charge Temps — Peak around 107 °F at redline
• Fueling — Starts near .81 lambda finishing around .79 lambda. No temp protection triggered this run.



The Throttle Angle is still not open, but a little more stable. Fuel Pressure is the same as before, which is to be expected.

So far, we have some interesting data, and we haven’t even got to the upgraded turbos yet. Sorry for those who have ran out of popcorn. Go do some stretches, grab a beer and sit back down, we have a long way to go.

Onto my “current custom tune”. For those interested, I made this tune. This tune was my daily driver for almost 2 years, tweaking little by little on the way. Either way this is the final “custom tune” I would use daily, and here is how it performed before the turbos.



This one I had to show vs vehicle speed because of tach pick up cut out. Either way it does show what we need. If you’ve been paying attention you’d notice that this tune has made the most power. Now we are going to compare that back to the Stock Tune and the 93 Preload for some perspective.



On the graph above, we can see the major differences in the 3 files. Stock vs 93 Preload vs BoostKing Custom Tune.


Peak Numbers
Stock Tune + mods = 319.60 whp & 405.28 wtq
93 Preload + mods = 360.75 whp & 395.76 wtq
BoostKing Custom Tune + mods = 390.89 whp & 511.76 wtq


Let’s look at the datalog from the BoostKing Custom Tune. File Name: BoostKing Custom Tune - Run 2.csv



• Boost — Now peaks around 22 psi on the hit, comes down and holds 17 till midway and then falls to about 15psi
• Spark — Peak spark is 11.75, still consistent like the preload but slightly less aggressive.
• Load — Max load on the hit is 2.39 but that is due to the boost spike early on.
• Air Flow — Max is around 49.73 #/min.
• Charge Temps — Peak around 106 °F at redline
• Fueling — Starts near .81 lambda finishing around .78 lambda. No temp protection triggered this run.



As you can see, the Throttle Angle is actually open this run. This is entirely because of the tuning. The lower panel, with the green line shows the fuel pressure. When the 22psi boost spike happens, you can see a slight dip in the fuel pressure. Overall this is still not substantial enough to be a concern. I was more concerned about the 22psi boost spike and the torque at that low RPM. This will be fixed later on the dyno with the upgraded turbos and the new tune.

Now to recap. We’ve reviewed data and dyno graphs from 3 different tunes. All of these runs were on the same day, with the same mods. This is how my truck would have performed before the turbo upgrade with the current set of tunes listed.

As we continue this journey, our next data sets are going to include the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos, aka “GT Turbos”. We are going to look at the dyno graphs with the turbos upgraded on the same set of tunes, and then finally we will see what my final custom tune looks like, and discuss how the results were achieved and my feedback on the turbos after driving them for over a month.

First up is the stock tune with the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos:



Above you see the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos on a stock tune file. It made a little less than before the turbos. Strange? Not really. A 5-10hp swing on these vehicles is very common. I call this in the ballpark. The graph is a little shaky because again I was having some tach pick up issues, however it still illustrates the data needed.

Here is a comparison from the Stock Turbos vs the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos. Same modifications, same dyno, same gear, same tune. Only difference is this was a different day, but conditions were similar.



I switched the bottom axis back to Engine Speed so the torque wouldn’t look strange between these two pulls. The gaps you see in the graph are the inductive cutting out. I think during the torque converter lock up the dyno software didn’t like the RPM’s coming back down and then makes the graph strange.

You can see that the stock turbos did make a little more power top end, but in the mid-range the upgraded turbos were on top. Again, this comes down to slight variables run to run that really shouldn’t be considered too much. I also suspect that with the upgraded turbos, the PCM was compensating for additional airflow and closing throttle and reducing torque. Peak boost was also less in the mid-range on the upgraded turbos, but it made the same power. How? Airflow. Less boost was needed to generate the same airflow. I also noticed in the log a difference in the peak spark advance and spark advance throughout the pull with the upgraded turbos. All of these can account for this power difference. I still call this difference negligible. Basically, you could bolt these turbos on your stock truck and it would drive pretty much the same as before. Without tuning they are not going to do much at all.

