Hey guys. Adam here with americanmuscle.com. Today we're taking a closer look at, installing
and dyno testing the JLT Series 3 Cold Air Intake with the BAMA Rev-X by SCT Tuner Combo
Kit available for the '05 to '09 Mustang GT. You should be checking this out for your early
S197 if you're looking to pick up a convenient combo kit that features an upgraded cold air
intake and a tuner combo to boost horsepower and torque numbers, throttle response, acceleration
and overall just give you a better breathing and performing engine.
Right off the bat, we, of course, established our baseline run completely bone stock with
our stock intake, 93 octane in the tank and our factory tune, dynoed it, walked away with
270 horsepower and about 299 foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels. We then uninstalled
our factory intake, threw on our JLT Series 3, tuned it to the BAMA 93 octane tune for
the intake, ran it again with 93 in the tank and walked away with 285 horsepower and 314
foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels. Good for gains of 15 horsepower and 15 torque
at the rear but the curve gains are even more impressive than those peak gains. We made
our biggest curve gains at around 5600 RPM, so the top end of the RPM band, walking away
with 38 horsepower and 35 torque. We noticed our factory tune dies off a little bit with
power and torque at the top-end whereas our new BAMA tune and JLT combo really picks things
up. I'm really impressed with those gains at the top end but we've really got good gains
all across the RPM band. We're looking at 314 foot-pounds of torque at around 4000 RPMs
which is a really good sweet spot. Something you'll feel everyday out on the road whether
it'd be a daily driver or weekend warrior. Either way this combo kit really did surpass
expectations.
Now this particular cold air intake from JLT is their Series 3 that features a washable
and reusable oil filter and a giant 110-millimeter mass airflow housing. That's actually the
largest currently available in the category which is specifically designed for Mustangs
making around or over 350 rear wheel horsepower but it works perfectly for the daily driver
as well looking for that big bump. If you plan on adding a number of other bolt-ons
to your 4.6, it's a really good idea to pick up that larger MAF housing in order to accommodate
for the more air you're gonna be pulling in at some point. Now this particular option
here does, again, come with Rev-X tuner with the BAMA tunes, two custom tunes to be exact,
made particularly for your exact mods on your exact vehicle. Those will be the 87 octane
tune which is your street tune, great for the daily driver, weekend warrior but the
guys who really want to bump things up and maximize their potential and maximize their
mods, the 93 race tune is gonna be for you. In addition to all that, we'll walking through
all the Rev-X features but just to give you a quick sneak peek, you can expect gauges
and data log capabilities, DTC code reader, Wi-Fi capabilities, cloud sync, wireless updates,
so on and so forth.
Now this convenient combo kit does come at a price tag of around 600 bucks. Not necessarily
the most expensive combo kit in the category but it does feature some really premium quality
materials and I'll break that down in just a little bit. Install, one out of three wrenches
on our difficulty meter. Anybody can tackle a cold air intake. It's one of the easiest
things to do under the hood. And the tune, it's really just following the directions
on this screen. I'll take you through every step of the process. Took me about two, maybe
three hours start to finish. What do you say we get started?
Tools used in this install include an impact gun or a ratchet, an extension, eight and
10-millimeter deep sockets, eight-millimeter swivel socket is also recommended, Philips
head screwdriver and a T20 Torx bit. All right, now the first step of the uninstall here is
to look over to your left side here where the breather hose is. You're gonna push back
on the green clip and pull straight out to disconnect it. On the opposite end here, we're
gonna lift up on the red locking tab on our MAF sensor and pinch to disconnect.
Next up, grab an eight-millimeter socket and an impact gun or a ratchet and we're gonna
loosen up the clamp holding the tubing to our throttle body. Once you have that loose,
you can see this little retaining tab, just rotate it over. We should be able to just
pull it straight off. Now, right next to our air filter, there's a 10-millimeter bolt holding
that whole thing on. We're gonna loosen that up and remove it. At this point, you just
pull off your entire intake in one piece.
All right, so we finally got our factory intake off of our '06 GT behind me. It's on the table
next to our JLT Series 3 cold air intake. I wanna show you guys some of the similarities
but mainly the differences between the two kits and we're gonna start with the star parts,
which is gonna be our filter. Now the factory option is a flat paper element filter. It's
dry so it's not an oiled filter and it's not really washable and reusable. Every few thousand
miles, you gotta pop it out, replace it, buy a new one. Not gonna be the case with your
JLT. Now JLT actually uses an S&B filter. S&B is a reputable aftermarket filter company
similar to those such as K&N or Airaid. They make their own filters and often companies
like JLT will use them in their kit and this one in particular is a giant conical filter.
It's 4½ by 9 inches tall and it's something that has a power stack at the top which is
very unique. A lot of the aftermarket filters out there, whether it be dry or oiled, cap
off the top end but not the case here with the S&B option. It's completely open so the
top end can give you a boost of cold air coming in instead of capping it off and blocking
out that excess. Now this one in particular is an oiled filter. It's a high flow conical
oiled filter which means, when it comes time for routine maintenance, pop it off, wash
it, re-oil it, throw it right back in, no need to spend your money on a new filter.
So that's a big upgrade there in the cold air intake.
