Hey, guys.
Adam here with americantrucks.com.
Today we're taking a closer look at, installing and dyno testing the GTX Tuner loaded with
Two Custom Tunes from Bama Performance available for the '15 to '16 3.5-liter EcoBoost F150.
Now, before we jump into all the details of the tuner itself, along with the tunes included,
what do you say we had right on over to the dyno graph to take a look at the results?
All right.
So, we have our 2016 at 3.5-liter EcoBoost F150 strapped down to the dyno.
It's got 93 octane in the tank, it does have 35-inch tires on it, but bone stock, otherwise.
We wanted to establish our baseline run, walked away with 302 horsepower, 339-pound-feet of
torque at the rear wheels.
We then uploaded our Bama 93 octane tune, we then ran it under the same conditions and
walked away with 317 horsepower, 378-pound-feet of torque at the rear wheels.
That's good for peak gains of about 15 horsepower and 39 torque at the rear.
Now, those numbers alone are pretty good, but it gets even more impressive under the
curve.
We're seeing curve gains of as much as 65 horsepower and 39-pound-feet of torque at
the rear wheels, and that's gonna make a huge difference for drivability.
We're seeing a lot of low-end torque, about 39 torque at that low to mid-range of about
4,000 RPMs.
And with these bigger wheels and tires, it can make it feel a lot less sluggish and a
lot more torquey.
So, with a simple 93 tune, I'm pretty impressed.
Now, the GTX tuner here is gonna come with two custom tunes from Bama, an 87 octane and
a 93 performance or 93 race tune.
Now, the 87 octane option is great for guys who may be daily driving their truck who might
not wanna spend as much money at the gas pump on 93 octane, but still want a little bit
more out of their truck.
Now, these EcoBoosts can tend to have a little bit of turbo lag, but with that 87 tune, you
can expect an increase in throttle response and acceleration, a little bit less turbo
lag, and you're gonna see a lot of more torque down low.
Now, if you want to maximize the performance of your truck, 93 race is gonna be the way
to go and that's what we're focusing on here in this video, especially at that dyno graph
as you saw a second ago.
93 again is gonna maximize all of your mods, whether it be stock mildly modified or heavily
modified.
This is gonna remove some of that drive by wire delay, which is essentially the time
delay between hitting the gas pedal and your truck getting going off of the line.
That's gonna make drivability on a whole new level.
You're also gonna be able to recalibrate your speedometer based on your tire size.
So, anytime you add larger wheels and tires, it can throw your speedometer off several
miles per hour, sometimes up to 7 to 10 miles per hour.
Now, we've got 35s here on our '16 3.5 next to me, so we have that factored into our tune
as well.
Now, Bama takes a number of other things into consideration when altering the factory tune
to maximize your performance here, but they are gonna keep all the factory Ford fail-safes
in check to make sure your vehicle is operating safely.
The GTX tuner does have a number of other features to take advantage of and this one,
in particular, is gonna be for the guys who want that larger touchscreen display, something
a lot easier to read, something a lot more stylish for the interior of their truck, something
a little bit bigger, and something with that LCD display.
Now, the display here is perfect for the guys who wanna run the gauges in datalog screen,
which is a huge feature included in this kit.
The gauges screen is gonna allow you to monitor live engine vitals on the fly.
Things like boost in PSI, great for these EcoBoosts.
Things like cooling temp, air intake temp, air-fuel ratio, spark.
You're also gonna be able to monitor speedometer and RPMs, so you'll have that here on your
device and there are multiple gauge menus for you to customize to your own personal
preference.
Something unique to the GTX tuner that you don't really have the option with on, say
the X4 for the Rev-X, for example, is being able to quickly scroll through different tune
gauge menus.
Different gauge layouts can be a single gauge in the left, multiple gauges on the right.
You can swipe and have up to 12 gauges displayed at the same time.
So, lots of data can be right at your fingertips and you can personalize it.
You can also record a datalog session.
So, once you have your gauges set up, press the record button right there on the screen
that we'll take a look at in a little bit.
You'll be able to record your session and communicate that back to your tuner for possible
revisions.
In the tuner itself, you'll also have cloud capabilities.
So, you can send and receive those cloud tunes along with datalog files, stock files, and
even wireless updates that can also be connected via WiFi.
On the device, there's a DTC code reader, so if the check engine light comes on, plug
this guy in, read the code, get a description and clear it right then and there.
No need for any separate OBD2 module.
You'll also be able to take advantage of some of the vehicle information available there,
you'll also be able to see device info and it's all packed into this nice little package
that also comes with a windshield mount.