Let’s look at a log from the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos on stock tune. File Name: OEM+ Turbos with Stock Tune.csv



It may be hard to see; however overall things are very similar to before the upgraded turbos. These PCM’s are very smart, compensating for variations and trying to achieve what it was programmed to do. With these upgraded turbos and stock tuning, the PCM basically doesn’t let it make any more power. It has may ways to control this. Boost, timing, throttle closure, and even fueling can be used to moderate the power/torque output.



Above we see the Throttle Angle is similar to the original Stock tune run, not opening all the way. Fuel Pressure is stable again, which is what I expected at this boost level.

The stock tune on the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos is not very exciting. I wanted to show this data to demonstrate how the PCM keeps things within the limits determined in the programming, and it does this extremely well.

Moving on to the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos with the SCT 93 Preloaded Tune. Here is the dyno graph.



Looks a lot like the previous dyno graph before the turbos were installed. It is almost identical. Here is a compare of this graph vs before the turbos.



They are almost identical. Only notable part to look at is nearing redline when we start to see some separation on the blue line which is the upgraded turbos. It could just be a “good” run, or this could be from these turbos being more efficient up top. Let’s look at the data and see what it can tell us.

Stock Turbos on SCT 93 Preloaded Tune: Load vs RPM vs Airflow #/min



Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos on SCT 93 Preloaded Tune: Load vs RPM vs Airflow #/min



Above we see two histograms comparing Airflow #/min to load on the Y-axis and RPM on the X-Axis. With the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos, we see a slight gain in airflow, but very minimal. This could account for the little bit of power made at the top of the run, however it's probably negligible. Again, the tune at this point is apples to apples, the only difference being the turbos. Once again, we can see that these turbos will not do anything more until the tuning is adjusted to use them.

 

[Boostking]

Quick rule of thumb for some of you who may not know. Tuners and engine builders have been using this little trick for years. For every 1 #/min of airflow, you will be at approximately 10 crank horse power. Most people use a range of 8-12 crank horsepower per pound a minute of air. I like to use 10 hp and it usually works out very well. For example, when the truck was completely stock, it made 37#/min of airflow peak, which is roughly 370 crank. Very close to what Ford rated these trucks at. Take out 18% for drivetrain loss (give or take) and you end up around 303 hp at the wheels. This is about what my truck made when it was bone stock. Neat!

Airflow is a great way to estimate horsepower numbers. Of course, this is not perfect. Airflow does not account for increased spark advance or different fuels that allow for even more aggressive spark. It can be used as an effective ballpark.

We are going to take a quick look at boost on the last runs in histogram form, just to see what we were getting on the new turbos vs the stock ones.

Stock Turbos on SCT 93 Preloaded Tune: Load vs RPM vs Boost



Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos on SCT 93 Preloaded Tune: Load vs RPM vs Boost



Overall, not much different again. I would call it a wash. There a few points that the stock turbos made more boost, and a few where the opposite is true.

My original intention at this point was to compare the original BoostKing Custom tune with the stock turbos, to the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos on the same tune. When I got to this point in my testing, I decided that the old custom tune would not be safe for me to run. I made a test hit and torque hit over 570 ft/lbs. Not exactly what I’m looking for and honestly a little scary as I was not trying to blow the motor. Too much airflow down low can cause fuel starvation issues, and even with my +35% HPFP I did not want to chance it or get into that territory.

Remember, my old daily driver custom tune would spike around 21-22psi early on with the stock turbos, but fall to 17 and hold about 15-16 psi to redline. I never really liked that 22psi spike but I never worried about it too much because on the street when I would go WOT, I would ensure my RPM’s were above 3000 before laying rubber.

Admittedly, before these turbos were installed, I had intentions of putting my truck on the dyno to work on that spike and a few other things. Time and other priorities here at work made that very difficult to find time. I knew how to drive the tune to mitigate the risk.

