Pedal Commander! Awesomeness!

[FreightTerrain]

I got my pc from SVC when they first offered it. I have no tune, just intake and catbackb. It has been flawless! I love it!!

love mine. been a few months now and no issues. sport +2. tap the pedal and away i go. turned it off just for fun awhile back and couldnt believe what a dog the 6.2 felt like. i wont turn it off again

 

[Gilligan]

Since everyone is an Engineer on the internet, I’ll put on my internet certified graduate of the Wile E. Coyote School for Engineering Greatness (WECSEG) hat...

So, while not proof beyond all doubt, or perhaps even reasonable doubt, this bit of information seems to point to an invalidation of the theory that @Gilligan’s problem was caused by the pedal commander, but maybe not contributed to by the PC.

While the evidence would point away from the PC, it seems the 2 subject vehicles were significantly different in their state of tune, and it is always possible they were in a different state of repair. While there’s not enough information or “evidence” for court, there is strong circumstantial evidence that the unit @Gilligan was campaigning was not defective. The fact that it’s in use by a subsequent user without the problems strongly suggests this - but does not prove it outright in and of itself.

OTOH, in his shoes I’d have pulled the PC too assuming it was the last or last combination of modifications - and this ladies is why you make one mod at a time. The (reported) fact that the surging did not reoccur does at least suggest on a base level that the combination of the pc and his truck was not optimal but the cause is not known.

The cause isn't and probably never will be known but since the theory is that these malfunctions could be caused by electromagnetic interference the fact it works on another truck without issue doesn't really say much, I knew that it would barring the new owner didn't cross paths with some type of interference that would affect all pedal commander units the same.

And for what it's worth Kanakry warned this could happen months before it did happen so it's not a theory I made up after the fact to fit a narrative.

 

[pjones]

Wow this is a pretty epic thread. Kudos for PC to come here and face the users and try to get answers.

Since these devices are contract manufactured, unless there were explicit requirements for specific certification, the CEM would not just automatically seek these certs.

I will make a guess that these aren’t designed completely in-house and shipped off to some shop in China to build. It was probably contract designed and manufactured. PC provided the specs and they build a box to meet the specs.

I doubt you will find a smoking gun in the certs, it often just describes how it is tested. These are designed to catch major flaws, and what seems to be happening here are conditions that are not typically caught in the testing.

Maybe a better approach is to get the build sheet of the Raptor with issues and see what is the common bond between these vehicles. Maybe the ones with issues have the technology package and the lane assist is confusing the ecu.

Or, if this is known it work on 100% stock trucks, sell it only to owners who do not intent to mod?

I don’t have a dog In this fight. I don’t own a PC and have no interest in one, but I hate to see the pitch forks out if the vendor is willing to work with the customers to improve a product. For this to work, both sides need to chill and be open.

Anyone opened one of these boxes? I am curious to see what’s inside.

 

[Kanakry]

I bet Kanakry would be willing to test a Pedal Commander if a vendor or PC themselves wants to end this once and for all

Possibly.

These test cost quite a bit of money to run, mainly because of equipment cost. But I'm sure I can find some down time in Q1 of 2018 if someone wanted to send one over.

I would run to the Ford or GM spec. Using an Keysight arb to drive the pedal commander at a preset frequency and a Keysight 6000 scope to monitor for changes.

Let me know.

 

[Aaron]

Wow this is a pretty epic thread. Kudos for PC to come here and face the users and try to get answers.

Since these devices are contract manufactured, unless there were explicit requirements for specific certification, the CEM would not just automatically seek these certs.

I will make a guess that these aren’t designed completely in-house and shipped off to some shop in China to build. It was probably contract designed and manufactured. PC provided the specs and they build a box to meet the specs.

I doubt you will find a smoking gun in the certs, it often just describes how it is tested. These are designed to catch major flaws, and what seems to be happening here are conditions that are not typically caught in the testing.

Maybe a better approach is to get the build sheet of the Raptor with issues and see what is the common bond between these vehicles. Maybe the ones with issues have the technology package and the lane assist is confusing the ecu.

Or, if this is known it work on 100% stock trucks, sell it only to owners who do not intent to mod?

I don’t have a dog In this fight. I don’t own a PC and have no interest in one, but I hate to see the pitch forks out if the vendor is willing to work with the customers to improve a product. For this to work, both sides need to chill and be open.

Anyone opened one of these boxes? I am curious to see what’s inside.

Ok so first of all, PC as we know it does not manufacture the units. They get them from a company based in Ankara, Turkey named Vitalen Auto Performance. Where Vitalen has them manufactured I don't know. Their website is https://www.vitalengarage.com/en/ if you want to check them out.

