Learning to Tune 2021+ F150 with HP Tuners
 

Now that my PCM has been unlocked by HP tuners, I'm debating whether or not I should try tuning my truck myself and I’m wondering if anyone here can offer some advice based on their experience.

I’m not new to tuning, but my experience is very limited. I have some experience with older Holley EFI setups, Edelbrock Pro-Flo 4 EFI, and carbureted cars if you want to count them, but they have almost all been natural aspirated small-block and big-block V8s. I’ve never tuned anything with torque management, a dozen different limiters, or 2 dozen different spark tables, and I have never used any HP Tuners software before.

I’ve found a couple companies that offer HP tuners training courses and books that are specific to Ford EcoBoost engines and 10R80 transmissions; some of them seem reasonably priced and others seem outrageously expensive, but it's hard to judge them when you can't see the material ahead of time. I’m hoping that someone here could recommend a specific course/book to buy or avoid as it’s not clear how in depth any of them actually are.

If you have tried tuning your 2021+ F150 yourself, I would love to hear about your experience, especially if you have a 3.5EB. Are there any specific things I should avoid or do first if I decide to give this a try? Are there any particular issues or areas you struggled with?

Just pay someone. Not a good first vehicle to start with. Gearhead, 5star, mpt are all good.

spend some time on the hptuners forum.

I dont know exactly what the tuning looks like on the 2021+ trucks, but the earlier trucks are pretty easy to make at least a moderate tune for. It mostly just consists of lifting the torque demand tables and moving some limiters out of the way. The PCM takes care of the rest. In my experience the timing doesnt need to be played with much unless you are running E85 or something that causes the timing to fall outside of the operating limits of the stock tuning. But I can run 94 or 96 octane(91 + Boostane) on my 2014 and the stock ignition tuning will mostly take advantage of it.

If you start getting too high in power you may end up having to rescale tables and stuff where it would get more involved.

i AGREE WITH HIM 100% and this is coming from someone who has built and tuned an 800whp Mitsubishi on the stock ECU, played with AEM EMS standalone. The Coyote is very complicated (don't forget it also has DI) so the probability to fk up is very high and I didn't want to chance this on my brand new truck. By the way, I have built my 2014 Mustang GT (single turbo) and I am learning playing with the Coyote tuning with HPT in that car. It's a learning curve but it has been going great...currently tuned on E30 and 9psi. Spend a lot of time weeding through good information from the HPT Forums. It's not always focussed or concentrated, but it's there if you know what you're looking for. Be patient. Oz tuned my Whippled truck by the way!

I’ve tuned lots of modern ford’s and I think more people should. Open for discussion. Also hit up Jperna on here as he has done quite a bit himself on his 3.5.

The ecoboost isn’t crazy hard to tune. It’s hard to find solid info or folks willing to share solid info on tuning these things, so it can be overwhelming at first.

I agree that @Perna00 is a great resource to hookup and talk with. Great guy.

The HPT forums suck when it comes to ecoboost tuning. Got an LS3??…there’s info for days. The (I should say most) ecoboost tuners out there on that forum seem to want to keep info close to their chest or sell you a tune.

There are some decent guides out there, but most just say what to do, not why.

I’d love for this section to take off and have folks sharing all they know about ecoboost tuning. I’ve got my 10r80 dialed in, IMO, if you want info on trans tuning. I can help with engine tuning too, but I’m not an advanced tuner by any means. My truck runs harder on my tune than it ever did on the 93 5* tune…but I’m also willing to be aggressive in areas they are not, so it makes sense.

I’m glad you are interested in learning how to properly tune these trucks. I’ve tuned Ecoboosts and NA Ford engines since 2019. If you all have any questions I’ll gladly answer them. I also mentor up and coming tuners and techs, and I don’t lock the tune files I build for customers so they can learn from them and make their own adjustments. HP Tuners is my preferred platform but I also tune with SCT. If you have a question or need some help with a tune, I can be reached on this forum, the f150ecoboost forum or on the tltechpro.com website.

Nice of you to have that approach. Coming from the Mitsubishi community, I was kinda bummed how secretive folks can be in the Coyote world with regards to tuning. I understand there's money to be made...but sucks for some of us hardcore DIYers lol. I am slowly learning.

The best free resource I have found is the Cobb Tuning Ecoboost Guide

https://cobbtuning.atlassian.net/wik...r+Tuning+Guide

It also sucks because you dont really know what you are getting if you cant see it. I had some tunes for my 2014 which, after learning more about how to tune and what to datalog, realized were pretty questionable and stopped using them. Just some dude turning off all the limiters and cranking up the torque table and sending it.

This was on basic plug-n-play adaptive tunes too. Not like some max effort custom tune where I was asking for maximum possible power.