What's going on, ladies and gentlemen?
Travis from americantrucks.com and today we're checking out BBK's 90 millimeter Throttle
Body upgrade designed for your '15 to '17 5 liter powered F150.
Now there are a few different throttle bodies that you can pick up on the site and this
one is gonna be the most expensive at around the $550 price point but more importantly
it's gonna be the biggest available option that you can throw under the hood.
So why would you want the biggest one?
Well, simple logic says that more air going into the intake manifold obviously makes its
way into the combustion cylinder.
You get a better compression stroke.
You get a better air and fuel mixture and overall you make more horsepower and torque
especially on the bottom end.
And that's really nice because BBK says that you don't actually have to tune your truck
once you install this throttle body.
Now keep in mind that is only gonna hold true if your truck is mostly stock.
Now if you do have other mods currently installed, maybe you got something like a cold air intake,
maybe you got a throttle body spacer that's already installed, maybe a new intake manifold,
maybe you have a tune on the truck already, this thing's gonna take advantage of that
but if you don't already have a tune, you have some other mods installed just keep in
mind you might run into a lean out situation in which case you will have to get a tune
in order to correct your air and fuel mixtures.
Not a huge deal and even then you will get more power and performance out of your truck
again.
Now what kind of performance can you get without a tune?
If your truck's mostly stock, guys, I'd go ahead and say you'll probably get maybe high
single digit, maybe low double digit gains.
Again applicable from both horsepower and torque and obviously you throw a tune, other
mods on there, that number is only gonna continue to climb.
Now one other thing to think of, guys, if your truck is stock and you do have a factory
intake just know that your factory intake tube will unfortunately not fit correctly
over the new openings.
Just simple logic, right.
Smaller intake tube design for a smaller factory throttle body.
You will have to buy a rubber adapter in order to mate the factory intake tube to the new
throttle body.
They're pretty easy to find online.
They only cost a couple bucks so not a huge deal.
Just keep that in mind if you decide to stick with this option over any of the other ones
and if you do, you can actually come back in a little bit.
I'm gonna show you guys how to get this thing bolted on.
It's an incredibly simple job, guys.
I would actually recommend this as a good first mod if you're just getting into the
world of actually modifying your truck, you don't have a lot of experience.
This is incredibly simple.
Shouldn't take us more than an hour.
So for that reason, I'm gonna go ahead and give this thing a soft one out of three wrenches
on the old difficulty meter.
So check it out a little bit more.
Come back in a little bit and I'll show you how to get that install done.
All right, before we install our throttle body you'll need some standard drive ratchets.
You also need a seven and eight millimeter socket.
Those can both be shallow sockets.
If you're gonna use an impact gun like me you'll probably need an impact swivel socket.
It's a little bit of a tight fit.
And not pictured you'll also need an adapter for the new throttle body if you're using
the factory intake tube.
Okay.
Before we actually go to remove our throttle body obviously we have to make room here.
So we're gonna disconnect our factory intake tube and remove it from our engine bay.
So we're gonna loosen up this clamp here securing it to the throttle body and you'll need a
seven millimeter socket for this one.
Once you've loosened up that clamp just go ahead and gently pull on the intake tube and
unseat it from the throttle body.
Okay, now we need to disconnect these breather hoses on the intake tube here.
You can see this one that I have in my hand currently has a little gray lock ring so on
the bottom just gotta kinda feel for that little tab.
Just pull on it with your finger, you can actually unslip it.
You can do the same thing for the other one except this one, you're just gonna kinda yank
on it gently to remove it from the intake tube.
Okay, then we just have one more clamp to take care of here.
This is securing the intake tube to our airbox.
Same seven mil socket.
Once you've loosened up that clamp let's go ahead and unseat the intake tube by pulling
on it a little bit and kinda wiggling it around.
Then you can remove the intake tube from the engine bay.
Just make sure you're not pulling on this crossover line near this coolant line too
much.
Okay, now we're ready to start removing our throttle body.
Before we actually remove it from the intake manifold we have to disconnect our electrical
connection here for the motor.
