HOWTO: Disable or reset ZF 6 speed long term adaptive learning (KAM)

[Roland@pcmtec]

If you have a freshly rebuilt box with extra clutch packs you will find that the car bangs into gears and is generally horrible to drive. This is as the adaptive learning has to unlearn the clutch wear. It takes approximately ~1500km of light cruising to achieve this. We believe the learning algorithm learns forward (eg learns worn clutches) much faster than it learns in reverse, this is as logically a clutch can't become "unworn" so the algorithm probably was not programmed with this in mind.

To disable the long term learning algorithm set ZF03182 to 0

To reset the long term learning set this to 0, start the car and put it in gear. Turn the vehicle off then set the variable back to 1.

It is reported that it takes less than 100km for the vehicle to learn the clutch wear on a standard box with 150,000kms if this is done. We have another workshop trialling this out on some new boxes shortly to give us some more feedback on how accurate the learning period is and how well this works on a high hp (800hp) build with lots of extra clutch packs.

Update:

This is not 100% confirmed as working on modified boxes. We have had a report that it does indeed work on a standard box however. Most likely this is as there is only a certain range it can learn as one workshop trialled this on a heavily modified box and found they still had to pull a lot of pressure out of the tune for it to stop banging into gears.

[richardpalinkas]

Can this be done to a standard box also? And would there be any benefit of doing this to a standard transmission?

[Roland@pcmtec]

It would drive terribly if you disabled it on a box that had learnt the clutch wear.,

[Blackxr6t]

Hi Roland, 

Can I change this value in the professional version or do I need the workshop version?

[Roland@pcmtec]

Workshop edition is required for that one. We have a special on until the end of the month or the first 20 customer 50% off if you want to upgrade!

[Superb]

On 2/27/2019 at 10:50 AM, Roland@pcmtec said:

To disable the long term learning algorithm set ZF03182 to 0

To reset the long term learning set this to 0, start the car and put it in gear. Turn the vehicle off then set the variable back to 1.

It is reported that it takes less than 100km for the vehicle to learn the clutch wear on a standard box with 150,000kms if this is done.

Just a question,

What does the "reset adaptive" do then when ticked if flashing a tune?

[Roland@pcmtec]

21 minutes ago, Superb said:

Just a question,

What does the "reset adaptive" do then when ticked if flashing a tune?

When writing the PCM it triggers a "hard reset" which clears the long term fuel trims and various other learnt values like idle airflow adders etc.

[Blackxr6t]

Any chance it could be added to the professional version? Resetting the tcm adaptations is important when moving the zf mechatronics unit (which includes the TCM) from one box to another as the clutch wear will not be the same between the boxes. Interestingly the BMW guys reguarly reset the  zf adaptions however there seems to be no affordable way to do it with the falcons. 

[Roland@pcmtec]

We are the only company who has mapped these parameters to date, so we need to recoup on our investment which is why we don't put everything in the professional version. There needs to be an incentive for people to pay full price.

[Blackxr6t]

I understand, but I only want the reset function as a service function, i have no interest in any of the zf tuning features of the workshop version. After calling a few transmission places you could actually release a tailored "zf adaptation reset" tool and sell this to the service market rather than just tuners. However this would need to under cut ford's IDS software in cost per use.  

[Roland@pcmtec]

1 hour ago, Blackxr6t said:

I understand, but I only want the reset function as a service function, i have no interest in any of the zf tuning features of the workshop version. After calling a few transmission places you could actually release a tailored "zf adaptation reset" tool and sell this to the service market rather than just tuners. However this would need to under cut ford's IDS software in cost per use.  

There would be no return on investment for us to build such a tool unfortunately. Forscan, IDS, FDRS etc all do these tasks much better than we ever will and support thousands of cars for a tiny price. The Falcon ZF is the only TCM that Ford never released a tool for.

To build, test, QA and release a product like that (which would only support a now extinct model of car, the Falcon) would end up costing us close to $100k in development, not only that but we would lose 3 months of development time on our flagship products (the multi tune etc). We would sell maybe 100 copies of the software and I doubt anyone would pay more than $300 for it.

There are a lot of things we would like to do, but we have to say no to about 90% of them as we would end up building 50 tools poorly instead of 1 extremely well.

You can see why the high end scantools cost thousands of dollars a year in subscription fees, it is a huge amount of work to build and maintain even simple products. So if not many people use them, you have to charge a lot of money to make it anything other than a money losing exercise. Where as with something like a tuning product that people use daily and are willing to spend $150-$500 per car in licensing fees, you can suddenly dedicate several full time staff to polishing and constantly improving the tools for multiple years.

