Knechtion

Just installed headers, x pipe, gears, intake and along with uploading a Bama tune. My bama tunes has 87 octane street, performance & 93 race. I really like the way the peformance tune runs but the shift points are Very aggressive (automatic btw). SOOO... do you guys know any recommended shift points to adjust the tuner to so my car doesnt feel like it wants to race everytime i touch the throttle?

Another quicky, when i ordered my tuner i wanted 89 street & peformance but when i ordered it was 87/89 online and in the mail it strictly says 87 octane. is it ok to run 89?

CalBoy101

I'm running a Bama tune, mine originally came with an 87 tune, 91 performance and 91 race tune, for my 2002 GT with an auto trans.

I like the full throttle performance of the 91 perf tune but like you I don't like the part throttle high shifting. When my engine is cold I like to take it easy on it but with this tune even an extremely light throttle makes the 1/2 and 2/3 shifts not occur until 2000 rpm.

In addition to being harder on a cold engine than I like, with the loud exhaust on the car it also makes my neighbors think I'm a d***head, especially when I leave at 6:30am.

I called them and asked if they could make me a new tune with the 91 perf as a starting point but with the part throttle shift points like the stock tune. On my stock tune under part throttle the light throttle shifts occur around 1500 rpm, which is reasonable.

They said they could do this and emailed it to me but I haven't loaded it yet, I also have a Accufab TB and C&L plenum to install and I'm going put the tune in when I put those parts on. I'll likely be doing that over the next few days so if you like I'll post back on how the tune worked.

But if you don't want to wait just call them up and have them lower your part throttle shift points also.

You can run 89 octane with an 87 tune without hurting your engine but you will be wasting your money, the higher octane won't help with a tune for 87 octane. If you want an 89 only tune ask them to make that also, take advantage of your "free tunes for life" while you have it.

Knechtion

ok thanks! and ya let me know how it works for you and then ill call them up.

And i probably will change to 89, ive been putting 89 in even before the tuner.

AMDanBailer

I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the Performance Tune. The Race tune is going to be the most aggressive tune we offer, especially for the Automatic Mustangs (since we can control the shift points). This tune is set up for Race use so the shift points are going to be very aggressive. However, we have no problem making some adjustments to your tune for you to soften up the shifts a bit.

Just hit up the Bama team and they'll gladly get you squared away! You can reach them at the contact information in my signature.

-Dan

CalBoy101

Knechtion, hold off on trying a modified part throttle shift tune for now.

I loaded the modified tune last night and on first shift it seemed like the part throttle shift points were lowered but then on a section of road from work to home where I needed to cruise at around 35 mph it started going crazy, quickly shifting back and forth between I guess 2nd and 3rd or maybe overdrive also, it sounded like the transmission was going nuts.

I had to limp home in 2nd and I'm hoping the transmission didn't get hurt by this.

For now I'm swapping back to the high shift point tune and I'll be calling Bama to find out what was wrong with the modified tune.

I'm guessing that there are multiple parameters in the tune that affect the part throttle shift properties and not all of them got changed correctly so the transmission was getting mixed signals in the rpm/throttle range I was in.

Knechtion

oh great, i will hold off. Hopefully you get everything worked out, and let me know how it goes. These are the types of things i was worried about when buying this tuner =/. I do know whenever the car is in stock form it goes into overdrive around 35 mph. So maybe you were going between overdrive and 4th?

CalBoy101

Knechtion, I know you were waiting to hear how the shift modifications worked out with my Bama tune. I've been working on putting in a new TB, plenum and injectors, that went well and the car is running really strong. I did some datalogging on the Bama tune with these new parts, looking at the stort term and long term fuel trims, and so far the tune looks good.

After the car running the best it can I'll probably go back to getting the low throttle shifting where I'd like it to be but first I'm going to get car going as fast as it can.

I am having a problem with datalogging with my SCT device, it will only log for about 2 minutes before it freezes. I sent in a tech request to SCT about this and they got back pretty fast and said the current firmware does have some problems with some "older" vehicles and to call in with my SCT hooked up to my PC and they would fix it over the internet. If that works I'll call that pretty good support.

While the data logging works though it is pretty nice, watching the fuel trims let me confirm that my current tune is pretty good, at least in closed loop mode.

I busted for an AFR gauge (the NGK AFX one) and will be using it to check the WOT AFR but I need to get the datalogging working first to be able to do that.