Hey, guys, Adam here with americanmuscle.com, and today we're takin' a closer look, installing,
and dyno testing the Bama Rev-X by SCT Tuner with 2 Custom Tunes, available for the '18
and newer EcoBoost Mustang.
Now, if you're the owner of this four-banger and you're in the market for something that's
gonna increase horsepower and torque numbers as well as give you a more responsive vehicle,
better throttle response, acceleration, so on and so forth, this is a great handheld
tuner with two custom tunes.
Before we dive in too deep with the details of this tuner, I want to, of course, get to
the meat and potatoes of the video.
I'm gonna show you the dyno results.
We, of course, have our 2018 strapped down.
We're gonna do a pull in 4th gear to give you guys an idea of what our baseline numbers
are.
Then we're gonna upload our tune and show you those results.
So let's take a look at that graph.
All right, now, of course we strapped our '18 Eco to the dyno to establish a baseline
run with 93 octane in the tank, bone stock otherwise.
We walked away with 265 horsepower and about 283 pound-feet of torque at the rear wheels.
We then, of course, uploaded our Bama tune, ran it again under the same conditions, and
we walked away with 280 horsepower and about 331 pound-feet of torque at the rear.
Good for peak gains of 15 horsepower and 48 torque, which looks amazing, guys.
It's really good torque gains, especially just peak.
But if we look at curve gains, it can get even better here, and that's really what you're
gonna feel out on the street.
Now, torque curve, we're lookin' at about 3400 rpms, so good low to mid-range gains
of about 55 torque at the rear wheels.
Horsepower at about 3600 rpms, so around the same at that low to mid-range.
Gains of 35 horsepower, so that's really what's gonna make a lot of difference out on the
road.
Having that low-end torque is just gonna really wake up that EcoBoost, and from a simple 93
octane tune, I'm pretty impressed.
Now, as you saw, man, pretty impressive numbers coming from this tune.
Now, we all know the EcoBoosts get really good bumps in horsepower and torque from just
a simple octane tune.
Now, with this, you do get two custom ones, a performance V2 and a race V2.
Now, the performance tune is good for any octane level, and it's really meant for those
daily drivers looking to get a big performance boost, something suitable for the street.
Now, that tune, in particular, for the EcoBoost Mustang is going to alter your turbocharger's
spool time and responsiveness, which we all know can be a little bit of an issue with
all that turbo lag.
But not gonna be the case here.
It's really gonna make that a lot more responsive.
It's also gonna alter that throttle response and acceleration, giving you changes to your
timing and spark advance as well as fuel, air-fuel ratio, so on and so forth.
Bama hones in to make sure your daily driver comes to life a little bit more without being
too overwhelming on the streets.
Now, if you really wanna take it all out, there's the race V2 tune.
That's geared for those higher octane fuels, 91 and 93, what's available in your area,
which is gonna make sure that it's taking it to the next level.
It is meant for race only, geared for the track, and guys with automatic transmissions
get entirely new shift points for these tunes.
This is also making sure it's tuned specifically for your vehicle and any mods you may have.
Now, our EcoBoost on the dyno is bone stock with just a simple 93 octane in the tank.
Just a full disclaimer, guys, about the dyno pull.
Now, we did pull in 4th gear.
5th is a 1 to 1 gear ratio, but you hit that speed limiter.
So we wanted to make sure we're giving you as true dyno results as possible.
Now, this tuner does have a number of other features, including a DTC code reader, Wi-Fi
access, cloud capabilities, data logging, live engine vital monitoring, otherwise gauges
you get to take a look at on the fly in arm's reach.
The device comes in right around $400 bucks, and the install's gonna get one out of three
wrenches on our difficulty meter.
Anybody can tackle this in the driveway at home in about 30 minutes from start to finish.
No hand tools required, no modifications required.
All you do is plug this into your OBD-II port and follow directions on screen.
Now, one thing I'd recommend, guys, right out of the box, make any updates to this that
you need to.
Go into the settings, check for updates.
Sometimes that is available.
SCT releases updates pretty frequently, so you wanna do that first before jumping into
it.
Now, as far as getting started, I'm gonna show you guys how to upload a tune to your
vehicle.
We're gonna focus on that 93 octane, and then I'm gonna walk through all the other features
of the Rev-X.
Guys, first step, grab the harness included in the kit.
You're gonna plug the OBD-II side into the port under your driver side dashboard on the
left-hand side.
All right, once that's plugged in, take the other end, plug it into the top of your Rev-X,
and now we're good to start tuning.
All right, from the main menu here, guys, we have a lot of options, but I wanna take
you straight into actually tuning your vehicle.
You're gonna start by selecting Program Vehicle from the top.
Confirm your VIN.
Now, if you're pulling something from the cloud, internet will be required, or if it's
the first time you're booting up your device, you'll wanna connect to the Wi-Fi.
So that's gonna be something we're gonna connect to right now, and we'll come back when we
begin to select our tune.
All right, from here, you wanna make sure your key is on, but the engine has not started,
and press Continue.
All right, from here, we're gonna select 93 Race and move right into tuning our vehicle.