With these new turbos, that 22 psi spike became a much larger concern for me, so I decided to just start the complete custom tuning process for the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos at this point. My goal with these turbos is to control the initial boost spike and maintain a meatier power band up top.

Moving on, let’s take a look at where my truck ended up at and start reviewing the data from the final tune file.



As you can see, the final numbers on 93 pump for my truck came out at 448 whp/510 wtq. Let’s compare that back to the old daily driver custom tune and stock tune as well.



Those are some serious gains under the curve. Power starts earlier and carries longer than the old turbos.

To recap on peak power numbers:
100% Stock Truck and Tune: 305whp/385wtq
Stock Tune with Stock Turbos + mods: 319whp/390wtq (+14hp/5tq)
SCT 93 Preload with Stock Turbos + mods: 360whp/395wtq (+55hp/10tq)
Old BoostKing Custom Tune Daily Driver + mods: 390whp/511wtq (+85hp/126tq)
Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos with FINAL Custom Tune: 448whp/510wtq (+143hp/125tq)

These values only represent peak gains. Just for fun, here is a chart of the truck when it was 100% stock, vs where it is today with the upgrades and tuning.



If you look at the vertical line just after 6000 rpm, you can see there is +200whp under the curve compared to a stock truck. The gains under the curve are insane. When at WOT, these trucks operate between 4500-6500 rpms between shifts give or take. You can see that with these mods and turbos you are right in the meat of the power on every shift. The stock turbos would begin to fall off hard after 5000 rpm. Not these turbos. Power all the way through.

Now we can start reviewing some data from the final Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos custom tune. Let’s call it BoostKing OEM+ Turbo Custom Tune.





• Boost – Now peaks around 19 psi. Average throughout pull is around 17-18.5 psi. No early spike either.
• Spark – I was able to work more spark into this tune, and on this run peaked around 14.5 with an average around 13.
• Load – Max load is 2.04.
• Air Flow – Max is around 55.7 #/min.
• Charge Temps – Peak around 104 °F at redline.
• Fueling – Starts near .82 lambda finishing around .79 lambda.


On the second screen shot above, you can see that the throttle is not open until a little before midway in the run. This is on purpose. To assist in controlling the boost spike that usually happens very early on, I employed a few tables that the PCM uses to control load targets. Using these tables correctly, I can let the PCM close the throttle to help hit the load target, and control boost until I want it.

As the RPM’s climb, I move these tables up above the load I am going to target, which lets the PCM open the throttle more. If I were to exceed the load limits of these tables, the throttle would close some. Desired TIP vs Actual Tip and other sensors would see this throttle closure and automatically reduce boost using wastegate duty cycle.

Another key factor in this calibration is how much torque you command, how you command it, and what you do with the Torque/Inverse Torque tables. Driver Demand torque is exactly as it sounds. I knew that these turbos would perform better at higher RPM’s and to take advantage of that, the torque table was modified to “fit the curve” of what I expected the power and torque delivery to do.

Here is a look at a stock Driver Demand Table:


Here is the new Driver Demand Engine table.



Many times, I’ve reviewed files to find that the tuner has raise the Driver Demand torque table to the moon. In conjunction with that, I often find many other torque limits raised to ridiculous values. Then in the same file you will usually find that the Torque/Inverse tables are left stock.

Some limits can be moved “out of the way”, however I find it a better practice to set these limits just above your targets. This allows the PCM to still work as intended and help catch unexpected conditions and scenarios that may occur.

Torque and Torque Inverse are very important tables, and understanding how they play a role in the system is important. Essentially the way this PCM works is this. The driver pushes down on the pedal, which looks up an amount of torque demand. This output torque from the Driver Demand table is used to look up the load required for those conditions in the Torque/Inverse Tables. There are 16 tables for this, and which ones are used depends on the HDFX blending as designed by the OEM logic.