Got a little red locking tab on it so just pull that little red tab out.
Little flathead screwdriver helps.
Then you also have to press down on this little black retainer here on the plug.
Let's see here.
It's kind of a squeeze but press down on that black retainer and then unseat the clip and
move it out of the way.
Okay, now we're ready to finally remove the throttle body.
It's secured using four bolts here.
You'll need an eight mil socket to remove these bolts.
All right, guys.
We got the factory throttle body removed.
Before we throw the new one in the truck I wanted to give you a quick little side by
side comparison here, really show you some of the differences between the two because
at first glance they do look very similar but the BBK is a little bit different in terms
of its overall fit and finish.
Besides the fact that we're just going with that larger diameter to get better air flow.
One of the things that jumped out when I opened it right out of the box here, they have a
way nicer finish on the actual body of the throttle body itself.
It looks like a nice little kind of a hammertone finish on here.
Almost looks forged even though it's cast aluminum.
It's factory grade cast aluminum by the way.
You don't gotta worry about that rust or corrosion or anything like that.
But the factory throttle bodies are a little bit messy in their overall finish.
You can see some of the seams and marks on there where they actually cast them.
So they actually took the time to kinda give this a nice finish.
They also put a nice little engraving on the side here, little BBK logo.
So that looks really cool.
And we are using a factory motor.
That's really important.
These things, compatibility issues can become a concern with aftermarket motors.
This thing operates on very specific voltages because it's not a drive by wire truck.
It's actually all electronic.
So the way that the throttle body opens is determined by throttle position and the voltage
going to this motor.
So we really wanna make sure that that thing's gonna be operating especially under those
high temp conditions.
Full disclosure, I do have a BBK in my vehicle.
I've ran one just like this for a long period of time.
Haven't had any problems with that again thanks to that factory motor.
So where it counts, they did not change anything up.
They only made some nice improvements here.
Now we are using new hardware by the way.
We have this cool little spacer here with the new O ring on there and we also do have
new bolts that we're gonna be using to install the throttle body.
Because the body is a little bit bigger than the factory one we're not gonna be able to
use our factory bolts and these actually aren't even long enough.
So go ahead and set those aside, put them in a box, do whatever with them.
We're not gonna be needing those.
Let's go ahead and grab the new throttle body, grab that spacer with the bolts.
You also need the appropriate sized Allen key.
So let's go ahead and show you guys how to get this thing bolted in.
All right.
So before we throw the new throttle body in place, wanna do a couple of checks and balances
first.
It's actually a good opportunity to kinda check the overall health of the intake system
here.
Kinda check around inside the manifold and feel around here.
If you're getting excessive blow-by through the crankcase through your breather hoses
then you'll actually see a buildup of carbon in here in which case you should kinda clean
that out a little bit.
That might be indicative of some deeper issues.
But once everything's looking good in here and as long as this little factory O ring
looks okay now you can install the throttle body but you also have to accommodate the
spacer that we're gonna be throwing on as well.
So the metal side of the spacer is gonna be resting against the intake manifold.
Then we're gonna throw the throttle body up in place.
It's a little bit difficult trying to get all this stuff on there separately so what
I like to do is actually grab a bolt, thread the bolt through the throttle body and through
the spacer and just get one of the four bolts kinda hand threaded.
Then we'll grab the other three, get those in place and we'll tighten everything down.
All right, now that we have all four bolts hand tight we can go ahead and drive all of
them home.
And again it's best to use just gentle hand pressure on these to get these tight because
we have those rubber O rings in the back and we're also threading through aluminum here.
So hand tight should be sufficient for us.
And now that I have all the bolts flush I'm just gonna give each one another half turn
or two.
Okay, once you have all four bolts tightened you can reconnect your harness.
Just make sure that little red plastic locking tab is also pressed down once you have this
back in place.
That'll wrap up the install and that also wraps up my review of the BBK 90 millimeter
Throttle Body.
Be sure to check this thing more out on the site and for all things F150, keep it right
here at americantrucks.com.