vF Tuner for the 3.5L Tacoma-AGM tuning

Thank ya! Appreciate it

 

after working a 10 hour shift yesterday I noticed my car turn over slow. seemed weird, got home and checked battery voltage at the terminal posts and was registering around 12.0v. Took it for an hour drive charging at 14.5v on scangauge and verified at battery posts. I then un hooked the battery from the car and let it charge on a 2.0 Amp charger for 8 hours over night. I know this isn't ideal, but it's the only charger I own. In the morning i'm at 12.3v. I hook it up to the truck. Drive to work for about a 15 minute drive charging at 14.5v. Shut it off wait about 3 min and check voltage at the posts and i'm at 11.9v.

I did do a quick parasitic drain test with my volt meter in line, but didn't wait very long for the car to shut down last night and was showing .500 amp draw with everything off. This may settle down over some time and will re check this. Also checked with an amp clamp and engine running saw 20amps going to the battery at 14.5v. I'm starting to think i have a bad 3 month old northstar x2 or maybe a drain. will investigate, but seems odd that it's not really holding a charge. I'm going to pull it out of the truck and fully charge it and put in a backup battery.

only things i've done recently was flashed a bunch playing with idle maps and some alternator settings to attempt to fix my voltage drop in D at idle with loads active. This was saturday night. the very last flash to the ecu i flashed back to my initial settings I turned the ignition to the off position after flashing and didn't turn on and start the car until the next morning. it fired right up sunday morning.

been running the following adjustments since the battery was installed late january of this year 04b33 2019 truck. (aside from some quick adjustments which led back to these settings)

91.8437 91.8437 91.5234 94 94 94 94 94 94

base phase initial additive, (start phase increast duty) 0
alternator constant disable control (alternator duty %) 3.57812
alternator constant phase duty 1 (alternator duty %) 14.0312
alternator constant phase duty 2 (alternator duty %) 102.296
alternator constant phase duty 3 (alternator duty %) 82.0625
alternator constant phase duty 4 (alternator duty %) 84
alternator constant phase duty 5 (alternator duty %) 84
alternator constant phase duty 9 (alternator duty %) 84
alternator constant phase duty base voltage (alternator duty %) 102.296
alternator constant phase duty for maximum voltage 14.7 (alternator duty %) 102.398
alternator constant phase duty miniumum (duty) 67.8437
alternator constant phase duty maximum for voltage 14.7 (duty) 102.398

will report back with more findings.

 

Quick update. Dropped the Northstar x2 off at batteries plus last night. They charged it and tested it this morning. Tested bad. Called me this am and picked up a new battery. Fingers crossed on this one. Dead in less than 2 months... also did a parasitic drain test and passed. Drawing .048 amps. .09 with my telematic gps and dimmer switch installed.

 

Been very weirded out by blowing that battery in a few months. Running these settings boosting to 14.5v 99% of the time isn’t bad for these batteries right? What if the battery is fully charged and takes 14.5v from the alternator for a 3 hour drive? I’ve never seen mine drop below 14.4v since the vftuner agm mod other than at idle under load ever.

I’m sure it was just a one of bad battery but been digging into info in regards to charging these batteries and how a charger would switch to float voltage values around 13.8v once a battery reaches a full charge. Our alternators don’t do that right?

 

Right. It depends on your driving habits. If you don't drive more than a couple hours at a time, the higher constant voltage isn't so bad. If you're on an all day trip and never shut your truck down, it's probably not great. The few AGM tunes I have done, I have used the values @Shellshock and @mZiggy were using. That put the "warm" voltage down around 14.2 and would probably fall to 14.0 or less when hot.

 

Interesting. Maybe I need to lower mine then. I was driving once a week for 6+ hours a day split into two so 3+ hours each way at 14.4~14.6v. Battery is rated for 14.3~14.8v. But I don’t do that all the time.

 

Yeah, I really wish we had more control (time dependent) over the charge voltage. Engine temperature seems like such a useless variable to use for changing output voltage. I am hoping the additional controls Mat was talking about are useful, but I am not getting my hopes up.

 

@OVTune would you be able to give us a sneak preview or anything of what extra alternator controls even exists?

 

I ran mine (X2power 27f) at 14.4-5 since spring of 2020 when we were first able to bump it up. I haven’t had any issues with multiple multi hour trips

I did just flash to a tune in the last couple weeks with the taper but I’m not convinced it’s really worthwhile to do that. I might go back to my previous settings

 

I’m not sure if I’m running yours with the taper but the ones from yours have my dual odyssey pc1500 holding 14.3-.4 and I feel like they are doing well under those conditions and I have done a few multi hour trips no weird smells or anything

 

That’s good info to hear for sure. Thanks for sharing. I like hearing others real world experiences. I’ll probably leave mine where it’s at for now then and write the failure off as a one off.

 

I wouldn’t worry about it. My brother had an x2 24f that was fine and totally died after like 4 months. I think there was a bad run of them, the batteries plus guy had a couple of them replaced.

 

I'd posted my results when driving on my current values and they tapered down to the 13's when the engine was warmed up

 

I’ve seen mine go down to like 14.2.. but it’s like 60 degrees here at best

 

Looks like I was remembering it incorrectly. Been awhile.

Minimum while warmed up was 13, but hung out around 14.2

 

Anybody else seeing this with truck off but accessory mode on (2 button pushes)? My voltage with truck off seems normal.

with the truck on, it doesn’t show

 

That’s normal. Happens stock

truck is drawing power and no power is going in so puts up that screen

 

Guess I never really noticed until we AGM guys started messing with things. Thanks

 

just played around with a taper. Makes 0 change on my charging voltages. Starts at 30 at 94 93.5 93 92 91 90

voltage holds steady at 14.5v occasionally bouncing to 14.4v makes no change weather the truck is fully warmed up or cold. Have we determined what the upper values represent yet? Engine compartment temp? Maybe I’ll see a change once summer kicks in... it’s been like 50 degrees driving in the AM and around 70 driving home in the pm both 14.5v.

 

I think it's coolant temp. Would be a lot more useful if it was engine compartment temp though.