I don't know about reprogramming the chips persay, but if you get a
CAN(controller area network) card of some sort and know the requisite
commands you can control anything in the vehicle on the CAN bus.
Nearly everything on the bus will have an override command. With a
Ford, I can't help you much. I know most of the Chrysler stuff, and
some GM. I suppose there is a chance that there is some overlap, but I
wouldn't count on it.

The telemetry you are looking for would be cake if you can get on the
bus and know what you are looking for.

Bad news: CAN cards are not cheap. The ones I work with start at $1k
and go up from there. There probably are some "home user" level of CAN
interface, but I don't know about them. Everything I do is development
level and we need all of the control that the expensive packages yield
us.

National Instruments sells PCI/ISA backplane cards. Vector