2014 Focus ST New to tuning looking for tips

Hello everyone,

I am currently fighting with the several limit source's. Basically I am just getting started.

I have read the 3.5 tuning manual and the cobb strategy multiple times, but I don't have a complete understanding of everything yet. I am having a lot of fun experimenting though.

The car has 20k miles and the current mods are:
Front mount intercooler
3in cat back exhaust (I will be installing my 3in cat less downpipe soon)
Drop in cone filter
aluminum intercooler piping
50/50 Blow off valve (Connected to factory vacuum line)
Short throw shifter

First computer mod that I did was add a two step at 2k rpm and I love it. (The tuning school youtube)

After that it has been mostly trial and error with a lot of learning and minimal success.

My biggest concern is that I can't seem to find very much information on what to look out for in terms of major red flags.
An example of this is that I understand to watch the cylinder knock 1-4 and compare decreasing values to the drop in ignition advance. But I don't know what is considered acceptable.
When I first started to adjust things I went out for the first drive and seen negative values and scared myself because I didn't know what normal was. So I did some stock logs for comparison, but it doesn't tell me what the actual limits are. So this makes me nervous.

Please take a look at what I have done so far and let me know your thoughts. Again I am very new and trying to make sure I'm not adjusting something that I really shouldn't be touching.

Thank you.

OK, after rereading some other posts I decided to start from the stock file again.

I am now getting the anticlunk tipin torque limit. I have adjusted the torque limit timer from 2 to 5 seconds, I will see if this helps tomorrow on the way to work.

I am also struggling with cylinder knock, does anyone know how to prevent this? I'm wondering if changing my timing tables will help.

I have not tuned a Focus ST or 2.0 but have tuned a 3.5 Eco truck and a 2.3 Mustang. I'm certainly no expert and still learning too. With that being said, you want to log anything that is a 'Source'. There are many limiters with Ecoboost engines. Torque, Spark, Driver Demand, and others. The first thing you have to do is raise the limiters about 30% and then start from there. Don't raise boost too much, the turbo is only efficient to a point and over-boosting will only blow hotter air. Sometimes you can make more power with less boost and more spark. The Ecoboost engines do well when you increase torque in Driver Demand and let the computer decide how much boost and spark it needs to achieve that torque, within reason. You don't want to ask for a bunch more torque than the engine can make.

Thank you for your advice Volstang.

I plan to raise all limiters tonight and go for some tests in the morning. This entire week I have worked on spark control trying to get only positive corrections in all cylinders. I made some adjustments that I seen on some other threads but what seemed to make the biggest difference was that I removed -6* of spark using the global spark adder. I am really nervous about requesting too much power or raising limiters to high and blowing up the motor. My thought is that if I turn the spark down and keep the negative adjustments from happening it will give me a greater buffer when I turn the power up. As of right now I can do multiple pulls through 3rd and 4th and see positive corrections almost every time. Every once in a while I will get a -.05 in one of the cylinders but that starts going back up right away. I will post any limiters that I do or don't get past incase someone else is reading this and can use the data.

Again thank you for your advice Volstang.

You don't want to pull a global 6 degrees. Log your mapped points and spark source and use that as your reference as to what lookup table the ecu is referencing, then pull the timing from that mapped point/spark map. There is no reason you should have to or want to pull 6 degrees globally. It is also not uncommon at all to see some small negative knock correction sometimes, that is why that strategy is implemented. You could do 20 logs on the same map and see sometimes it's pulling and sometimes it's adding. View them like fuel trims, they're going to fluctuate. You basically are making your tune more conservative than ford engineers did.

Thank you projekteg.

I have restarted again but am still seeing -2 to -4 degrees in all cylinders on almost every run. I mapped the points in a graph, took all the negative numbers and added them to the main spark table being used at the time of the cylinder correction. Either I am doing it completely wrong (possible) or something is up. I read a lot of forums as well as watched a tech Tuesday episode from the tuning school that explains how to correct part throttle knock. I just rebuilt my entire tune step by step while reading the ecoboost tuning guide that metroplex made. Thank you if you are reading this metroplex. I only found a couple places that made me really nervous while following your guide, mostly spark cylinder pressure limit [44616} and preignition limit [44615]. Adjusting spark limits to max from such a low value scares me, but that could just be the inexperience talking.

Side note
I installed a cobb high flow downpipe yesterday and while under the car looking at everything I noticed the hot side intercooler piping mounts were broken. The two mounts that connect to the bottom of the engine had broken away and now under hard acceleration I can see where the intercooler piping is slightly rubbing on the motor. Could my knock sensors be picking this up and pulling timing?

Attached is the log file that I was working on.
Here is the tune that I made following the tuning guide. I will be trying this tomorrow.

After a couple small adjustments today the car now pulls really hard.

I am just below 21 pounds of boost.
Ign. correction is -3 at the worst.
fuel pressure is holding strong.

The throttle is still closing it self off and the boost tapers down to 15 psi around 5800.
I plan to do some research and learn how to tune this in a little. First glance is the desired tip is below the actual, so this is the first thing I will try to address.

I know I'm a bit late to this thread, but I thought I'd chime in if you are still working on your tune. Looking at your "Final Tune 1.1" file there's quite a bit going on in it that shouldn't really be necessary or is setup a bit wonky.

A few things like how your load limits in various places are set to values like 3.0 (LSPI and Part Pedal tables and others), the Rescale Torque switches being enabled shouldn't be necessary, preignition and cylinder pressure limits being maxed, and your WOT fueling settings (0.85 lambda is quite lean for the FoST) as well as Min Lambda allowed (also set to 0.85).

I'd be happy to help you set a tune up that keeps more in line with the standard Ecoboost strategies/setup with properly adjusted preignition and cyl pressure limits as well as utilizing proper load limits and torque requests etc..

Feel free to shoot me a message if you need any help or advice!

Thank you for chiming in, I am still working on my tune and appreciate all the help I get. I?ll send you a message this weekend.

Sounds good to me!

Good morning,

Attached is the tune that I have been currently working and daily driving with.

Thank you for taking a look.

I would honestly recommend just starting from a stock tune file at this point since there are a lot of unneeded changes for your current tune setup. it would be easier to to take a log of the stock tune to see the limits being hit and how your knock response is looking for whatever type of fuel you're using.

Then we'd have an idea of the headroom you might have and the appropriate changes to make to the various load limits, torque limits, and throttle tables etc..

Ill load the stock file tomorrow morning on the way to work and data log on the way home.