The Roush Level One Power Pac will be a great lift for the S-550 GT owners out there to
add upwards of 25 horsepower and 30 foot pounds of torque, according Roush using two extremely
basic modifications or parts.
Their cold air intake system, and of course, the included calibration voucher for right
around the mid $700 price point.
The calibration is optimized for 91 octane fuel, but can still be used with lesser octane's
if needed, although don't expect to see the same gains with those lower octanes.
Finally, guys, interested buyers can also take advantage of Roush's optional three-year
36,000 mile powertrain warranty with this power pac in calibration.
And honestly, that's something you don't always see in the land of aftermarket tuning.
The install is going to be extremely straight forward for the intake portion, but keep in
mind, guys, you will need to have the calibration flashed by your local dealer, so obviously
factor that into the job.
All that being said, I'm still gonna go one out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter
here with a little bit more detail to come later on.
But let's break down the level one power pac a little bit further, guys, and again, at
first glance, this is a very basic kit, right?
The first half of this power pac will be the Roush cold air intake system, a very highly
rated part on the site.
Now, this thing will obviously replace that factory air box along with the cheap paper
element factory filter with the reusable high flow dry option you see here on the table.
Now, the Roush filter will not only be an improvement in both in filtration and also
appearance, but, of course, power as well, thanks to less intake restriction resulting
in that bump and power, of course, along with some other benefits.
Now, GT owners can also look forward to slightly better throttle response with this thing in
place and Roush claims maybe even the slightest increase in fuel economy, but between you
and I, guys, I wouldn't be installing this to help you gain better miles per gallon.
You can also look forward to a little bit more sound coming from under the hood of that
Coyote power plant, thanks to the open element design here and that is something a lot of
our customers have pointed out in the customer view section.
Now, from a construction standpoint, the Roush consistently delivers OEM levels of fit and
finish and I'm happy to say that is the case here with their intake.
You are gonna be looking at injection molded automotive grade plastic for a majority of
the build including the air box here and the filter is going to be a dry option.
We covered that a little bit earlier.
That being said though, guys, it is still washable, it is still reusable, which will
save you some money in the long run.
And honestly, a lot of guys out there might prefer a dry filter as opposed to an oiled
filter, not that there's anything wrong with an oiled filter per se, but sometimes, guys
can overlay oil them causing problems with your mass airflow sensor, obviously, not a
concern here with the Roush.
Now, the second part of the Roush power pac, of course, is the calibration, and while it
is included with the kit, what you are actually receiving is this guy, just simply a voucher
that you'll need to take to your local dealer.
They'll flash it using their Ford specific tool and depending on your hookup with your
local dealer, they might charge you an hour of labor, which is roughly about 100 bucks
or they might just do you a solid.
So, if you're expecting to see a traditional handheld tuning device, you're simply just
not gonna be receiving one here, so don't be disappointed.
But once that calibration has been flashed to your Mustang, expect gains of around 25
horsepower, 30 foot pounds of torque according to Roush when used with their intake here,
and at least, 91 octane.
Now, you can certainly use 93 octane for those who have it available.
In fact, the car might like that a little bit more in.
And as I pointed out earlier, you can certainly use those lower octane fuels, but expect reduced
power as the tune will not be as aggressive.
You won't be seeing the timing that you would with those higher octane fuels.
Baseline numbers using our 2016 automatic GT, gave us 357 horsepower and 348 pound feet
of torque to the rear wheels.
With the Roush power pac installed, the car is now making 384 horsepower and 373 pound
feet of torque.
That's good for a pit gain of 27 horsepower over those baseline numbers in gains of as
much as 31 horsepower and 27 pound feet of torque under the curve.
And speaking of those gains, they are made possible, thanks to improve camshaft timing
along with a focus on throttle mapping, just to give the car a slightly sportier or maybe
snappier feel overall.
And as I did point out earlier here, guys, if you did wanna opt for the optional three-year,
36,000 mile warranty, you have that option with Roush here, but you have to apply for
that with Roush directly and it must be purchased within 30 days of installation.
Now, if you did crave a little bit more power and a lot more sound, you should definitely
check out the level two power pac here on the site also from Roush.
Now, they do claim a little bit more horsepower and torque with the kit, but more importantly,
a lot more sound, thanks to the fan favorite Roush axle back that is included with that
level two kit.
