Tuning a 6F35 Automatic Gearbox

[Vlad Soare]

Hello,

I have a 2016 Kuga 1.5 Ecoboost with the 6F35 automatic gearbox. The engine is fine, I have no plans to tune for the time being, but the gearbox is absolutely dreadful. I hate it with a passion. I do, however, think that a bit of tuning might change it into something more acceptable. But I have no tuning experience, and almost all of the settings that I see in VCM Editor related to the transmission mean nothing to me. I would really appreciate your help.

First, just so you understand what I'm talking about, let me tell you how it behaves.
I drive it exclusively in Sport. In Drive it's utterly horrible.
If I drive spiritedly, it shifts just fine. It allows the engine to rev quite a bit before upshifting. The shift points seem fine to me. But as soon as I let go of the throttle and try to just maintain the current speed, it upshifts until the engine's rpm falls down to a level similar to the Drive mode, where it has no power to do anything more than just maintain the speed. It then takes a hard press of the gas pedal to make it downshift when the need arises, and it takes quite some time for this to happen.
When I drive up-hill it keeps the engine in such a high gear that it's literally undrivable unless I switch to manual mode. For instance, when driving up a hill that required second gear, in Sport it would be in fourth!!!
This stupid behaviour makes me switch to manual mode most of the time. But there's something that bugs me even in manual. As soon my speed falls below 7 mph or so, it automatically shifts into first gear, even though second would be just fine. And first gear is so short that there's no point in using it for anything except driving off from a standstill.

So, is there anything I can change to:

1. make it react more quickly at changes in the throttle position (say, instead of downshifting at 40% throttle after 1.5 seconds, make it downshift at 20% throttle after 0.5 seconds)

2. make it use some compensation factor for up-hill driving (say, increase the shift points by 20% when it senses that the car goes up-hill)

3. tell it never to downshift into first in manual mode unless the car is stationary (i.e. set the speed threshold for the 2->1 downshift in manual mode to 0 km/h).

Thank you.

[Vlad Soare]

Am I right in thinking that "Base" is the shift map used with the gear selector in D? And "Sport" is the shift map used with the gear selector in S?

6F35_Shift.png

What do the values in the shift table actually mean? I see that the unit is rpm, but what rpm is it about? It can't be the engine rpm at which the shift is supposed to occur, because a lot of those values are obviously far below the idle rpm.

6F35_Table.png

[Vlad Soare]

I think I've figured out what that rpm means. It's not the engine rpm, but rather the output shaft rpm. But how do I convert that to engine rpm? Do I simply multiply those values by the ratio of the respective gear? I mean, if the first gear ratio is, say, 4.58 then the 320 in the above table actually means 1465 rpm?

[JaegerWrenching]

Yes if the converter is fully coupled or has 0 slip, but if the converter is slipping it would result in higher actual engine RPM when the shift actually occurs.

I think I've figured out what that rpm means. It's not the engine rpm, but rather the output shaft rpm. But how do I convert that to engine rpm? Do I simply multiply those values by the ratio of the respective gear? I mean, if the first gear ratio is, say, 4.58 then the 320 in the above table actually means 1465 rpm?

[Lammer]

Hello,
I have a 2016 Kuga 1.5 Ecoboost with the 6F35 automatic gearbox. The engine is fine, I have no plans to tune for the time being, but the gearbox is absolutely dreadful. I hate it with a passion. I do, however, think that a bit of tuning might change it into something more acceptable. But I have no tuning experience, and almost all of the settings that I see in VCM Editor related to the transmission mean nothing to me. I would really appreciate your help.
Thank you.

Hi Vlad
Did u get any success with 6f35?
I have the same in my focus 1.5 eb

[Vlad Soare]

No, I didn't pursue this. Having received no replies, I figured the cost of a licence for this car was too high if I was gonna end up not knowing what to do with it. I had already had a sore experience with my Mustang, having paid a lot or money for a licence only to discover later on that the very feature I needed did not work, and that the HPtuners support was non-existent, and nobody on the forum could help. So I gave up. Besides, the gearbox started shifting much better after I replaced a faulty engine sensor (no idea how and why it affected the gearbox, but apparently it did), which made me forget about it.

[Lammer]

its only 2 credits for 1.5 ecoboost.
I changed revs 3-4-5-6 and made it higher to prevent using low revs of engine in city, like 6 gear at 74 kph

[ynot]

Has anyone made any progress improving the 6F35?

I'm looking at things like shifting speed, the rev hang when backing off after WOT acceleration, the delay until accelerating when going WOT from a stop, the delay when you floor it in gear before anything happens etc. I've had a look through the tables (=confusion) and watched some videos (on other Ford auto transmissions) but the programming is often different.

[ynot]

Has anyone made any progress improving the 6F35?

Okay for anyone else, you're better off searching through the engine tuning section e.g. https://forum.hptuners.com/forumdisp...Gas-(Ecoboost) and looking at what people are doing with just the trans section of the PCM. You may to find a similar platform e.g. Kuga = Escape which share engines / transmissions with the Lincoln MKC , Fusion/ Mondeo etc. (I'm sure there's others I've missed.)