Ford Ranger Raptor MY23>
(3.0 Litre Ecoboost)
Fords new 6 cylinder Ecoboost powered Ranger Raptors are amazing vehicles! With their 3 litre direct injection Ecoboost engine giving really great performance for its size!
This is certainly one of the most capable and surprising Fords to date.
However, as with most production cars, it feels a little "soft" out of the box.
We can tailor the calibration in your ECU to ensure all existing modifications are accommodated for and you can rest assured the vehicle will retain all the safety features programmed in by the manufacturer such as EGT control, Knock control, closed loop fuel control and other such important features. We wont remove these to facilitate a power increase as some tuners do. The vehicle will retain these important safety features and will run just as well as it did standard, in fact probably even better.
We currently have two well tried and tested tunes for this vehicle, the MSD 400 that increases power to 400PS and torque up to 600NM and the MSD460, raising power to 460PS and Torque to 700 NM
MSD 400 (600 Nm and 400 PS)
This calibration works fine on the standard vehicle and optimises the calibration in order to enhance the power output to 600Nm and 400PS.
This isn’t just headline power either, flexibility and reliability are our speciality so the ECU's incredible torque model is fully retained ensuring factory driveability with no hesitations, surges or hiccups in the power delivery. Naturally, as with all MSD power upgrades, all necessary safety limits and protection strategies are re-profiled and enhanced in order to allow the extra performance whilst retaining a strong, O.E Level of engine protection.
Please be aware that power figures don’t tell the whole story with these management systems, making extra power is easy, but many companies completely disable the torque control and most of the protection strategies in order to do so and this can cause driveability and longevity concerns with often massive boost levels required to make the power. Read our comprehensive "Safety" tab for more details.
Additional hardware needed:
- None
Standard Calibration Features
- Increased power and torque
- Improved idle stability
- Factory driveability under all conditions.
- Optimal gear shifting
- Retains all emissions systems, including the GPF.
- All engine protections remain in place (See safety tab)
Personalisations Available:
- Decat / sports cat MIL eliminated (For vehicle with a de-cat / sports cat fitted)
- Road speed limiter removal
Features still in development: (Ask for further details)
- Stop / Start disable
- Power upgrade on sport button only
- Burbles activation
Total cost of this calibration installed: £399.00 inc vat.
(Includes diagnostics and test drive to asses vehicle pre and post tune condition)
(The calibration will be supplied via HP Tuners RTD unit with the relevant credits to license the car. An Android or IOS mobile phone is required for this service.)
MSD 460 (700Nm and 460PS)
This calibration utilises a free flowing air filter on an otherwise standard vehicle and optimises the calibration in order to enhance the power output to 700Nm and 460PS.
This isn’t just headline power either, flexibility and reliability are our speciality so the ECU's incredible torque model is fully retained ensuring factory driveability with no hesitations, surges or hiccups in the power delivery. Naturally, as with all MSD power upgrades, all necessary safety limits and protection strategies are re-profiled and enhanced in order to allow the extra performance whilst retaining a strong, O.E Level of engine protection.
Please be aware that power figures don’t tell the whole story with these management systems, making extra power is easy, but many companies completely disable the torque control and most of the protection strategies in order to do so and this can cause driveability and longevity concerns with often massive boost levels required to make the power. Read our comprehensive "Safety" tab for more details.
Additional hardware needed:
- Uprated panel filter
Standard Calibration Features
- Improved idle stability
- Factory driveability under all conditions.
- Optimal gear shifting
- Retains all emissions systems, including the GPF.
- All engine protections remain in place (See safety tab)
Personalisations Available:
- Decat / sports cat MIL eliminated (For vehicle with a de-cat / sports cat fitted)
- Road speed limiter removal
Features still in development: (Ask for further details)
- Stop / Start disable
- Power upgrade on sport button only
- Burbles activation
Total cost of this calibration installed: £499.00 inc vat.
(Includes diagnostics and test drive to asses vehicle pre and post tune condition)
Total cost of this calibration supplied remotely: £TBA inc vat.
(The calibration will be supplied via HP Tuners RTD unit with the relevant credits to license the car. An Android or IOS mobile phone is required for this service.)
MSD 500 (780Nm and 500PS)
STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT still under development. start- stop.