The PCM looks at the active weighting factors, and goes on the Y axis of the Torque Inverse Table, which is a torque value that matches the Driver Demanded Torque. Kind of like this image:



The PCM interpolates for data between the lines. The value that it finds here in the Inverse table is the LOAD required to make that much torque at that RPM. This is all done in conjunction with constant blending between weighting factors, which also blends and modifies the VCT schedule.

Once the PCM has the Load required for the Torque requested, it converts this in to an airflow value for desired air mass and other calculations using this equation:

Airflow #/min = Engine displacement for one-cylinder (.00157 for 3.5 eco) x RPM x # of cylinders/2 x desired load (torque inverse value)
This final value is used to determine how much to open the throttle to deliver the desired torque.

FUN!!!!

I log the HDFX weighting factors, figure out which ones are used at WOT, by how much, and in what RPM ranges. For example, my truck runs like this.

WF = Weighting Factor for HDFX
WF 12 = From initial hit to 4100 rpm this is basically 100%
WF 10 = Comes in around 4100 rpm and holds to 4600 rpm. WF 12 is going away while WF 10 is coming in. WF 10 is 100% at 4800 rpm where it tapers to 70% by 5500 rpm.
WF 8 = 30% use at 5500 rpm as WF 10 tapers down, WF 8 ramps up to 80% after 5500 rpm and holds this trend till almost redline
WF 7 = Coming in strong at 6000 rpm but by then the run is almost over.

Log screen shot of this:



You can get a feel for the amount of use each Weighting Factor is doing and see how when one blends out, another is blending in. Sometimes a few are disabled. There are 16 of them, and some of them are being blended in at very small percentages. I only pay attention to the WF that has the most priority, unless it's split between 2 of them. Point is this is one of the main steps to figuring out which of the Torque Tables and Inverse will need to be adjusted in the WOT area.

Part throttle is the same, just with more factors being blended. Usually WOT only uses 3-5 factors actively at play.

After collecting that data, I know which Torque/Inverse tables to touch and when. I also know what spark tables to use for WOT because they will match.

How do I know how to modify the Torque/Inverse tables, and what load targets to hit? A little bit of math, a little bit of guessing, and a little bit of experience.

Load can be calculated based on a few simple parameters that we already have. If we know the engine displacement, RPM, and airflow, we can guestimate the load. This explanation can get lengthy so I’ll just break it down to a simple form.
The basic formula looks like this. You can complicate things if you want more accuracy by accounting for barometric pressure, humidity, and temperature adjustments. Let’s not go there for now.

Load (VE) is = (Actual Airflow / Theoretical Airflow) x 100
Theoretical Airflow is = (RPM / 2) x (Displacement / 1728)

If we take a 3.5 Liter engine, and convert that to cubic inches, we get ~214.

We can figure out the theoretical airflow as if our engine was naturally aspirated. Basically, how much air it could possibly consume based on RPM and displacement without forced induction.

Let’s figure out the theoretical airflow at 3000 rpm for our engine.

= (3000 / 2) x (214/1728)
= 1500 x 0.12384
= 185 CFM (cubic feet per minute)

We can convert CFM back to #/min as well, since that’s what we usually log. I’m just going to use a calculator I made that uses 72° F with 14.7 psi of atmosphere (sea level), and 0 boost since we are calculating this engine as if it were naturally aspirated. Most will consider those conditions “standard” so I will leave them there. I won't show this math, you can google it though.

185 CMF = 13.82 #/min

Now we can figure out the Load based on Actual Airflow. For this example, I’m just going to make something up, and say that at 3000 rpm the airflow was 26 #/min.

(Actual Airflow / Theoretical) x 100 = Load estimate
(26 / 13.82) x 100 = 188.4%

If you log load as a faction like I do, this would read 1.88 load. Essentially the engine is consuming 88% more airflow than if it was naturally aspirated.
Does your head hurt yet? Does everyone want to start tuning now? Anyone ready for another beer? Something stronger?

Moving on. As you can see, lots of math involved. I’ve created countless excel calculators to use while tuning so don’t feel pity on me, I don’t calculate this stuff by hand much anymore.

