I can not see tuners giving specific instructions on how to get these idles completely smooth as that is how they make their money and it was there time plugging away testing over and over again to figure out what works. Certainly not on a open public forum. They may point you in the right direction with posts like Matt has made to give you a path to start looking for things to try to start changing values. Maybe I am wrong but that just seems logical.
TARM,
This is not a shot against you so please don't take it as such because I know you are simply stating a fact, but it's
exactly that attitude why the 7.3L has lagged so far behind the Cummins and Duramax for so many years. It's this whole damn "secret squirrel" crap that goes on the hinders any real chance of improvements in the platform. You go on the Duramax forums and people are handing out tunes and configuration details like it was candy, but the Ford guys are often so tight-lipped you'd think they didn't even have a mouth.
I won't speak for any other tuners out there, but I have never had a problem explaining... in great detail... what it takes to make certain configurations work. I've built heavily modified base files and handed them straight to customers to let them do their own tuning. In fact, I still get calls form other tuners asking me for help or for files when they have difficulty with a specific configuration. I take great pleasure in the post I write about tuning, ECM functionality, or any other subject in which I can share my knowledge and experience. To not share it is, in my opinion, actually pretty selfish. Corey always said I'd be a great teacher because I love watching people learn, and if I had more patience I probably would teach.
This crap needs to stop or the 7.3L is going to finally outlive the brief resurgence we've seen over the last couple years. The reality is that the only people we're keeping secrets from is the general public. Pretty much anyone in the industry can look and learn from anyone else's tuning so nobody is really hiding anything anyway.
With that out of the way...
Lack of idle resolution is what makes them lope..... How is the truck supposed to idle properly when the idle fuel is basically too much or too little? Cold starts are usually smooth because of the oil and fuel viscosity being thick. When the fuel and oil thin out, it gets lopey because the fuel curve is too aggressive.
Jason's truck idles just as smooth warm as it does cold. There is more than enough resolution in the fuel PW and ICP tables to make even 350% nozzles idle smoothly, so the 200% nozzles aren't a problem. When we put a set of 400/350's (courtesy of Jim at Rosewood Diesel) in my truck, it idled like stock and ran like a striped-a$$ ape! The only real problem (aside from STUPID EGT's) was that serious PW and ICP table modifications become necessary to maintain a smooth stable idle. A slight haze was also had at light cruise, but to be honest I really didn't spend a lot of time tuning outside of the idle area on those injectors. They were strictly done as a proof of concept, and that was that you could put 400cc injectors in a BONE STOCK truck and still make them driveable. It worked and then we returned the injectors to Jim.
If you look at this video and watch near the end, you can hear how smooth the idle is even after romping on the truck a bit. This video is trimmed from a larger file, but I have more of it with hot idle (in park) if anyone really wants to see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL9drkh8Peg
In fact, here's the later part of that clip where I pulled onto the dyno. Idling for a good 30 seconds as I was talking to my buddy Foose. No haze, no rough idle. Just takes a little time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1f8iT5zltk
Take care.
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