Drove my old normal commute path today. It was a typical day and rather than the 19mpg I'd get in the first 5 miles I ended that stretch at 23. By the end of the trip I managed 31.7 vs the 26 I had been previously getting. Will be interesting to see how it does going home that way tonight.

This is really cool as I hate the other route I've been taking (4 different accidents with idiots that don't understand what "merge" and "right of way" mean in my old Escape). This will take a lot of stress out of my commutes if it pans out.

 

We come home yesterday from a trip (250 miles) and average MPG was 34 doing 60 to 85. When I filled up last night it read 786 range to empty, you gotta like that. What about the feel in power or is it insignificant?

 

On 6, 1, and 2 I didn't notice any difference, but now that I understand the graph they supplied I understand why. On 8 and 9 there is no doubt you are running with another 100 lbs of torque at the peak and unlike the base config there is a welling of the power compared to the on/off feel I got from the long flat peak of the default.

 

So what's your overall verdict?

 

Well I haven't pulled it out and sent it back

Seriously though I think it's money well spent in my opinion. The fuel economy is nice, but much like the price difference between the V6 and Diesel it will take awhile to pay for itself. For me I like the extra power for such a little price and the better economy appeals to my greener side which is why I wanted to go diesel in the first place.

As I said previously, I'll continue to play with it and I'll continue to post my impressions. I think giving each setting, unless there is a glaring issue, a full tank of gas is probably the best approach.

 

$3.75/g was too good to pass up last night, so I filled up even though the light hadn't come on yet. The last time it was a good price and I decided to wait until morning it jumped $0.10 overnight

The box was installed for all but maybe 20 miles of this tank and I ended up getting 582.1 miles out of it (with it telling me I had about 150 more to go) which is a personal best. The PCM ended up reporting an overall of 29.8mpg for the tank, but calculating it out gives me 26.41 which is inline with the discrepancy I've already noticed between what it thinks and what is true in the real world.

If I take my trip back and forth to FL out of the mix (which interestingly was almost dead on the same results, but I had over 1000 pounds of people, dogs, crap, and a roof box for that trip) then this tank was a bit over 15% better than my other fill ups doing pretty much the same type of driving.

So after 1 tank on map 8 I have to say I'm impressed and am extremely happy with the purchase. The torque is noticeable and fun and to get the economy on top of it is great.

The downsides are that the increased "diesel knock" was consistent and I did have another couple of episodes of the long running fan with hints of a burning oil smell.

So now I've switched to map 6 (which is how it came) and will give it a tank to see how it does.

 

I've yet to drive it since I made the switch, but my wife drove it yesterday for a shortish trip. Normally she hates to drive it because I yell at her for getting crappy consumption numbers, but she got back to the house at 33mpg and claims to have "driven normally".

6 might be my new favorite number

 

Now that I've played with it a little bit (between 50-100 miles) I'll probably be going back to 8 after this tank.

• It has to be a placebo effect, but I swear even though the speedo says the same speed it feels slower.
• It has plenty of power, but it isn't as instant as 8 was.
• As the curve is less drastic, it feels more like the factory setting. The power is pretty much on or off. No feeling of a good kick like 8 gave.
• It appears to get incredible MPG if you can just let it cruise, but if you are in stop/go traffic it might actually be worse than the factory setting.

I'll commute into the office with it on Wednesday which will get a better real world (e.g. how it's normally driven) view of how it does, but for the type of driving it will normally see 8 seems to be a lot better than 6. No question I need to remember to switch to 6 before doing a road trip though.

I'll still give it the full tank though so it hopefully gets a good average set of driving conditions.

 

I've done a few commutes now and I'm still not sure what to think about 6. The MPG gets low during the stop/go portions, but once I get it moving and can cruise it jumps like a rocket. Map 8 seemed a lot more predictable to me.

I think my initial feeling is correct. Map 8 for my typical driving and Map 6 for any long hauls.

I need to find an excuse to do a late night run to the city so I can see how it compares to the Map 8 run that netted ~36MPG for the round trip.