Now back to the Torque/Inverse Tables. I looked at what the stock turbos were capable of from previous logs, looked at some data I had on the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos and came up with a ballpark on what I thought the load would hit with my boost targets.

Now I go in and set the torque on the Y-axis of the Torque Inverse Tables first. The torque and torque inverse tables must be inverse of each other. I made a reverse calculator to allow me to plug in the load I wanted, which would automatically calculate the complimentary Torque Table in the correct cells. To use this method, you must set the Inverse Y-axis up first. If you don’t, you’ll be off.

I modify the Y-axis to match the Driver Demanded Torque I will see in ¾ to WOT conditions. Blend all the values up and down for smooth transitions. I want to fall in to the top area of this table without running off too much. From there I modify the load values on the Inverse Table and let my calculator spit out the Torque Table. Copy and paste that into the tune and do the next table. Once I’ve done this to the relevant weighting factors, it's time to put it in the truck and see what happens.

Quick look at a set of Torque/Inverse tables that have been modified for my truck.



You may notice that the bottom half of the table is stock. This may seem strange to you, but here is my reasoning. The PCM logic is somewhat flexible. It can handle some error without you even knowing. These turbos will not flow much more at normal cruising and daily driving, the area that’s stock for the most part. They really are a baby upgrade compared to other turbos like what RBrown runs.

To prove this, I’ve been driving this tune for the past ~2000 miles. The truck drives very much like it did before the turbos. The street manners are perfect. Most people would have no idea that this truck puts out 450whp. No surging, no bucking, no stumbles. Aside from the pleasant whistle from the turbos, this truck drives like stock if not better.

A few more things about tuning these before I wrap this up. Boost control. For my truck, a Gen 1 without port injection, my largest concern is too much low-end torque, which is a result from usually too much boost. With the Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos, I knew they could stretch their legs up top, but I wasn’t sure how much spool up would be affected, or what people commonly call turbo lag. For my truck with my modifications, there was almost no perceivable difference in the ability to spool up and generate boost down low.

I decided that I didn’t want too much boost down low so I employed some PID controllers and a few limits down low to reduce boost. Therefore, when you look at my dyno chart, you may notice a bump around 4250 RPM. This is when I allowed more boost to come in.




You can see above where the boost comes in and only hits around 16 psi until just past 4000 rpms, where I allow it to reach 18-19 psi for the remainder of the run. This was on the dyno, and on the street it actually dropped about .5-1 psi which I’m completely fine with. It provides and almost flat 18 psi through redline, which for me is set to 6100 rpm.

Using these PID controllers, a few load limiters, I allowed the PCM to close the throttle, drop wastegate duty cycle faster and “catch” the typical boost spike you would see in may tunes. I know that instant rush of low end torque that many of us feel in our tunes feels great, but generating 480-550 wtq at 2500 rpms is very hard on the motor. I suspect that this is the reason for some engine failures on custom tunes. We know that the HPFP has trouble keeping up with the air mass down low even on stock turbos. I made sure that would not be an issue on my truck.

Speaking of Fuel Pressure, how did that work out? Here is a screen shot of just the rail pressure on my final pulls. Keep in mind I do have the upgraded 35% HPFP. No other fuel system modifications.



Hard to tell what values it's at, but peak pressure is around 2400 psi, and the lowest it hit under WOT is around 2150. 250 psi fluctuation isn’t something to worry about. This is nothing like the 6-800 psi drop I had when I tested with E85 last year. It’s not as smooth as I would have liked in that log, but I found on the street it is much more stable. I suspect on the dyno, RPM’s climb much faster and the PID controller probably need a little tweaking to make faster corrections. Since this didn’t prove to be a problem on the street, I left it alone.

Now I could go on and on about every single change I made for this set up, but let’s face it, I’d have another 50 pages and most of you would fall asleep. I am writing this originally in Word and at this point I have almost 7000 words and 30 pages. It’s time to real this thing back in and get down to the final results, opinions and feedback.