Now, that connects to a magnetic strip that'll pop right on the back of your GTX and you
can mount them on your windshield for easy access and line of sight.
Whenever you pick up a Bama tune paired with a device like this or the Rev-X or X4 on the
site, you're automatically enrolled in the Bama Free Tunes for Life program.
What that basically means is anytime you need a tune updated or revised, you can get it
done for free.
Now, we all know we're never really done building our trucks, so if you decide to add power
adders in the future, say a cold air intake, maybe a cat-back, say you're gonna add a downpipe
or something like that, you can have that added to the tune for free and revised for
you from Bama.
All you have to do is fill out that form again.
The device is gonna come in right around 600 bucks and the install gets one out of three
wrenches on our difficulty meter.
Anybody can tackle this in the driveway at home with about 30 minutes from start to finish.
I'm gonna walk you through the whole tune process and then show you those features I
mentioned.
Let's get started.
All right.
First thing's first, with the install, grab your GTX tuner and all the harnesses and equipment
included in the kit.
You're go see an OBD2 harness and that's the one with the fat harness on the end here.
That'll connect to your vehicle module.
The vehicle module then goes to another harness that has a magnet on the back.
Now, the magnet is gonna go right to the back of the GTX.
And on the other end, grab the OBD2 harness and plug it in to the OBD2 port located under
the driver side dash.
From there, we can hop in, connect it to our windshield mount and get to work.
All right.
So, here, we can put it right up on the windshield and I'm just gonna put it right here so you
guys can see it easily.
Drop that lock and now it's nice and secure.
You can rotate this guy and then tighten the collar on the back to get it nice and stiff
depending on how you like it angled.
Now, once you boot it up, we'll start going right into the tune options.
Now, the first thing you wanna do guys is connect to WiFi.
Now, you can see our WiFi connection on the top-left.
We're already connected, so I'm not gonna show you that, but you wanna tap that little
icon there and connect to your local WiFi network to get started.
Secondly, if you have tunes on the cloud, you wanna hit updates, go through that process,
select a tune from the cloud, and it'll install to your device and make the necessary updates.
We've already got ours here as well, but from your tuner here, it may be on the cloud and
that's how you'll do that.
From there, let's jump into tuning.
So, at top-left from the main menu says tune.
It's pretty straightforward.
Take your key and put it in the on position, but don't actually start your engine and then
press continue.
All right.
So, here it's gonna check for updates again.
We've already taken care of that when downloading our cloud tune, so I'm gonna hit skip.
All right.
So, it's
saying turn the key on again.
So, we already have it, so we're gonna hit continue.
All right.
And you wanna hit continue on the street notice basically saying it's not for legal sale or
use in California or pollution control vehicles.
So, just hit continue to move forward.
All right.
From here, you'll have your tune options.
Now, you'll have a couple of different tunes depending on how many you download from the
cloud available from your tuner, but in our case, we're focusing strictly on that 93 performance
tune, which we see in our custom tune menu as per what we pulled from the cloud.
Now, above that is the preloaded tune.
Now, the GTX comes with a preloaded tune as do most handheld tuners.
We're gonna be again focusing on the custom, but the preloaded option is there.
All right.
For this, you can customize some aspects of the tune itself, so I'll hit customize tune
just to show you guys what that looks like.
So, you can change tire revs per mile if you changed your tire size after requesting the
custom tune.
We do have 35s on our truck, but we already incorporated that into our custom tune, so
I'm gonna keep it as is.
Can adjust axle ratio, global spark, speed limiter, rev limiter, and a number of other
parameters here.
Now, that is the option for you to change, but we're gonna stick with what we requested
here.
So, I'm just gonna go back and hit this guy, it'll prepare the tune and then it will move
forward without any customizations.
All right.
Like I said, I'm gonna skip the customizations.
I just wanted to show you what that would look like.
So, we're gonna skip that step.
Confirm the option.
All right.
From here, it's telling us now to turn the key off, so I'm gonna turn that off and press
continue, back on, and press continue.
All right.
So turn the key off here and then back on.
One more time.
And back on.
All right.
And there you have it.
Congratulations.
It's successful.
You can press okay or disconnect the device.
From there it takes you right back to the main menu.
It'll connect to the vehicle again and then give you all of your options.
So, from here, I wanna show you guys some of the other features of the GTX aside from
actually tuning the vehicle.
And the biggest one I wanna show you next is the gauges screen.
So, you select this guy, you again wanna make sure your key is in the on position for this.
