Transmission issues... nGuage Can't Return to Stock

[screaminfast]

Having some hard shifting and transmission issues when the truck is cold so I have an appt at the dealer tomorrow to have it looked at and an oil change done. I went to go return the tune to stock on the nGauge (came with truck, tune is from Brew City Boost, now out of business) and it said the stock file was wrong. Not sure what the best thing to do here is now. My goal was to eventually eliminate the nGauge, buy an HP Tuners MPVI3 and tune it locally, but these problems came up now and I want to make sure something serious isn't wrong with the transmission.

Any ideas?

 

[FordTechOne]

Well they won’t be able to diagnose it with the tune installed, so you might as well be up front about it. Some tunes won’t even allow IDS to start a session. If you can’t get the stock file to reload, there is a procedure that can be done with IDS to reflash the PCM and TCM with the factory calibration. It would be customer pay of course, but better than being stuck in a situation where you have no ability to return it to the stock calibration.

 

[screaminfast]

Well they won’t be able to diagnose it with the tune installed, so you might as well be up front about it. Some tunes won’t even allow IDS to start a session. If you can’t get the stock file to reload, there is a procedure that can be done with IDS to reflash the PCM and TCM with the factory calibration. It would be customer pay of course, but better than being stuck in a situation where you have no ability to return it to the stock calibration.

Yeah that’s what I figured. One if my close friends knows the service manager so he’s coming with me tomorrow. I guess I’ll take my chances and see what we can come up with.

Honestly I’m hoping it’s something like low fluid or the like since it seems to be ok once the transmission is up to temp.

 

[screaminfast]

@FordTechOne So it turns out the transmission tech who I took for a ride this morning is a long time customer of mine at my retail store. He thinks it's almost for sure the CDF drum. He's going to try to have the whole transmission replaced under warranty but at a minimum a full rebuild with a new drum & valve body. He's actually going to put on a PPE tranny pan for me at the same time. The caveat is they want me to try to get the truck flashed back to stock and the tune off the PCM.

So far my options are somewhat limited since for whatever reason the nGauge needs an actual "tune file" which is stock in order to flash it back (something about 2017+). Option 1 - I've talked to MPT about purchasing their tune and they would give me a stock file to flash now and an unlock code so that I can resell the nGauge later on after getting a MPVI3 or RTD flasher. Option 2 - Since I'm in more of a time crunch and they want to start on it Monday, I could attempt to use Forscan beta to flash the PCM with the Factory software and factory AsBuilt data, which would remove any Forscan mods anyways (Not a bad thing for bringing into dealership).

I don't know any non-dealers with VCMII or VCMIII to do the flashing, and I'm not scared to do the Forscan flash, but it does make me a little nervous.

This would have been alleviated if Brew City Boost didn't go out of business. Lesson to be learned for those reading here is to when choosing a company to do business with, stability and longevity do matter.

 

[screaminfast]

I know it's been a while since I updated on this post, but I actually had a great outcome with my local dealer.

I ended up flashing the PCM and TCM back to stock calibration via Forscan by loading it as a firmware update. The dealer got an entire replacement crate transmission put in under warranty. They also put a PPE trans pan on there for me. I picked up the truck and drove it for about a month and it was acting up and "overrevving" in the later gears (8-9-10). They reset the calibration and I drove it for about 500 miles. I took it on a longer 3-4 hour trip and noticed that the trans fluid was spiking to 230F while it was doing it. I brought it back to the dealer and mentioned this and some research I found online with other guys experiencing this. I said it seems like it's an issue with the amount of fluid.

Picked it back up last week from that and they said it was over a quart high in fluid. It's been shifting and acting great ever since!