My son has a 2002 GT. We just recently got the rebuilt engine back into the car after having been out for three years. The following are the modifications: Manley forged pistons at .030 over with moly rings and 11cc dish yeilding 10.53:1 compression with the stock PI heads. Comp Cams Stage II cams (I can get the cam number or specs if that helps). BBK full length headers and catted X pipe. It also has some no-name CAI, which hopefully he will remedy with a BBK 78mm TB and CAI kit eventually. He has ARP main and head studs and the rods have ARP 2000 bolts. The crank is a stock refreshed unit and there's an ATI damper hanging off the front and Centerforce clutch off the back side.
As you can imagine, it runs on the stock program, but not particularly well. All 4 O2 sensors are brand new. We are getting occasional codes P0152 and P1152. We haven't driven it very far for fear it's running rich and chancing melted cats.
Here's the problem: I bought him a BAMA/SCT Rev-X tuner w/ lifetime tunes from American Muscle for his birthday. I had them write a 91 octane performance tune and 93 race tune based on his engine. After downloading over WiFi direct to the tuner, it would not load the tune on the car. I kept getting a "General Error#:0" immediately after selecting which tune I wanted to load. I called AM and their solution was to email me the tunes and manually load them on the tuner. That worked to alleviate the above problem and I got much further in the programming process. The tuner downloaded the stock tune from the car but would freeze with the screen saying that it was applying the changes to the tune that I selected before it got to the step to write the new tune. This happened even when I chose to skip the step where I could make changes to the tune. The first time I tried it, I waited with that frozen screen for over 40 minutes because I wasn't familiar with how long that should take. Bama says that screen should not appear for more than 30 seconds.
Five calls to AM & Bama later, Bama had me try loading the included 93 octane tune for the stock engine. The tuner was able to successfully write that tune onto the car and it started and ran. It's obviously not at all correct for the engine. Bama then wrote a "Stock custom tune" based on the EEC-V engine strategy number from the car and sent that to me. The tuner froze at the exact same place as the AM custom tunes. I was then told by Bama that this is a known problem with the 99-04 cars. The tuner cannot write any custom tune to this car. Their engineers are supposed to be working on it, but they have no estimate for a time to fix the issue. I was able to return the car to the stock file on the second attempt.
I would just return the tuner for a refund and go with another manufacturer, but from what I'm learning, SCT/Bama is the only game in town for this older generation of cars short of going with a full standalone system like the Holly. I even called Anderson Ford Motorsport, as they are relatively close to where I live, and they don't have a solution to tune his car either. Does anyone know how long this has been an issue with some of the 99-04 cars for SCT? Does anyone know of an alternate tuner solution short of spending a couple grand on a standalone and dyno tuning?
SCT says this problem affects all their devices, so returning the Rev-X for an X4 will not solve the problem. They also said they cannot flash any tuner back to a previous known firmware that works with these cars.
I did post this exact request to several FB groups and one member stated they had a similar problem with the Rev-X that was cured by switching to the X4. I've requested his fimware number to make sure he didn't simply get an X4 with an earlier firmware that doesn't have this issue vs the firmware that was on his Rev-X.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
As you can imagine, it runs on the stock program, but not particularly well. All 4 O2 sensors are brand new. We are getting occasional codes P0152 and P1152. We haven't driven it very far for fear it's running rich and chancing melted cats.
Here's the problem: I bought him a BAMA/SCT Rev-X tuner w/ lifetime tunes from American Muscle for his birthday. I had them write a 91 octane performance tune and 93 race tune based on his engine. After downloading over WiFi direct to the tuner, it would not load the tune on the car. I kept getting a "General Error#:0" immediately after selecting which tune I wanted to load. I called AM and their solution was to email me the tunes and manually load them on the tuner. That worked to alleviate the above problem and I got much further in the programming process. The tuner downloaded the stock tune from the car but would freeze with the screen saying that it was applying the changes to the tune that I selected before it got to the step to write the new tune. This happened even when I chose to skip the step where I could make changes to the tune. The first time I tried it, I waited with that frozen screen for over 40 minutes because I wasn't familiar with how long that should take. Bama says that screen should not appear for more than 30 seconds.
Five calls to AM & Bama later, Bama had me try loading the included 93 octane tune for the stock engine. The tuner was able to successfully write that tune onto the car and it started and ran. It's obviously not at all correct for the engine. Bama then wrote a "Stock custom tune" based on the EEC-V engine strategy number from the car and sent that to me. The tuner froze at the exact same place as the AM custom tunes. I was then told by Bama that this is a known problem with the 99-04 cars. The tuner cannot write any custom tune to this car. Their engineers are supposed to be working on it, but they have no estimate for a time to fix the issue. I was able to return the car to the stock file on the second attempt.
I would just return the tuner for a refund and go with another manufacturer, but from what I'm learning, SCT/Bama is the only game in town for this older generation of cars short of going with a full standalone system like the Holly. I even called Anderson Ford Motorsport, as they are relatively close to where I live, and they don't have a solution to tune his car either. Does anyone know how long this has been an issue with some of the 99-04 cars for SCT? Does anyone know of an alternate tuner solution short of spending a couple grand on a standalone and dyno tuning?
SCT says this problem affects all their devices, so returning the Rev-X for an X4 will not solve the problem. They also said they cannot flash any tuner back to a previous known firmware that works with these cars.
I did post this exact request to several FB groups and one member stated they had a similar problem with the Rev-X that was cured by switching to the X4. I've requested his fimware number to make sure he didn't simply get an X4 with an earlier firmware that doesn't have this issue vs the firmware that was on his Rev-X.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
