What is the 545-RFE Co-Pilot?
The Co-Pilot consists of a controller, coil box and wiring harness. The harness plugs into the transmission connector located on the side of the transmission. The harness is completely plug and play for easy installation. The controller mounts in the cab and allows the driver to view critical transmission and engine inputs such as line pressure and commanded engine load. To view the different sensor inputs all you do is depress the up or down arrows. These changes can be made on-the-fly or with the vehicle stopped.
What Does the 545-RFE Co-Pilot Do?
The Co-Pilot controls line pressure, clutch timing and more aggressively applies the converter clutch under high torque situations. Line pressure is limited in a stock 545-RFE to 110 PSI. Unfortunately, this is not high enough to reliably prevent clutch slippage at higher power levels. The Co-Pilot senses throttle position to quickly takes control of line pressure when it is needed. However, when the vehicle is driven lightly, line pressure is near stock for comfortable shifts and lower transmission temperatures. This is all done automatically in the controller. Line pressure is increased more dramatically and lubrication pressure is increased with the addition of an ATS Valve Body. While the ATS valve body installation isn't necessary, it will increase the performance of the Co-Pilot to its fullest potential. We recommend installing one of our modified valve bodies to fully address all of the internal hydraulic issues with the stock 545-RFE Valve body. The Co-Pilot has a huge advantage over TCM programing on 2003 to 2018 TCMs because of the way the factory TCM is designed. We have found when aftermarket tuning for higher line pressures are done to the TCM to command higher line pressure in the transmission many if not all aftermarket TCM tuning will cause a radical pressure variation that spikes line pressure causally more firmly lock the converter clutch during apply, this allows the inherent torque of the 3.8L engine to be used for better efficiency and performance.