The main goal for this write up was to describe to you the tuning process, show you some real hard data on what these things do without any smoke and mirrors. I want to discuss the problems some folks had getting tunes and explain my thoughts on all of this.

I can now say with confidence that the tuning on these Full-Race / BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos is not that difficult. As a matter of fact, I put the stock tune on for 3 days, driving back and forth to work, and honestly it felt like a stock truck. It ran fine, no CEL’s or bucking and surging. Everything was fine, except my truck was slow.

Even the off the shelf SCT 93 Preload would run fine on these turbos, even though it's Torque/Inverse are not adjusted for these. The PCM will handle that.

There really is no reason that tuning should be difficult to attain on these turbos. After all these are a baby upgrade in comparison to EFRs etc. My wife has driven the truck and says she didn’t notice anything but more power. I recently took a trip to northern Alabama, 600+ miles one way. Drove it all the way there, loaded down with luggage and gear for a vacation. My wife and I shared the drive time, and it went smooth as you could want. Through the hills of the Smoky Mountains it drove up and down those hills like you would want. I have nothing but good things to say about this set up.

These turbos are essentially plug and play. If your stock turbos need replacement, you could upgrade to these without a worry. The stock tune will handle these. It also works with all existing modifications, such as ported manifolds, upgraded downpipes, SPD turbo adapters, and the list goes on. 100% OEM fitment and the quality you expect from Full-Race and BorgWarner. Full-Race supplies the hardware on these so contact them directly if you are looking to upgrade. BorgWarner will just direct you to Full-Race.

One small revelation and a little kudos to my CP-E intercooler (sorry Geoff). The drive up to Alabama was done at night, and we encountered some very heavy rain, bad traffic in Atlanta, and all sorts of mixed driving and temperature changes. After arriving, and spending a few days at the cabin, it was time to take some trash to the dump. My brother and I loaded the truck and drove to town. After dropping off the trash, I wanted to show him some power. I put my foot down and the truck misfired and stumbled. I thought to myself, oh no, something is wrong, did I mess up my tune. Long story short, I got a CEL for a cylinder 6 misfire. Thinking oh no, here I am out in the woods with limited tools, what am I going to do? After my nerves calmed a little, thinking the worst, I decided to check for moisture in my intercooler. The CP-E intercooler has two metal drain plugs, one on each side of the end tank. I pulled those out, started the truck, and about 2 cups of water came out. I suspect this is due to the 600+ mile trip where I basically ran at highway speed, through rain and temperature drops, and never went WOT the whole time. I usually go WOT a few times a week. I had never personally experienced the “water in intercooler” issue until this day. Props to CP-E for those little plugs and how easy it was to pull them out, drain the crap and get moving again. The misfire went away and she’s back to normal. That said, when I had my Full-Race intercooler, I never had those issues, probably due to the higher mounting position. My dad now has the Full-Race FMIC on his truck and towed a boat all the way up there and it went great. Charge temps in check and power all the time. He loves the Full-Race unit. So kudo’s to both intercoolers, winners in my book.

To those of you who were early adopters of these turbos and had a bad time getting a good tune, I’m sorry, sincerely. I don’t want to point fingers at anyone or get into any politics of that. Some of you may just be really picky, maybe your tuner sucked, maybe he just didn’t have experience with these and he tried. I don’t know, and it's really not for me to say. I do thank you for trying and giving your feedback. You jumped in early and might have got burned a bit. You helped push me to the point of trying this myself and doing my best to give feedback to the community. My only hope is that this helps dispel some myths about these turbos and tuning difficulties.

Dyno Video for Fun

Full-Race BorgWarner OEM+ Turbos

https://www.full-race.com/store/ecoboost/f150/ford-f-150-ecoboost-3-5l-stock-replacement-twin-turbo-upgrade/


Datalogs and Dyno Runs to download:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kv5iyjnwand0vyv/AAD6mXnpJ9Kyjzr_en3_JZq8a?dl=0

 

[Boostking]

Done editing. Post away. Mods can delete this if you want, it was just a placeholder

 

[D0ncH]

Holy smokes. I'll comment in a few days when I'm done reading looks good

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

 

[biglipps66]

Excellent information!