Second, lets not get this twisted, people like Kanakry and myself are not trying to directly link what happened with Gill's truck to certs. What we are trying to do is determine what level of testing was done during the development of this product. It's something you hook directly to your throttle, so I'd say it's important to make sure that the proper tests (not just any tests) are done to make sure that it's not susceptible to interference. Nobody is asking for the moon here, we just want to know what tests have been performed.

I can only speak for myself, but I have not brought out the pitchfork as of yet. I've been corresponding on and off with Jax for over 7 months on this trying to get an answer to my question about EMC testing.

 

[Kanakry]

***Real life situation of a mass produced car showing EMC problems from a multi Billion dollar company in the real world.


12 Tests vehicles are driving down I-75 in Flint, Michigan. While driving past Bishop Airport 10 of the 12 cars shut off almost instantly and the drivers coasted to the side of the road. The other 2 pulled over and backed up to see what the problem is.

All 10 cars reported that the Cluster was INOP. Fast forward 3 hours, I receive a phone call and looked on a map to where this issue was. The Radar for Bishop airport is very close to the Expressway. Through back channels a call was made from the OEM to the FAA to Bishop to switch to the other Radar array.

The moment they switched the cars cluster turned back on. They started and drove away.

This cluster had over 5000 hours of design into it. Passed Design Validation EMC testing.

So why did this happen?

Because the micro manufacture changed the chip design and it wasn't passed along. The clusters where then EMC tested again and all 12 failed.

Why didn't all 12 fail in the real world?

A lot of things effect EMC and the way it couples into the product. Placement of a cellphone on the dash or the use of a Walkie Talkie for instance can drastically change how a product performs. Possibly the wiring harness was routed slightly differently.

A 4w Baofang radio on high outputs roughly 500 v/m at .5M from the antenna. The Radar Pulse test for non saftey equipment is only 300 v/m. Up until 5 years ago no one really tested for these scenarios of cell phones and Walkie Talkies. But now they do, ISO-11452-9.

In the end the problem was solved and there are over 1 Million of these clusters on the road today.

Adding something to the Throttle position system isn't the same as adding a K&N Intake, supercharger or even a tune. None of those things have the ability to falsely manipulate the signal or heavily distort it in a High RF Environment. With enough RF energy and Pulse packets the device would think that you are on the gas when you are not. Its how this workings. All you need is a source (RF) a victim(PCB in line, pedal thing) and a effective antenna(PCB trace, wire something to couple to).


1 sample of 1 product from Design to Release for Automotive EMC testing alone, not electrical or environmental is over $35k.

Im not saying that the PC did or didn't have testing(that is just a small piece, just because it was tested doesn't mean it passed) or did or didn't pass. I am here just relaying the real world issues it can cause.

Also just because you test and pass EMC doesn't mean that your product is a good product. EMC is how it interacts with the RF world nothing about how it preforms under normal conditions.

 

[Aaron]

@Kanakry up in here preaching that gospel this morning.

 

[AndysLog]

daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn.

 

[WRCRaptor]

@Kanakry I have one you can test! Love the flint bishop story.

 

[smurfslayer]

Ok so first of all, PC as we know it does not manufacture the units. They get them from a company based in Ankara, Turkey named Vitalen Auto Performance. Where Vitalen has them manufactured I don't know. Their website is https://www.vitalengarage.com/en/ if you want to check them out.

Second, lets not get this twisted, people like Kanakry and myself are not trying to directly link what happened with Gill's truck to certs. What we are trying to do is determine what level of testing was done during the development of this product. It's something you hook directly to your throttle, so I'd say it's important to make sure that the proper tests (not just any tests) are done to make sure that it's not susceptible to interference. Nobody is asking for the moon here, we just want to know what tests have been performed.

I can only speak for myself, but I have not brought out the pitchfork as of yet. I've been corresponding on and off with Jax for over 7 months on this trying to get an answer to my question about EMC testing.

yeah.... no. I think it’s pretty clear from your posts ... I’ll go as far as to say you have an axe to grind here.

You are far from unbiased in this, oh master of the starbucks drive thru.
let’s be clear though - nobody is unbiased.

I’ve given PC the benefit of doubt here, possibly more so than reasonable in the given fact set, but if you page back further, you’ll see I was not so kind or charitable in their pricing (MAP) fiasco.

Regardless, axe to grind or not, if it brings more useful information to light, it’s not a bad thing. I avoided the boostmax for exactly the bad reports posted here and a few more products I’ve seen.

I’ve personally worked on a similar failure to one reported by Kanarky, but not EMI; heat soaking. It was a customer abuse situation but, exposed a fairly significant hardware flaw in a server component. the (computer) card vendor investigated and admitted fault. This component too had thousands of test hours behind it. So weird and bad $hit does happen.