Profile Correction

1999 Mercury Tracer LS, 4D Sedan, StandardSECTION Profile Correction
WARNING: This page does not describe the selected car, but rather 32 other vehicles, including the 2011 Mercury Milan, 2011 Mercury Mariner, 2011 Mercury Grand Marquis, 2011 Lincoln Town Car, and 2011 Lincoln Navigator L. However, it is still accessible from the selected car via links, so may be relevant.

Profile correction software is used to learn and correct for mechanical inaccuracies in the crankshaft position wheel tooth spacing. Since the sum of all the angles between the crankshaft teeth must equal 360 degrees, a correction factor can be calculated for each misfire sample interval that makes all the angles between individual teeth equal. The LDR system learns one profile correction factor per cylinder (that is, 4 correction factors for a 4 cylinder engine), while the HDR system learns 36 or 40 correction factors depending on the number of crankshaft wheel teeth (that is, 36 for V6 or V8 engines, 40 for V10 engines).

The corrections are calculated from several engine cycles of misfire sample interval data. The correction factors are the average of a selected number of samples. In order to assure the accuracy of these corrections, a tolerance is placed on the incoming values such that an individual correction factor must be repeatable within the tolerance during learning. This is to reduce the possibility of learning corrections on rough road conditions which could limit misfire detection capability and to help isolate misfire diagnoses from other crankshaft velocity disturbances.

To prevent any fueling or combustion differences from affecting the correction factors, learning is done during deceleration fuel shut-off (DFSO). This can be done during closed-throttle, non-braking, de-fueled decelerations in the 97 to 64 km/h (60 to 40 mph) range after exceeding 97 km/h (60 mph) (likely to correspond to a freeway exit condition). In order to minimize the learning time for the correction factors, a more aggressive DFSO strategy may be used when the conditions for learning are present. The corrections are typically learned in a single 97 to 64 km/h (60 to 40 mph) deceleration, but may take up to 3 such decelerations or a higher number of shorter decelerations.

Since inaccuracies in the wheel tooth spacing can produce a false indication of misfire, the misfire monitor is not active until the corrections are learned. In the event of battery disconnection or loss of keep alive memory (KAM), the correction factors are lost and must be relearned. If the software is unable to learn a profile after three, 97 to 64 km/h (60 to 40 mph) deceleration cycles, DTC P0315 is set.

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