 

[Chris H]

Wow. That's an amazing write up! Very cool to see the numbers under the curve in the various states of mod/tune.

Nicely done, sir.

Future plans?

 

[Envious]

This is awesome! Thanks for doing this. Another step for our community!

 

[Elmore328]

I'm having a software problem with my programmer, can you fix it for me?

Just kidding!!! Excellent write up BK!

 

[Boostking]

Wow. That's an amazing write up! Very cool to see the numbers under the curve in the various states of mod/tune.

Nicely done, sir.

Future plans?

Thanks everyone. It was a lot of work but I really wanted to get some good data out there. I hope everyone can benefit from this.

As for future plans, at the moment nothing is stirring. I would like to upgraded to an 18 next year. I think this truck will stay this way till then, it's pretty much perfect for me.

 

[Grim Reaper]

Very interesting. I do plan to read when time permits (probably this weekend).

Thanks for all your efforts.

 

[Envious]

So, we all have a little Brett with us on our SCTs? lol

 

[Rodneytxps]

Just the facts!
Love the write up, well done sir.
Congrats for coming out of the closet. Hopefully everyone respects your wishes.

 

[snakebitten]

Admittedly, I'm rarely ever in a rush. So I actually read EVERY word. (in between a couple of cups of coffee and some good natured texting back and forth with a CRAZY person (unnamed) on this forum.)

Elmore makes me laugh. Lol

Anyways, Boostking, 2 things.....

1. SO many things about you and your posts now line up! And to tell you the truth, I'm a little bummed now because it answered SO many questions and now I don't get to wonder and hypothesize.

2. While I did read every word, I don't want to leave the impression or claim that I understood it all. I don't and am totally happy with my medium grasp of it. But what I'm thrilled with is the spirit of the whole thing. What an amazing gift! An incredibly unselfish thing to do. I'm really really grateful.

By the way, it does not surprise me one bit of the list of who's who that you included in your efforts. I've been blessed to have rubbed shoulders, as you know, with much of the same fellas. Ain't having one of these amazing Ford 3.5's a blast? While I credit Ford's folks for the guts to go in this direction with ALL the risks associated, it's you aftermarket gurus (and pioneers) that unleash the real fun and adventure.

I'll shut up now. But thanks man! Especially for the passion and sheer tenacity it took to figure out that INSANE (fantastic) software Ford put in this truck.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

[mwemaxxowner]

Thanks for this.

 

[tvsjr]

See, now that's the kind of thing that sells gear to truck geeks. If more tuners would quit being secret-squirrel and actually get into this level of detail, it would really help. Plus, you can get better feedback from the users when they know what you're looking for.

Now, if only we could all afford the mods and the time/money to bring our trucks to you for this sort of custom work!

 

[JerryTX]

Probably the single most valuable thread on this forum! Great job sir!


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[BigPhatPaulie]

That was so cool to read through and see the differences

 

[Elmore328]

Probably the single most valuable thread on this forum! Great job sir!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Hey now? What about this one???

https://www.f150ecoboost.net/forum/10-f150-ecoboost-builds/41713-clark-s-boring-but-budget-friendly-build-thread.html

 

[Chris H]

So effing excited about this thread I stopped a quarter way in to post about how excited I am. Lol. I'm glad you let the cat out of the bag. 藍 I don't have to keep it to myself!

Thank you much for all the information and assistance you lend this ragtag bunch of veesixers.

Baaaaaaaaaaa

Did you really just quote the longest post on the entire forum?

 

[Chris H]

Hey now? What about this one???

https://www.f150ecoboost.net/forum/10-f150-ecoboost-builds/41713-clark-s-boring-but-budget-friendly-build-thread.html

Don't knock your thread. It's how I put myself to sleep every night - invaluable!!