Ford fights chips?

[Ron in Colorado]

I also posted this on the 99-2000 forum.

I talked to a new diesel owner who bought an Excursion PSD. The performance was less than expected, and the dealer could not fix the dog. The dealer finally put in a performance "chip", and wow the truck about burned the tires off. Thirty minutes of driving and the motor shut down, and the original chip had to be reinstalled to get it running, This occurred every time the new chip was tried.
The owner and the dealer's tech surmise that Ford has the computer configured to reject any foreign chips. Has anyone else run into this problem? Sounds like there is going to be a battle of electronic counter-measures.

Ron in Colorado

[Wayne Steele]

What's stored on these chips is nothing more than a computer program. If Ford has code in its chip that detects and disables an after-market program, then it's only a matter of time before the chip makers find a way to "override" this behavior.

In this case, I'd be more inclined to believe that something else was wrong with the setup. Perhaps the chip wasn't properly matched to the native computer module.

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Ordered 11/22/99: Excursion Limited 4X4 V10 in Estate Green with ALL of the Toys

[bjornar]

Did they check for error codes in the engine management after shutdown? It could be that the tune chip triggered an engine alarm that made the computer shut everything down after a while to be on the safe side.
It is common that the chips will cause an "overboost alarm", possibly other errors too.


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Bjørnar
Ålesund, Norway
1990 E-250 7.3l E4OD 3.54
2000 Excursion Limited on order