When I talked to them over the phone, the man at the other end said that with a stock tune on the upgraded turbo (MRX upgrade) that car would run like crap. Just FYI. Your idea of having another shop do it other than mountune is well taken. The last time I talked with the Ford Racing Shop (Aldridge Motors) in Portland, they had recently moved and weren't taking in new work. I should give them an call and see if they're taking customers again. (They did all my other installs).
Oh definitely. You really NEVER want to drive the MRX setup on the stock tune. Here's what will happen to my car (which currently has the MR230 tune and HW):
- With the MR230 HW in place, car will be flashed back to the stock tune.
- I'll carefully drive the car to the shop where the MRX HW and tune will be installed.
- Shop bolts up the few items that are coming.
- Shop uploads MRX tune from Cobb AP3 to the car; Cobb AP3 captures the stock tune for safe keeping and possible use in the future.
The car will have the MRX tune and the required HW bits to start a process of data logging and adjustment as needed. Then it will get to the track for more test and data logging and possibly more tuning, TBD.
I'm keeping the stock tune for a specific reason: To take the car back to something close to stock in the future if needed for some reason.
I'll have the following options for the car:
- MRX setuip: in the car once this is done; stock tune in the Cobb AP3 for possible future use
- Stock tune: Return to stock turbo/BOV and cat. Upload stock tune from the Cobb AP3. I don't think the other bits (FMIC, plumbing, coolers, etc.) will really matter at that point. The car will run like stock as long as the stock cat is in there.
- MR230 setup: To get back to this, I would restore the stock turbo/BOV back (but keep the mountune cat) and replace the MRX tune with the MR230 tune from my mountune-specific AP (least likely change, but possible). I might have to switch back to the stock tune first from the Cobb AP3, not sure. I'm not sure how the Cobb AP3 handles managing tunes.
It's possible that order of swapout could matter depending on how the Cobb AP3 handles the tunes it sees in the car. I'm new to managing tunes with the AP3. My old SCT tuner for the SVT Focus had some limitations, but I don't recall how it hanlded stock vs. custom tunes.
In any event, I'm wanting to retain some options. I think that if I go straight to the MRX tune from the MR230 tune, then the Cobb AP3 will try capture the MR230 tune as its "default" tune. Not sure that will work right, plus I have that tune in my mountune AP. I'm much more sure that the Cobb AP3 will capture a stock Ford tune correctly when it goes to pair with my car and upload/swap tunes.
Hope that makes sense.