F150 Cummins ISB 4.5 swap

[kcarsey]

Hello Everyone.

This is my first post here so forgive me if this has been talked about. I've been browsing around the threads for a couple of hours, and I think I have found some of my answers just through other posts, but not all.

I?m in the market for a newer f150, and have decided on a 14 or maybe a 15th gen f150 with 6r80. I?ve always wanted a (reliable) diesel half ton. I have thought about swapping an older truck with an older engine, but it would be nice to have a comfy/modern truck with a modern non-ford diesel engine.

I?m sort of just doing a feasibility study here about what is possible, and what can be done with the factory ford PCM. I?ve been looking at 5.0 trucks because they have a bell housing that can be adapted to the Cummins. I know there are options for standalone controllers (quick6) which would do what I want, but I would like to keep as much as the truck electronics as oem as possible. I?d even go as far as to see if I could get fuel usage data from the diesel ecu to calculate instant mpg, if I have that I should be able to send it to the OEM dash via CAN.

This brings me to my questions/thoughts. I?ve been trying to think about what data the Cummins ecu can provide over J1939 data link, and what inputs would be required to operate the factory ford PCM, if possible.


The engine uses an electronic throttle pedal 0-5v which can be tapped into directly. Can the ford ecu/HP tuners set the throttle calibration voltages in the factory ecu?

I could provide an rpm signal multiple ways, straight from the crank tone ring (can the ford pcm pickup type be changed?) or I could set up/code a pulse converter with an Arduino, or add an additional 36-1 trigger wheel to the crank.

One issue I see is that I'm assuming that the factory ford pcm is designed to be able to know engine torque output to be able to calculate shifts. This data should be available from the ecu on J1939 interface, could it be input into the ecu via CAN? If not, can that feature be disabled, and will the transmission still work properly with just a vss/tps/rpm table?

The other thought I have is, there will be LOTS of sensors unhooked. No iat, ect, maf, map, etc. Nothing else besides rpm and tps data would be coming from the engine, the engine tuning portion of the ecu would be entirely unused. Can these sensors/codes just be completely disabled? Is this even realistic, or should I just scrap the idea of using a factory Ford PCM?

[kcarsey]

Mods - I just realized I accidentally posted this to the gasoline non-ecoboost forum, if this should be in the misc ford forum, please move for me. Thanks.