Let's switch gears quickly here and talk about the install and yes, I did give this one a
one out of three wrenches on the old difficulty meter earlier on initially, and I will say
that will come with the caveat of needing to schedule a trip to your local dealer to
have the calibration flashed to your Mustang, unless of course, you do have access to that
special Ford-specific interface tool.
Now again, guys, in my experience, they're gonna charge you about an hour's worth of
labor, so expect to spend an additional 100 bucks on top of the power pac here unless
you have a hookup at your local Ford dealer.
Now, the intake by itself, a piece of cake, right?
And can be done with the basic hand tools you have laying around the garage, about 30
minutes to an hour depending on how quick you work and how many beers you wanna drink.
Now, it is a no tune required intake.
So, my recommendation would be to install this first at home.
You can totally drive to the dealer and then have the calibration flashed.
All right, so the first step of our power pac install is removing our stock air assembly.
Now, to do this, you're just gonna need to start off with a flathead screwdriver.
We're gonna disconnect our maf sensor, and disconnect this clamp tightened down the top
of the air box, and we're gonna loosen these two clamps to hold the air box to the vehicle.
So with the top air box removed, the next step is removing the filter itself as well
as the bottom airbox.
Now, our car has been worked on quite a lot, so we're missing our screw that holds this
down.
Normally, you'd loosen this and you can pull the whole assembly out of the vehicle.
All right.
Now that we have our air box assembly removed from the vehicle, the next step is removing
the air intake tube itself.
Normally, you have to remove your sound tube, which pumps sound into the cabin.
We didn't like that, so we already took ours off.
So, the next steps are gonna be removing your PCV hose right here, and this breather hose,
as well as removing the final clamp that secures the tube to the actual throttle body itself.
Okay, guys, now that we have our stock air box assembly out of the vehicle, it's time
for us to do some out of car assembly with our new air system.
Now, I'm gonna walk you through each step here.
You can also go on Roush's site and get some nice printed in color instructions if you
don't wanna keep rewinding and listening to me the whole time.
However, I'm gonna walk you through anyway.
First things first, we're gonna reuse some of the rubber grommets from our stock air
box assembly.
So,you're gonna start with pulling this little rubber grommet off the bottom of the stock
air box, and we're gonna move it over to our new one.
The second piece we're reusing from our stock air box assembly is this other little rubber
grommet.
This is an actual little isolator, and that's gonna sit on the inside of the fender well
on your new air box assembly.
Now, with those two parts reused on the new airbox assembly, you can go ahead and discard
your old one.
All right.
The next piece is putting on a weather stripping here.
Its got these nice little plastic rivets and you're just gonna pop those inside these
little rivet holes on the top of the airbox assembly.
They might have some excess material here on the end, you can just cut that off.
So, with your weather stripping installed, the last piece is installing this little breather
tube.
This is what actually pulls in cold air from the front of the vehicle to the air assembly.
So, now that our new air box assembly is all put together, we're actually gonna assemble
the air intake itself, and I'm talking about the filter and the tubing for the mass airflow
sensor.
First things first, you're gonna put these two together with the provided clamp.
All right.
Now that we have our air intake attached to the mouth housing, we're actually gonna go
ahead and switch over our mass airflow sensor from these stock map housing to the new one.
And that's just a little alien key head.
Okay.
Going to switch this over to our new one.
Okay.
Now that we have our mass airflow sensor installed in our new mass airflow housing, we're gonna
go ahead and install this in our new air assembly.
Now, you wanna make sure that the mass airflow sensor is facing towards you and towards the
front of the air assembly so that the plug has faced to plug in once you install it.
All right.
Once you have those two bolts hand threaded for the filter itself, you're gonna go ahead
and tighten those down using a 10-millimeter socket and an extension
Cool.
So now that we have our mass air flow sensor, our air filter, and airbox assembly all put
together as one piece, we're gonna go ahead and install this in the vehicle.
We're not gonna put the tube on yet.
We wanna have some room once this is in the vehicle so that we can move this around, play
with it a bit, and get everything seated, then we'll tighten everything down.
Now, before we install the intake filter and the air box assembly, you wanna make sure
that your air inlet lines up with the hole that's down here hidden behind the front grill.
You also wanna make sure that your mass airflow sensor has enough slack so you can plug it
in once you put this all together.
