First time out in the 2011 5.0 Auto

[DTony]

I bought the car Thursday and ran it today with 450 miles on it. I ran at Tristate Dragway in Hamilton. The car was raced as follows:

1) Bone stock (no tune, cai, or any mods).
2) 1/4 tank of Shell 93.
3) Drag radials....325/45 17 M&H's. (By the way...I know DRs are not stock).

The DA on the best pass was 1618'. Most of my runs were 12.70~12.80 because I kept hitting the rev limiter going from 1st to 2nd gear. This trans is the slowest shifting I have ever seen!! Hopefully a tune will fix this.

My mph ranged from 110.4 ~ 112.14

 

[GERMANSHEPERD]

Congrats Bro! Looks like next season is gonna be off the chain for ya!

 

[firestang70]

Hey I went to edgewater instead. My best was a 12.80 on stock tires, best trap was 111. So your car is running strong! I couldn't run the 15s they were rubbing in the driveway. I have always seemed to run close to tenth faster at Edgewater I know the elevation I think is about a 300' difference. I thought I might eek out a 12.6x with some stickies. Couple of observations I had (might help us both) 1200 MAX on the convertor or it would spin bad out of the whole. I noticed on the upper gears it would shift at 6100 and right before the stripe. Mine never blew thru the 1-2 shift. I think a tune with just raising the shift points would help alot. Congrats on some great times and hope to see you next year at the track.

 

[DTony]

Hey I went to edgewater instead. My best was a 12.80 on stock tires, best trap was 111. So your car is running strong! I couldn't run the 15s they were rubbing in the driveway. I have always seemed to run close to tenth faster at Edgewater I know the elevation I think is about a 300' difference. I thought I might eek out a 12.6x with some stickies. Couple of observations I had (might help us both) 1200 MAX on the convertor or it would spin bad out of the whole. I noticed on the upper gears it would shift at 6100 and right before the stripe. Mine never blew thru the 1-2 shift. I think a tune with just raising the shift points would help alot. Congrats on some great times and hope to see you next year at the track.

Too bad we didn't hook up at the track. I am going to try an make it out one more time so I may give Edgewater a try.

I was bringing my car off idle for the launch trying to get as much converter flash as I could. With stickies the car bogs super bad and definitely will pick up a ton with a converter. That is also on my list now.

I was shifting manually. I didn't try letting it shift itself, maybe I should have tried it. I did notice that I didnt really slow down hot lapping. I ran a 12.76 then hot lapped with a 12.77. This car seems pretty well set up to do some bracket racing with. I cant wait until next year to get it put together and race all summer.

 

[JerryC]

It seems that all of 2011 Auto's do that on the 1-2 shift if you shift manually. I have two of them that do that, and I have gone for a ride with a service tech in a new one that does the same thing. He reported it to FORD and the response was that it was by design to protect the trans.
However if you leave it "D" it shifts ok.

Here's are some things you can try to make it better.
AdvanceTrac completely off
Grade Assist on
Drive it hard for a while and manually shift 1-2
Report it to FORD and maybe they will will come out with an update to fix the shifting. I had an '08 Taurus and they came out with TSB to fix the sloppy shifting on it.

 

[D98GT]

Congrats on the first passes, great time.

 

[Riptide]

Glad to see you're liking the new car! Wish I could've run 12s stock in my 2006 lol

Looking forward to seeing what you do with it next season. I'm guessing the car will be modded soon. I bet a tune will fix the softness of the transmission in that car. It did huge things for the 05-10 models anyway.

 

[slw460]

Congrats Bro! Looks like next season is gonna be off the chain for ya!

Looks like that 2011 wants to head north