2010 5.4 3v phaser lockout and knock retard questions
I had a 2010 f150 5.4 come in with phaser lockouts installed and wanted vct turned off and figured simple enough. This was my first time fiddling with a ford but zeroed out all of the vct angle tables and turned off the master enable to be on the safe side, zeroed all of the vct modifiers under mbt and borderline and bumped the idle up to 750 p/n and 650 in drive for a smoother idle on advice from the guy that used to do these for us for a smoother idle with the extra overlap at idle.
When i went to test drive it seems to drive about as good as any other stock 5.4 i've driven but i did a data log to see what was going on and saw it having usually around 4 to 8 deg of knock retard reported at anything over about 40% throttle.
The questions i have are is this actually knock retard thats being reported or is it just spark retard based on timing modifiers or is this actually reporting backwards like ive read some of the ford pcms do and its actually adding 4 to 8 degrees?
Is it good to zero the vct borderline modifier tables or is there something else that needs to be done instead?
The guy that used to do these for us also said he adds like 3 degrees of ignition timing across the board to help compensate for the lockouts without issue.
Ive attached the tune and log file I got with the knock retard. Please excuse the sloppy graphs etc just wanted to get some kind of data to see if the truck was happy with everything fuel trim and spark wise so just tried to figure out how to build the graphs on the fly to get some kind of data.
Also if someone could explain in simple terms how these do fueling compared to gm ls engines that would be awesome because all im seeing is a maf-voltage table and no ve tables or anything. Not for this truck just wanna learn more about what makes these fords tick.
I'd like to see a stock cal to compare. I don't think I would have zero'd out the VCT spark correction tables, but I can't see the stock values to see what it would have done. Basically, if the cams are locked in a position, then the spark corrections would still need to be applied to the locked position.
I do think that the positive KR values are pulling timing. Look at 6:43.184 and you see it's 77% load and 3500 rpm. In the cal, it's calling for 7.5 deg Borderline, plus 1.5 for IAT correction, plus 5 for lambda correction, for about 14 total commanded. You were getting 5.2 knock retard and 9 deg final, so it works out right.
I guess my main question is where does the knock retard number come from? if its not retarding because the knock sensors are seeing knock then is that just some other factor like iat or something pulling timing to prevent knock or protect the drivetrain? for example my chevy will pull like 6 degrees when trans temp is below x degrees and it reports on the scanner as knock retard. just wandering if this is the same for the ford.
It has been my experience that knock retard is retard that results in knock sensor activity. Other corrections are applied to the borderline knock table before it is commanded.
I do think I would put the VCT Borderline and MBT corrections back in if it were me. If the cams are off of the baseline by some amount, then the timing will be corrected.
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