Now that our air filter and our airbox is all connected, we're gonna go ahead and do
the last step and that's actually installing the new air intake tube as well as all the
plumbing on all these connections.
Now that we have our air assembly installed with our intake, our tube, and all our connections
reapplied, then actually step in the vehicle, we're gonna install a Roush calibration, and
we're gonna throw this on a Dyno so we can see what kind of numbers it's making.
All right.
Before we calibrate the vehicle, we need to pull a four-digit alpha-numeric code off the
vehicle as indicated on the voucher card.
That code is a little hard to find, but if you find your PCM down here, I'm gonna point
to it and show you exactly where it is.
It's a four-digit code on the hardware number on this sticker that says continental.
Now, that we have our four-digit code from the PCM, we're gonna go ahead and plug in
our Roush dongle to our OBD-2 port, and we're gonna download the Roush diagnostic tools
so we can actually calibrate the vehicle.
The OBD-2 port is located just underneath the steering column to the left hand side.
All right.
So with your dongle plugged in and connected to your laptop, you're gonna want to install
the Roush diagnostic tool.
You have instructions on the voucher itself.
For first time users, just go to the website and download the tool from the web page that
they provide you.
Once the diagnostic tool is installed, you're gonna actually load it on the laptop, and
then we're gonna follow the rest of the instructions to calibrate with vehicle.
Okay.
Now that we have the Roush diagnostic tool up and running on our laptop, the first step
is to select our device, which is gonna be the dongle that's plugged into the OBD-2 port.
So you're gonna select this drop-down right here.
And we're gonna select our dash bridges CX dongle.
Now that we've selected are dongle device, we're gonna go ahead and select vehicle ID.
All Right.
Once you hit vehicle ID, the software is gonna read the vehicle, it's gonna pull up your
event, and it's going to confirm your vehicle information.
Once that's confirmed, you're gonna go ahead and select module programming on the left-hand
side.
All right.
Once you've selected module program, you should have a string pop up that says PCM software
installation.
You're also gonna get a prompt right here that's gonna ask you to locate your voucher
and enter the code on the voucher itself.
Once you select enter voucher, you're gonna get a pop up and you're gonna enter in the
voucher code on the back of the voucher, and you're gonna enter the voucher family number
on the front of the voucher.
Now, once you've entered your voucher code and the family number, you're gonna, get a
pop up that looks like an error.That's okay.
That's supposed to happen.
The next step is you're gonna enter in that four-digit tear tag number that you pulled
off of the PCM.
Let's go ahead and click okay, and then entering your tear tag number.
Okay.
Once you have your tear tag information from your PCM plugged in, you can go ahead and
click redeem now.
Now, if you have an issue with your tear tag and hitting redeem, and it gives you another
error after you've pulled the correct info from the vehicle, you'll wanna actually give
Roush a call.
They'll walk you through pulling the correct PCM number if you don't have that physical
number imprinted on that sticker on the vehicle.
Now, if everything worked as it's supposed to, you'll get this nice little pop-up screen
that says, "Redemption was successful and flashes enabled."
Go ahead and click okay, on this.
And then go ahead and click flash down here on the bottom of the screen.
This is actually gonna reprogram the computer on the vehicle.
So once you click this button, it's very important that you do not unplug anything.
Now, once you've clicked flashed, it's gonna hang for a few seconds, and it's gonna come
with a confirmed programming pop up, and it's gonna ask that you verify, you want to flush
the vehicle.
Go ahead and click okay.
Now, go ahead and follow through the onscreen instructions.
You're gonna cycle the engine without actually turning the vehicle over and you're gonna
click okay.
Just about finished.
All right.
Once the flash has almost completed, you're gonna get this pop-up screen that says, "Cycle
the ignition."
Now, if you're working on a '15 or newer like we obviously are, you're just gonna click
the engine button off without your foot on the pedal.
Go ahead and click it again and again without your foot on the pedal, and then go ahead
and click okay.
All right.
Now, once you've done that, you should get this final pop-up screen that says flash complete,
and then you can go ahead and disconnect everything from the vehicle.
And with that said, that actually wraps up our review and install of the Roush power
pac for your '15 and up Mustang GT.
I'm Travis.
Thanks for watching.
And for all things Mustang, keep it right here at americanmuscle.com.