[Puffwagon]

@Blackxr6t If you or anyone else needs it done you can always ask on the forum and there might be someone local to you with a workshop version that will do it for you. That way you'd only have to pay the cost of the credits for re-licensing and possibly some beer money.

 

Am I on the right track here @Roland@pcmtec?

[Blackxr6t]

Yeah there seems to some confusion out there about resetting the PCM adaptations also resetting the TCM at the same time. I have just cconceded that the transmission will need replacing and have found one with matching hardware and software tcm codes. 

[dat111]

hey guys! wondering if theses any information on forscan being able to reset the adaptions/view them

[Mick]

On 2/27/2019 at 11:50 AM, Roland@pcmtec said:

If you have a freshly rebuilt box with extra clutch packs you will find that the car bangs into gears and is generally horrible to drive. This is as the adaptive learning has to unlearn the clutch wear. It takes approximately ~1500km of light cruising to achieve this. We believe the learning algorithm learns forward (eg learns worn clutches) much faster than it learns in reverse, this is as logically a clutch can't become "unworn" so the algorithm probably was not programmed with this in mind.

To disable the long term learning algorithm set ZF03182 to 0

To reset the long term learning set this to 0, start the car and put it in gear. Turn the vehicle off then set the variable back to 1.

It is reported that it takes less than 100km for the vehicle to learn the clutch wear on a standard box with 150,000kms if this is done. We have another workshop trialling this out on some new boxes shortly to give us some more feedback on how accurate the learning period is and how well this works on a high hp (800hp) build with lots of extra clutch packs.

Update:

This is not 100% confirmed as working on modified boxes. We have had a report that it does indeed work on a standard box however. Most likely this is as there is only a certain range it can learn as one workshop trialled this on a heavily modified box and found they still had to pull a lot of pressure out of the tune for it to stop banging into gears.

If using this method (ZF03182), should I expect the learned adaptive numbers to zero out?

[hjtrbo]

If I was doing it that is what I would expect to see. There is a drive procedure to get the adapts to relearn faster than just normal driving. Its for BMW but should apply to ours close enough. The attached doc has the drive cycle in it.  Not sure which software version to follow. You'll have to suss that out. Please report back your findings, this would be good knowledge to share. 

ZF_Workbook-transmission-6-8HP.pdf

[Mick]

7 hours ago, hjtrbo said:

If I was doing it that is what I would expect to see.

I have a FG MK2 that does not reset the adaptive numbers at all

[hjtrbo]

@Mick No shit. The drive immediately after the adapt reset did you notice any flares or shitty shifts. Or was it the same as before the reset. 

[Mick]

1 hour ago, hjtrbo said:

@Mick No shit. The drive immediately after the adapt reset did you notice any flares or shitty shifts. Or was it the same as before the reset. 

Appears to have had no change at all to the way the car drives

[Roland@pcmtec]

15 hours ago, Mick said:

If using this method (ZF03182), should I expect the learned adaptive numbers to zero out?

Honestly I have no idea. We have never had a ZF to test with and relied on customer feedback which has been very polarising and not consistent. Personally I don't think it works but some people swear it does. 

[Puffwagon]

2 hours ago, Roland@pcmtec said:

Honestly I have no idea. We have never had a ZF to test with and relied on customer feedback which has been very polarising and not consistent. Personally I don't think it works but some people swear it does. 

 

So can you reprogram the values to be 0? I'm not talking about resetting memory, but rather just changing the values.

[Roland@pcmtec]

4 hours ago, Puffwagon said:

 

So can you reprogram the values to be 0? I'm not talking about resetting memory, but rather just changing the values.

Not that I'm aware of. 

[Puffwagon]

What's the difference between changing a spark value to zero and an adaptation value to zero?

[Roland@pcmtec]

15 minutes ago, Puffwagon said:

What's the difference between changing a spark value to zero and an adaptation value to zero?

One is a rom value, one is a dmr. Even if you could write to it it would be overwritten. I'm sure there is a way to make them reset but we have no way to test it without a car and a week of spare time. 

Flashing an ar29 to an 8r29 osid then back again to ar29 (or vice versa) should reset them as it changes the os checksums. Same as how changing the pcm osid resets the kam. 

[hjtrbo]

I'll have a play this week.

[Mick]

On 6/19/2022 at 10:57 PM, hjtrbo said:

I'll have a play this week.