Additional hardware needed:
- Uprated panel filter, induction kit and charge pipes
Standard Calibration Features
- STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT
Personalisations Available:
- STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT
Features still in development: (Ask for further details)
- STILL UNDER DEVELOPMENT
Total cost of this calibration installed: £TBA inc vat.
Beware:
All ECU "calibrations" are not created equally...
There are many ways to calibrate a modern vehicles ECU but the sad fact remains that a huge percentage of the tunes we see have had all the safety strategies and drive logic features removed from them. These MG1CS036 Gen2 PCM's are one of the hardest to access and have exceptional engine control strategies built into them.
These strategies are a key reason that as standard, these vehicles drive so amazingly well. Smooth, linear and powerful to the rev limiter. And safe too... the protection strategies are incredibly complex and work alongside a very comprehensive torque model in order to deliver what the driver asks, but keep the engine in one piece should things go wrong.
To recalibrate an MG1CS036 Gen2 PCM properly, from scratch as we do, takes many hundreds of hours of development on our in house dyno. But the results are worthwhile.
Rest assured that when we calibrate a vehicles PCM we retain:
- Full torque model remains intact. (This is what makes the vehicle drive so well)
- Low speed pre ignition (LSPI) control. (Read the blog for info)
- Knock control system is left intact and working (Guards against detonation)
- Over-boost limits. (Protects against over-boost due to a fault)
- Under-boost limits. (Protects turbo in the event of an air leaks)
- Full engine speed limits. (Raised if the tune would benefit)
- Exhaust temp load profiling. (Takes over if EGT exceeds limits)
- Fuel flow limit air control. (Takes over if you run too lean)
- Coolant temperature limits. (Never raised)
- Transmission temperature limits. (Never raised)
- Gearbox fluid temperature limits. (Never raised)
- All the ECU Limp home strategies. (These are what get you home!)
- All of the 300+ fault codes are retained so your ECU can report faults.
The above may look and read like common sense?
You are right... retaining everything above is desirable, but to do so requires an understanding of how these torque modelled systems work so that we can actually "recalibrate" the various sub-systems to work the way we want them to, whilst targeting higher airflow and power levels.
Sadly, because all of the above strategies will, by their very nature, fight our efforts to create extra airflow, many amateurs find ways to just disable the limits, often by "de-calibrating" the system so it will allow extra airflow.
We regularly see calibrations with various anticipation and prediction systems switched off, load limits flat-lined, air load limits totally disabled, fuel flow limits deleted, knock systems de-sensitised, the list goes on, its quite disappointing to see.
How would you know?
That’s a good question, and it depends just how badly they have de-calibrated the system.
Lets face a simple fact here... if you have a vehicle with a virtually standard engine and turbo that drove perfectly well before a re-calibration, extending its headroom above 360PS wont make it drive or perform worse during normal driving at least say, 100PS. Why would it? No reason at all. Same engine, same air path, same hardware. So it should drive the same, only faster at big throttle openings.
Now, if they have "only" removed all the safety limits (running more boost than a 3bar map sensor can see for example) then the vehicle will still drive perfectly well if the rest of the system has been recalibrated to properly request the torque the conversion makes. That kind of calibration will just have no safety limits in place should anything go wrong. Hopefully it wont, so all is well.(Whilst the cars components are new anyway)
However, if you start to disable the torque targeting system, or make a mess of recalibrating it then you end up with all manner of horrible drive-ability problems. Aggressive throttle, unpredictable or surging power delivery, an engine that doesn’t want to just cruise along at a set speed, an engine that only wants to deliver high power and doesn’t like to do things gently when needed, these are all very common when a confused ECU tries to deliver closed loop air loads with a broken load model.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, some of these de-calibrated strategies are firing out fault codes so we see some with all 300+ codes just deleted so the ECU cant report them. This in turn disables all the limp home strategies designed to take control and get you home in the event of component failure.
Sadly, this is the reality of modern tuning... Take care out there!
Further reading:
If this has wet your appetite to know more about how your Ford Ecoboost management strategy in the PCM works, you may well enjoy my series of Blogs about an almost identical system to your Ranger's PCM Strategy.
Blog 1 of 4. Understanding Ford Ecoboost Torque Control
(There are more located in our main technical info section with Stus other 70+ magazine articles)
Purchasing Options:
This OBD calibration can be purchased via any one of our professional Installers:
Owners looking to have their vehicle tuned can have it done by us here in Blackpool, or via any of our approved calibration installers across our Evolution Chips network.
