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