Ford Performance Tune and 87 Octane Fuel

You can run whatever. The car will adjust you just won’t see the full power it’s capable of.

Where’s your support for this? My understanding is that 91 and above is absolutely required and 87 can cause issues. This was from FP themselves.

Because Ford did not remove the “auto octane” feature from the car with their tune. This has been discussed previously.

I’m sure there is a fail safe feature in place but from what I read straight from the website and warranty page, premium is required. Sure, if you put 87 you will be okay. But running it all the time, not sure on that. Unless you think they’re just protecting themselves. But if it was truly auto octane, not sure why they’d emphasize premium fuel requirement.

Premium Fuel Requirement: Customers who purchase power upgrade packs, cold air kits with calibration, engine calibrations, or superchargers are required to use 91-octane or higher (“premium”) fuels at all times. Any failures associated with the non-use of premium fuel will be ineligible for warranty repair.

Like I said…this has already been hashed out. It’s fine. Do it…don’t…I don’t care either way.

All:

Sorry if I missed this but The ford performance tune information indicates that it requires 93/91 Octane to realize the performance gains. My question, is that optional ? Can you run 87 octane and the tune will adjust but you just won't see the HP and torque increases (as in the stock tune) or do you have to run 93/91 regardless.

Dennis

Where has this been discussed? I’ve been through this whole thread and don’t recall that discussion. Would love to read it.

I've been tuning my own cars/trucks/motorcycles and the occasional friend's vehicle (bourbon is currency) since 2004. The method Ford uses for keeping your engine in one piece while balancing performance is pretty bad ass!

I'll keep it simple:

Based on the average of how often your knock sensor is active (octane and fuel type/quality do matter) it blends between three tables, from mild to wild. I attached a picture where "wild" is on top and mild on the bottom. Even if you were running a fuel with an octane rating of infinity the MAX table will still dial back load (airflow/spark) based on the Manifold Charge Temperature (MCT). MCT is the air temp measured after the intercooler. As you can see a cooler MCT gets a higher load value...thus why an intercooler upgrade can improve performance even on a stock tune.

Additionally, ignition timing is constantly being adjusted based on knock activity. There are a lot of variables to this but keeping it simple I have also added a picture showing you how much spark the ECU can add or subtract on the fly...the ADD part is pretty bad ass.

I've never read and compared a stock tune to a FP tune, so I don't have scientific evidence that Ford didn't negate all of these strategies from their "Performance Tune". BUT, it would literally take more work to remove them than to just leave them and turn up the wick on the "max" and "normal" tables.

If anyone with the FP tune lives in southern LA and wants to know for sure, shoot me a message and we can put it to rest.

Search is your friend. Check out “ford tune” and there’s lots of reading available. The fire starter guy is a narcissist, so you may not want to get involved.