3rd Gen Tundra Tuning with VF Tuner

I just got software rights to tune 3rd Gen Tundra. I haven’t got the cable yet. I will be diving in to the tuning portion of these trucks and wanted to make a thread for somewhat of a how to for any of y’all thinking about tuning on your own. When I first opened the file, it was much different than what I’ve previously seen, and a tiny bit confusing in some parts. So as I get more acclimated with it, I can go through the different maps here and maybe I can help some of y’all understand them better. I’ll start with the basics, throttle, transmission, limiters, ect. Then I can get in to some more extensive maps. More to come.

 

And some eye candy I pulled off the internet.

 

OH YES! Excited to see the tunes I know my truck could use a better tansmission tune lol thing needs jesus.

 

Honestly, the old Toyota tuning was whack. I still do not understand the logic for what the hell its doing to actually arrive at a certain torque or power value.

This new tuning is load based, which means the truck will calculate a desired torque based on accelerator position and then, from there, determine an air mass that is needed to achieve that torque via torque models built into the PCM. Basically, the PCM handles everything. This is exactly how Ford has been running the Ecoboost motors for 14+ years and so you can probably look at some of the Ecoboost tuning guides to get a general idea of how the V35 tuning works. https://cobbtuning.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PRS/pages/769098243/Ford+Truck+Tuning+Guide

The great thing about this is, until you exceed the available torque or load range built into the PCM, you basically just request more torque and the PCM handles the rest. You may have to lift some limiters/safeties out of the way, but its generally just as simple as asking for more torque in the driver demand table and the PCM makes the air load needed to hit that torque.

Where it gets a little more difficult is when you start to do some major upgrades that start to change the engines volumetric efficiency. The torque models are all based on the engine in its current configuration and once you start to mess with that, the torque model no longer is correct. This would be things like turbo upgrades with larger turbines, or if you started messing with heads or other engine internals. Things like intakes and exhaust generally dont bother it.

One of the other things that ford does is uses a thing called HDFX. This where they might have 12 to 14 different tables for ignition timing, cam timing, torque to airload models and other things. The PCM uses this HDFX model to blend the various tables depending on the particular conditions the engine is operating in. At any given time, the PCM can be weighting 5 or 10 of those 12 different ignition timing tables to arrive at a single ingnition timing value. So you might have 10% on table 1, 25% on table 4, 5% on table 5, etc etc etc. IDK if Toyota is doing the same thing, but kinda suspect they might be just based on it being a load based tune.

 

excellent info. I plan on posting pics of every available map, hopefully this weekend. Then start dissecting them.

 

And just to add to what I said above, the air mass is really called the air load. The air load is essentially a ratio of the actual air mass the engine is consuming to the theoretical air mass a 3.4L engine can consume at standard temperature and pressure(something like 20*C and 1 Atmosphere). The Air load accommodates both the air pressure and charge air temperature in the manifold. So if the charge air temperature is really cold, its denser, and the engine needs less boost to achieve said air load. If its really hot, the air is less dense, and the turbos can make more boost to compensate to make the desired air load.

This makes it so that the engine makes the same torque and power in virtually all conditions, unless you run into a limiter(temperature, manifold pressure, barometric pressure, etc). The engine will 100% compensate for altitude because its just trying generate a certain air load.

 

Also, just reading the VFtuner 3.5L guide, its seems like they may be trying to suggest that there are some maps you want to alter to get the throttle to open more. Unless there is something fundamentally different about the V35 tuning than Ecoboost, this is not what you want to do. The way the engines work is that they use Wastegates for larger adjustments to boost, and then uses the throttle body to make finer adjustments to how much of that boost makes it into the manifold. If you datalog the truck while at WOT, you might see that the throttle is only open 40* or something like that. That doesnt mean its not making the requested power, it just means that the turbos are capable of making more power and the throttle is limiting air load to make the desired power.

Thats not a bad thing. You dont want the throttle to just snap wide open and stay there because then you lose fine boost/air load control.

 

Sorry, spamming.

It would be really interesting to see if they have some kind of turbo overspeed map or something like that. Basically a map that tells us the limits of the stock turbos. Would be a quick way to figure out the approximate max power potential these motors have stock. On the F150 it looks like this:



Basically, it tells us the stock F150 turbos are good for about 60 lbs/min of air flow, or 600 crank HP on 93 octane.

 

I ordered a WiFlash myself because ordering a whole new VFtuner kit was almost as cheap as just getting a new license for my existing kit for my LX570. I am hoping with the WiFlash and the 2.0+ version of the software I will be able to take a look at these tunes myself.

 

Its been almost 3 weeks and VFtuner still has not shipped my WiFlash.

 

Any updates on the tuning software? Did you get access to the maps/calibrations? Is this vaporware?

 

Matt requested I don’t publicly display the maps as per the terms of the copyright agreement. We can certainly talk about methods. I do have access to the software currently and it’s still being further developed. The interfaces haven’t shipped yet, but once they do, I’ll run through the process of tuning similar to the instructions posted on the VF Tuner website. I was gonna delete this thread, but there’s no delete button for it without admin interaction. So I’ll just change it up a bit. Stay tuned.

 

I got my WiFlash but dont have the upgrade license for the 4th gen ECU's and so i can't even open the tune.

 

The 3.5t and 2.4t interfaces are projected to ship this week.

 

Just got ship notification for the ECU interface for 3rd Gen Tundra. Next up will be tuning R&D. My question for 3rd Gen Tundra owners is what could be better about the truck performance wise, transmission, throttle, ect?

I spoke with a friend and he said the biggest complaint is getting going from a stop. I see that the 3.5L motor is trying to push a full size truck without turbos being spooled up. So that’s going to be a challenge to correct, but I see that it is doable. If any of you have input on this, with extra detail to add. Please I’d like to hear it.

Next complaint was transmission shifting. Seems the trans gets confused in some spots and doesn’t know what to do. I can clean that up, but any extra input would be appreciated.

Then responsiveness from driver input. That’s an EZ one. But again, input here would be appreciated.

Thank you.

 

Posting in this thread to see if anyone has user experience with the VF Tuner to see if this is an option vs JB4. I would imagine the full tune certainly helps the “dead pedal” many of us feel when taking off in a non-hybrid.

 

What exactly are you asking? And for what year, model, and motor?

 

sorry didnt see this response... 2023 non hybrid.

 

Any update on this? did you tune the ecu and tcu?

 

So initial results from take off has greatly improved the “dead pedal feel” but there is still a tiny bit of lag until the turbos spool up, then it rips. I’ve gotten a 22 Tundra on the dyno with 87 octane and gained an additional 45 wheel horsepower and 76 wheel torque over stock. This Friday I’ll be getting another truck on the dyno with 93 octane and will post the results. ECU and TCU are available. Currently the speed limiter is not available, but will be soon.

 

Sure did, I didn’t do much to the TCU since that’s more user preference area. But I didn’t make some improvements to the shift patterns in each shift set. Depending on the year, there’s up to 18 shift sets with 16 gear changes per.

 

Seems the weakest point is the gear box multiple people who tuned there cars reported an issue or gear failure due to high torque "can go up to 600 wheel torque with high octane fuel" this with FBO "intakes and downpipes".

 

I take that into consideration with every tune. I try and keep the trans tuning as simple as possible. The previous Gen Tundras I’ve had excellent success with just some basic conservative adjustments.

 

As I know the Australians in justauto they started with shift points for the 10 speed LC300 diesel engine maybe around a year ago with no issues and since few months they are announced lunching OTS for petrol 3.4TT engines soon "using flash device more like SCT devices with Ford" most likely will be combined with both ECU and TUC tune.