Looking forward to your results

 

[hjtrbo]

Funny how things pan out sometimes. After a fuck wit in a 1500 Silverado ripped up the side of my ute she's parked up at the panel beaters. Chev guys right 

[Mick]

sorry to hear that

[Turboidiot]

Quote

This is not 100% confirmed as working on modified boxes. We have had a report that it does indeed work on a standard box however. Most likely this is as there is only a certain range it can learn as one workshop trialled this on a heavily modified box and found they still had to pull a lot of pressure out of the tune for it to stop banging into gears.

So are people with built boxes going below factory pressure values to get a nicer shift feel in lower throttle cruise conditions?

[hjtrbo]

You can't make a broad statement like that.

The builders tuner won't be posting their tips here. You need to use first principals and a fundamental understanding of a clutch to clutch transmission along with good high sample frequency data logs to work out which direction to go with your settings.  

At this stage with regards to the small amount of detailed ZF information publicly available, there is a strong financial / reliability argument to stick with a build shop / tuner combo that has a good track record.  

[Turboidiot]

Thanks

[hjtrbo]

With that said, it still doesn't prohibit you from going your own way and then come back here with data and questions about what you're seeing. In that case, people can relate their own experiences and perhaps come to some direction that will be beneficial to your build. 

[Puffwagon]

A stock box can still bang into gear with stock shift pressures.

It's torque reduction or lack thereof that makes them bang into gear.

[hjtrbo]

... and slamming the shift time down to less than 150ms without sufficient pressure to get it done. 

The torque ramp back from a shift is still a bit of a mystery that I'm interested in.  There's a few tables that you notice in the OE cals that give some clues.  

[Puffwagon]

It's always torque that kills everything, if we can manage the torque vs time, hard and soft parts should be fine.

#torquemoduleoff

[hjtrbo]

Agree. 

What's the current Oceania benchmark for a stock ZF that still does daily duties? 9s or 10s something???

[Puffwagon]

Dunno man, you could probably run a 9 a few dozen times before it broke or fried the clutches.

[Roland@pcmtec]

8 hours ago, hjtrbo said:

Agree. 

What's the current Oceania benchmark for a stock ZF that still does daily duties? 9s or 10s something???

If you set the tune up to run 9s (eg just enough to keep it alive) but then daily it with way more torque reduction, eg basically no WOT downshifts etc you could make it live forever. 

Making it run 0 torque reduction on the higher gear shifts will be fast but it will never live long. 

You could fudge this in the multitune by tweaking speed density (to reduce torque reduction) then fixing fueling via tuning correction to get a multitune with different shift pressures. Be a bit hacky but you could make it work. 

[Puffwagon]

All those wot shift hits on the input shaft, along with the power required to run a 9, will eventually snap it. They twist a considerable amount before breaking and will break from outright power, even with no wot shifts.

Edited October 7, 2022 by Puffwagon

[hjtrbo]

23 minutes ago, Puffwagon said:

All those wot shift hits on the input shaft, along with the power required to run a 9, will eventually snap it. They twist a considerable amount before breaking and will break from outright power, even with no wot shifts.

That sux, ain't nothing that can be done in the tune when she's gonna shear off just from transmitting bulk torque in steady state. 

If I can get my 220,000km standard box to hold 520rwkw+ for another 20,000km hard daily driving I'm calling that a success. 

[Puffwagon]

Rwd is much more forgiving than awd. You'll be spinning the tyres and lowering the load on the trans, so it'll be much happier than mine was at that power level.

[hjtrbo]

Fuck, anyone for a burnt E clutch

ZF6HP26 Teardown, 3-4 slip - YouTube

 

 

[Puffwagon]

It's the smallest diameter clutch set by a mile, no wonder they are usually the first to go.

Have a look on the beefcake website for upgrades. You'll be looking for 6r80 parts, not zf.

[hjtrbo]

Very nice, good for mid 7s. More clamp than I'll ever need.   

Bluestreak 6R80 E-Clutch Upgrade 3-4 Shift (11-17 Mustang / F150) (beefcakeracing.com)

[Mick]

RVO do a modified E clutch set up that uses Powerglide clutched which give more clamping area, he confident that it's strong enough to have WOT shifts with no Torque management interaction, although in mine I still have it enabled

[Geesix]

ok guys ive  got a build  RVO  zfr80-B from Dave   with a 3200 rpm stall      and in  new to this  pcm tech gear  so  where would i start to look at modifying  for the  stall   thanks