Canned tune and FRPP cam. Need advice 4.6L 3V

91mini

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I have a throttle body, intake and hot rod cams coming in. All Ford Racing.

I am doing the swap myself and want to know if I can get a tune somewhere that would be good enough for me to drive the car 40 miles to get it on a dyno and custom tuned.

The shop I’m using installed my LT headers and did a 93 octane race tune with a SCT tuner a few years back and I like their service and quality work.

When I called the shop they said they could not give me a tune to load myself and that I should trailer it to them. Problem with that is I would like to crank the car after the install and see how everything sounds before installing everything then trailering the car only to find out something isn’t right and be stuck with them running up a bill instead of fixing on my own.

can this be done? I’m pretty mechanically inclined but tuning is over my head a little.
 

stkjock

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Yes it can. No reason the shop doing the dyno tune shouldn’t be able too IMHO.

The issue for u is going to cost and quality of the tune. Lito, Lund, VMP could give u a base tune for start up and then tune it via data logs to drill down drivability.
 

RED09GT

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For a fairly garden variety combo like that, I'd get it remote tuned. It will typically have much better drivability as the tuner will see data in real-world scenarios rather than in a stationary state on a couple of drums.
 

91mini

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So I can get a tune. That’s good news. I thought the tuner might be locked to the shop that sold it but I can load tunes myself then?
 

91mini

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Yes it can. No reason the shop doing the dyno tune shouldn’t be able too IMHO.

The issue for u is going to cost and quality of the tune. Lito, Lund, VMP could give u a base tune for start up and then tune it via data logs to drill down drivability.

cost shouldn’t be an issue. The shop was charging $850 for a tune and dyno run.
 
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ghunt81

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Honestly the cam install is super easy. If you get one of the how-to's and follow it, there's really nothing to screw up. I did my cams myself, having never really done anything of that type on a modular before, and I did the whole thing in about 4 hours. I even had extra time in the job pulling the front timing cover because I was worried the chain might have jumped timing but it was fine.

I don't know how the car would run after a cam install without a tune, probably very poorly, and I know it wouldn't idle.
 

stkjock

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cost shouldn’t be an issue. The shop was charging $850 for a tune and dyno run.
that seems outrageous to me. Admittedly I haven't had a dyno tune in a decade +, however $500-550 seems more real world.

here's local guy to me who I used in the past

http://www.realspeedautomotive.com/dynotuning.html

for a "heavily modded" N/A car he gets $550/600 depending on transmission.

that's NY pricing.
 

Juice

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If you are not changing the MAF, your biggest impact on the tune will be the throttle body. I think the car would still be drivable with idle issues and surging.
If I was stuck and would have to drive the car to the shop, I would take the new TB with me in a box and run the stock throttle body airbox to the shop. Swap the parts in the parking log.
 

Charly

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I purchased an 07 Mustang GT with unknown cams, long tube headers, Flow master exhaust and WMS cold air intake. It ran ok but I knew I needed a tune. I bought a SCT tuner and contacted Lito, ran a couple of data log files for him and he sent me back a tune, ran much better, sent him another set of data logs and he sent me a second tune, which really made the car run excellently. I would recommend Lito, but you must have a SCT tuner. Lito charged me $200.00(US) for all the work he did. I did have to determine the cams before he could do the tune, they are Ford Comp cams.
 

Laga

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I did my cams myself. Never done anything like that before. There are sites that provide instructions that go step by step. It wasn’t hard at all. Car ran like shit with Brenspeed tune that came with cams. Lito fixed that.
 

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