We had a customer call us with a really cool Lightning pickup that has a 5-speed manual swap. Because the ECU could no longer communicate with the automatic transmission that was no longer there, it was throwing a check engine light. No problem for us to hook up a tuner and let the ECU know not to panic. Upon arrival our Head Tuner and Lighting aficionado Travis started by looking over all of the common failure points for Lightnings including but not limited to the intercooler water pump, fuel pump relays. It turns out that the intercooler water pump had failed, the fuel pump relays were both on their way out and getting hot. When the fuel pumps fail on these trucks, it can cost you an engine if it happens under load. Upon further inspection, it also had aftermarket ignition coils that are known to have issues that cause misses. The customer wanted the truck to be dyno tuned, so knowing what potential issues we would run into we had the customer bring in the stock set of coils just in case we needed them. He had just replaced the spark plugs 1,000 miles ago so they weren’t of too much concern. We replaced the intercooler water pump, fuel pump relays, and fuel filter before pulling it onto the dyno. Once on the dyno and the miss that we were afraid it might have have showed up. Travis replaced the coils, and wisely while he was there, pulled the nearly new spark plugs to check the condition. All 8 of them were in terrible shape due to detonation caused from the intercooler not properly cooling the air and fuel starvation from the fuel pump relays going out. The truck now runs amazing and the customer has reported back that the truck can now break traction in all gears! The Lightning absolutely rips now and our knowledge likely saved the customer from having to replace an engine in the very near future. Photo of one of the spark plugs that only had 1,000 miles on it attached. Crisis Averted.
