2001 Ford F250 - Shift It Right!

ATS and Amsoil to the rescue! With the new, high-capacity diff cover mounted and sealed to our Ford's Sterling axle, we were afforded greater fluid capacity and safety to keep the working end of the drivetrain from puking its contents while keeping those big 39-1/2-inch tires rolling. Nic Germano's Kelderman air-ride suspension looks great from this angle.

With all of our systems sealed up, we grabbed our Amsoil supply and went to work. It may look like too much fluid, but the ATS extra-deep pan and external temperature-controlled cooler sucked up nearly all of the Amsoil synthetic ATF. That case of Amsoil's Severe Gear synthetic gear lube was also depleted, which filled both front and rear axles with its slippery contents.

Moving on to the electrical portion of the installation, we asked Nick Levas, a well known Northern California audio installer, to lend us his expertise. Nick found a cozy spot in an interior dash pocket that would be suitable for the ATS Co-Pilot.

Beginning with the accelerator, Nick tapped into the throttle sensor, which was located there.

Under the hood, the Ford PCM was located on the driver-side firewall and the harness was unplugged. According to the instructions from ATS, Nick tapped into the corresponding pin-out numbers with two exceptions. We referred to an aftermarket wiring diagram to locate the correctly colored wire for the PCM ground and MAP sensor wire, due to inaccuracies in the directions.

Once back inside the truck, we checked to ensure the Co-Pilot was getting power. The blue LED indicator, lit as shown, told us what setting the torque converter lockup was set at.

Before we headed out for a test drive, we snapped a shot of Nic Germano loading up the ATS E-Power Programmer software into the factory computer. The E-Power allows tuning from 30 hp to 170 hp. A higher setting was tuned, as we love the horsepower.