 

Are you enjoying the playing around or is it just getting frustrating?

 

Since the first day I've only changed it once at the last full up. All the "work" is just driving it and seeing how the current map performs against what I'd experienced with the factory config.

Map 6 is frustrating for me as I just haven't figured it out yet. Last week I got 28mpg for my commute that I was getting 31 from map 8. Today however I got 30 going in and 32.5 coming home when the traffic was actually worse (especially tonight).

The down side of the good gas mileage is that it takes so damn long to get through a tank since I only commute twice a week. Right now I'm trying for the mileage and not playing with the extra power too much. I look forward to going back to 8 and letting it rip when I need a break from the mundane drives

All in all I'm still having fun every time I drive it and can't get out with out a smile on my face.

 

After extrapolating a lot of numbers, I've been using map 7 for over 4 months now. It seems to have the combination of horsepower, torque, and fuel economy of the 9 available maps. Passed on map 9 (306hp/483ft-lbs/+10% economy), because torque is more important to me than horsepower. So I started with map 8 (300/509/+10%) because that's the highest torque output of the 9 maps. As it went through the gears under full throttle, it felt like torque was dropping off too long before horsepower peaked. Great acceleration, but not smooth enough for me. So I switched to map 7 (288/496/+15%). Even though I eventually intend to road test map 5 (276/496/+15%) and map 6 (282/496/+13%), I have a feeling I might end up back on map 7.

//greg//

 

Guys,

Thanks for the detailed thread and pictures and curves.

I am going to order a BlueSpark box shortly and will report back when I have it installed and gather some data and/or impressions.

 

Happy to help Josh.

Update:

Finally finished my Map 6 tank today (5 more miles and I would have broken my previous distance for a tank record!) and I'll definitely be going back to 8 for my normal driving. The final numbers were the MFD reporting 28.2mpg (PCM reported 28.0?) over 630.4 miles. Calculated the final number was 25.54mpg.

So for me Map 8 did almost a full 1mpg (calculated) better than Map 6. I think Map 6 has the potential to be better, but I just never found the right trick to driving it. I'll set it back to 6 for the next road trip though as I think cruising the road is where it will shine versus the mixed extremes that my normal usage sees.

I'm having a periodic rough shift (slowly costing down hill where it shifts up from 1st to 2nd) so I've pulled the BSP out for a few days just to make sure it's not related before I take it to the dealer over the weekend. So be prepared for me to post a whining rant in the next few days about how bad the factory settings are (actually it will be interesting to see how much difference I notice (besides what the MFD says))

 

A few things of note from running today without it.

1) This morning's commute ended at 30.4mpg according to the MFD which is what I've been seeing and is abnormally high prior to installing the BSP. On the way home, however, it reported 26.2 compared to the 30.8 I got last night in near identical conditions which is what I had come to expect as the top end of the range.

2) For commuting purposes I really did't notice the difference above the magic 1750rpm. Logically I know the extra power is not there, but since I wasn't getting on it I just didn't miss it.

3) Where I did notice the difference was under 1750:

3a) On Map 8 just releasing the brake on a flat stretch will take it up to 10mph at idle speed. On Map 6 it would do 6mph. Without the BSP 4mph is the best it would do. So I had to do more to get it moving in stop/go traffic which easily accounts for some of the drop is consumption.

3b) Without the BSP it's back to the on/off feel to me where it feels like it just spins until you hit 1750 and then all of a sudden the flood gate is open. With the BSP there is a much smoother ramp in power and it gives the feeling that the sub-1750 RPMs are actually doing something useful.

4) I noticed a case going up a slight hill where the transmission actually downshifted (8th to 7th) where I've come not to expect such a gear change.

It's not a shocking difference, but once you've gotten used to it you will notice it. In another recent thread (maybe on RL?) Greg talked about being unimpressed with a gas V6 he had for a few days. I'm a big fan of the VR6 is the Cayenne (at least the lighter 958), but I can see how going from a BSP tuned CD to a vanilla V6 could be quite the shocking change.