Now, you'll have a couple of different options, 87, 91, 93.
We wanna focus on the highest octane, so 93 Performance or 93 Race.
But from here, you wanna select whichever tune you wanna move forward with.
Confirm that it'll disable that preloaded tune.
If it says, "Your device is not paired," press Confirm to pair it.
If you wanna make additional changes to your tune, you can do so now, but we'll hit Skip
and move forward with that base file that Bama has written for us.
We'll press Continue.
From here, it moves on to save your stock tune to the device, and then, after that,
of course, it'll move into writing the tune itself.
At this point, you don't wanna unplug the device or turn the vehicle off unless it tells
you to.
Just keep an eye on the device.
It may tell you to turn the ignition off and on a few times.
You wanna stand by and let it do its thing.
At this point, it's instructing use to turn the key off, back on.
All right, programming complete.
You can hit Done, take you back to the main menu.
At this point, you can unplug your device, and you'll be good to go.
Now, instead of us unplugging this, I wanna take you through some of the other features
of the Rev-X while we're here.
So aside from Program Vehicle at the main menu, Gauges and Data Log is your next selection.
Now, this is gonna be great for the guys who wanna keep an eye on live engine vitals on
the fly and who maybe wanna take advantage of data logging right on the device without
needing a laptop or another, you know, set of devices.
From here, you wanna select your proper configuration, so we're working in an '18.
So you wanna scroll down and find Ford Gas '08 and Newer.
It's a gas vehicle.
It's newer than a '08.
That's the one you want.
It's more of the baseline that it starts off with.
There, it scans the data log, and it'll bring up your gauges.
Now, right off the bat, there's two you can track, but you can change this to track up
to eight vitals at once.
Now, in this case, it's tracking Boost and Control Module Voltage, but say we wanna change
Control Module Voltage to Coolant Temp.
Can select that, hit Approve, and it replaces that with Coolant Temp.
Now, we have Boost up top, Coolant Temp on the bottom.
You can go to the right and select Gauge Layout, and you can change how you track those vitals.
So again, you can track up to eight, so this is gonna be our biggest viewing screen.
So we have Boost, Power, so on and so forth, Air-Fuel Ratio, Bank 1.
There's so many things you can track.
You can replace any of them.
And, as you can see, there's just a number of different things you can track, RPM, Spark
Advance, so on and so forth, so really useful for guys who wanna track this.
If you have a windshield mount or if you wanna, you know, track this within arm's reach, you
can mount that.
That's always a good way to go.
And then, finally, you can start recording a data log, you can stop recording a data
log, and you can select a file to either upload to the cloud to send to your tuner.
Or if you wanna download it, you can do so here.
Now, if you hit Stop Data Log, it'll take you right back to the main menu.
Under that, Vehicle Functions will give you a DTC code reader, diagnostic trouble code,
otherwise your Check Engine light.
If that comes on, plug this device in.
You don't need to go to your local auto parts store.
You don't need to pick up a code reader.
It's right on this device.
It'll give you the code, a description, and allow you to clear it here.
Special Functions, more like Cam Relearn, Cam Reset, those things most people won't
even touch, but it is there.
Now, if you go down here, Vehicle Info and Device Info are two very similar.
Vehicle Info's gonna give you your VIN, your ECU strategy code, a number of other things
relating to your vehicle's ECU.
So if you ever need to request a new tune, Vehicle Info will give you some of those pieces
of data that you need.
Device Info, same thing, but for your device.
serial number, device number, the update software that you're on, the firmware version, so on
and forth.
And then Device Settings, the top four are gonna be pretty important.
So you can check for updates, which Rev-X or SCT does often put out updates for the
Rev-X.
You can do that here wirelessly, or you can plug it into a laptop and use the device updater.
Cloud File Sync allows you to either pull tunes from the cloud that Bama has placed
there for you, so you can download that wirelessly, or you can upload your data log files that
we just went over to the cloud here, view them, and give them to Bama or your local
tuner.
Now, Uploading Data Log to Cloud, just like I said, that is the selection there, and then
Wi-Fi allows you to do those things wirelessly.
So if you're trying to connect to the cloud or check for updates, you wanna be in access
with Wi-Fi.
Under that, very simple device things.
You can change the brightness, orientation if you wanna change it to Landscape.
Theme, you can change that from Dark Red to Light Blue.
Just changes things up a little bit right on the fly.
You can go Light Red if you wanna go with a light background, whatever's easier for
you.
There's a number of different ways you can view this.
Finally, Audio, there's a beep every time you hit a button.
You can turn that off.
And you can select the Startup Function.
If you want this to automatically go to your Gauges screen or Data Log screen every time
you plug this in, you can set that, so every time it turns on it goes straight to that
screen.
You can do a factory reset, and then, finally, back to the main menu.
So that's all your Rev-X.
That's what you'll need to know.
It's got some really important features that you can definitely take advantage of.
Well, guys, that's gonna wrap up my review and install as well as dyno test of the Bama
Rev-X by SCT Tuner with 2 Custom Tunes for the '18 and newer EcoBoost.
You can pick this particular tuner up and reap all of its benefits right here at americanmuscle.com.