It'll connect to the vehicle and show you your available gauges.
Now, with the bigger touchscreen display the GTX offers over some of the other tuners here,
it is a lot better looking in a display and the information being provided here, it's
just a lot clearer.
So, on the left, we have a larger coolant temp gauge, on the right we have control module
voltage, coolant temp, intake air temp.
So, there's a number of things here that are pretty important to some people, but we do
see one that's pretty repetitive.
So, say you wanted to select that guy.
Wanna double tap it and you'll be able to scroll through a list of different parameters
that you can set to track.
So, if we had coolant temp there, say we wanted to track boost in PSI for our turbo vehicles.
Select that guy, hit back and it replaces that gauge with whatever you selected.
And within that, you can change say coolant temp showing in Fahrenheit, you could change
to Celsius and vice versa.
You'll have a number of other unit parameters that you can play with here to fit your personal
preference as well.
Now, if we wanted to scroll to the right, it changes that gauge layout and it changes
what's available to you to the display.
So, here we have a lot of air-fuel ratio in different banks.
If you wanted to scroll over again, we have six gauges here in total, over one more time,
and we have a number of gauges here, a total of eight, one large one and a bunch of small
guys.
Scroll over, we have 9 and there we have 12.
So, really there is a plethora of things that you can track and a lot of different gauge
layouts for you to use.
So, you can customize each one of these to show different options, you can customize
them all to say the same thing in just different layouts.
So, you can really personalize what you see here.
Now, if you tap once instead of double-tapping a unit, you can click here and change the
layout for each one of those screens we just scrolled through.
Can also tap again, you can change the brightness, you can reset everything, and you can record.
Now, that's your datalog feature.
So, select your configuration, press record and you'll record your datalog session, whether
that be out on the road for normal driving or if you're on the dyno trying to record
a datalog, you can do that and communicate it back to your tuner, either via the cloud
or via device update or on your laptop using this device here, and then you can stop recording
as well.
And your data sets and shows you configurations, the preset configurations at least that you
can select from as well.
So, there you have your gauge screen and if you wanted to tap once and hit the home button,
it'll take you back to the home screen.
So, very useful, especially with the GTX since you have a windshield mount.
Personally, I would take advantage of that in every run.
I'd always have that up myself, but it's all personal preference.
Functions.
Turn key on, which we have, press continue.
Here you can do a cam reset, crank relearn, you can set TPMS sensors, change your tire
size and axle ratio.
So, a couple of new functions and a new menu that something like the Rev-X or X4 doesn't
have or has a set differently.
Typically, TPMS is then built into the tune itself, but you can actually set that differently
without having to retune your truck.
Diagnostics.
Read and clear DTC codes otherwise known as the diagnostic trouble codes.
So, if the check engine light comes on, read the code, get the description and clear it
right then and there.
Information.
You can select that, you'll have vehicle and device.
Now, vehicle info would give you your VIN number, your ECU strategy code, things that
are important for requesting new tunes.
You also have a number of other parameters there as well.
Device will give you your device serial number, it'll give you your device firmware and software
versions, and it will also show you your married status.
So, if your truck is tuned, it'll be married, if it's returned to stock, it then unmarries.
You can reflash that to different vehicles a certain amount of times and it'll show you
how many reflashes or unlocks you have left.
That's located in the device menu.
And then updates.
Pretty straightforward.
You can update your device wirelessly.
Settings.
This little cog up here in the top-right.
Tap that guy once.
You have general, give you a couple of parameters here.
Start gauges after power on I think is a huge setting.
So, if you know that every single day like I said, you'll be using the gauges screen
there, you can set it so that every time you turn your vehicle on and this is plugged in,
it'll automatically go right into the gauges screen to your preset.
So, that's really useful if that's what you're doing every day, you don't have to fiddle
with it every time you get in the car.
Going back here, we have audio, we can display, you can change it from different orientations.
There's a WiFi network, you can manage your custom tune files and datalog files and then
a couple of other basic feedback options.
And really there you have it.
That's your DTX device.
And last thing I wanna note here is this cord here.
You can then feed however you like.
I have this mounted obviously right in the smack dab middle of our windshield.
So, that's really not the best place for it, but if you put it up in the corner, you can
feed this guy down through your trim panel and under your dashboard very simply.
That also comes down to personal preference.
That's gonna wrap up my review, install, and dyno test for the GTX Tuner with Two Custom
Tunes from Bama Performance available for the '15 to '16 3.5 EcoBoost F150.
Now, if that's what you're looking for, get yours right here at americantrucks.com.