Now, the tubing itself from the factory has a lot of kinks, bends so on and so forth which
will restrict air flow and it's also not as large as some of the ones you get in the aftermarket
world. This one in particular, not only is bigger but has a 110-millimeter mass airflow
housing and that's going to translate to some more horsepower and torque gains, pulling
in more cold air, less restriction, better airflow. In addition to that, you get a heat
shield which is more of a rotomolded plastic. It's impact resistant, very hard, very durable.
It's good with heat dissipation and it also has weatherstripping pre-applied to the top
here which is gonna seal in underneath of your hood to block out some of the excess
engine bay heat, keeping in the cold air. In addition to that, you also get new couplers
which are really high-quality silicone. So they'll trap in all that cold air without
any leaks and you're also getting a new breather hose. So everything you need is in the kit.
All we need to transfer over is our factory MAF sensor which is just a couple of screws.
So what do you say we tackle that first and then assemble our new intake.
Now your factory sensor's held on by two T20 Torx screws. So grab your T20 Torx bit. I'm
using an impact gun and if you are, make sure you're using it on its lowest setting, being
very careful not to strip out the bolts. Can also use a ratchet. All right, pop these guys
out, carefully remove your MAF sensor and set aside your factory intake. Next up, you
wanna to take your factory MAF sensor and the gasket included in the kit, just a little
rubber gasket, you're gonna slide that over the end. From there, take the MAF sensor and
slide it into place and grab the Phillips head screws included in the kit and thread
those in by hand. Just get a couple of threads started. Grab a Phillips head screwdriver
and tighten them down. Wanna get that nice and snug so there's no air leak.
Next up, grab the coupler included in the kit. Put one clamp over the end of it. We're
gonna squeeze it and stretch it over the outlet that's gonna go into your throttle body. Gonna
seat that about halfway down. Line up that clamp, you may need to loosen it with your
eight-millimeter socket. Once you line that up, tighten it down. Now what I like to do
is just take the other side, grab a clamp and just put it into place in preparation
to tighten it down to the throttle body but don't tighten it down just yet.
Now we're over at the vehicle. You wanna grab an eight-millimeter socket and an extension.
I'm gonna use a swivel socket. We're gonna remove this eight-millimeter bolt on the rad
support. This is gonna be one of the retaining bolts that is gonna help hold on our heat
shield. Just wanna be careful. You don't wanna drop it in the engine bay. Next up, you can
grab your heat shield and drop it into place. Now, on some models, you may need to shuffle
out of the way some of the coolant lines down at the bottom. In our case we are gonna need
to do that. We're gonna need to try to maneuver that just a little bit to fit our heat shield
down here. Once you get it in place, line it up with the bolt holes on the side here
at the wheel well and where we just removed that eight-mil. We're gonna grab our factory
10, put it back over here, thread that down a little bit by hand. Grab the 10-millimeter
included in the kit and replace that eight we just took off. Grab your 10 socket and
tighten down the bolt. Grab your JLT tubing. Slide the one end into the heat shield. Connect
the other one to the throttle body. Make sure you have access to your clamp's bolt head.
Grab your eight-millimeter socket, tighten it down. Grab your filter, put the remaining
clamp over the end and drop it into place and connect it to your tubing. Make sure it's
seated all the way on, all the way around. Tighten up that clamp. Next up, grab your
vacuum hose included in the kit. Connect one end to the fitting on the underside of the
tubing and the other ends gonna go to the factory location on the head. Once you have
that connected, connect the other end. You'll hear a click. Last step, grab your MAF sensor,
connect the harness. You'll hear a click. Drop down the red locking tab and you're good
to go.
Since our intake's installed, now we can work on our tune. Grab your harness included in
the BAMA Rev-X kit. We're gonna plug in the OBD 2 slot underneath the dashboard on the
left-hand side. Once you snap that into place to your OBD 2, the other end's gonna go into
the top of your Rev-X. All right, now we can get started. All right, grab your key, put
it in the ignition, turn the key on but don't start your engine. From here, your main menu
boots up. I wanna take you guys straight into the tuning. So go to program vehicle from
the main menu. Confirm your VIN. Next, it may ask you to connect the Wi-Fi. It may also
ask if you want to update your device. Now, our device is already up-to-date so we're
gonna hit skip but if you haven't done so already, make sure you do this out of the
box. Next, it asks for a Cloud sync. If your tuner, in this case BAMA, put your tunes on
the Cloud, you need to access the Cloud from here via Wi-Fi, pull them off and download
them to your device. We've already done so, we're gonna hit skip. Just a notice that it
is not legal for street use or sale in California or pollution control vehicles, press continue,
key on. At this point, we're basically going to select our tune. Now, our tuner has a lot
of tunes on it but yours should only have one or two depending on how many you pulled
off the Cloud. In this case, we're just gonna focus on our 93 tune for our JLT intake from
BAMA.
So here are all of our tunes. We're gonna go down to the bottom, select JLT Series 3
93 race. Once you select that, it processes. It will ask you if you wanna make any changes
to the tune, any additional changes such as tire size, gear ratio, speed rev limiter,
so on and so forth. Those are some of the additional options. It is optional so you
can just take it as a base tune which is what we're gonna do once it's done loading up.
It'll disable your preloaded tunes so just hit confirm. At this point, if you wanna make
changes, you can. We're gonna skip and then continue to confirm. At this point, it'll
take time to save your stock tune from your GT to the Rev-X. If you ever wanna revert
back the stock, you can do that by just plugging it in, going through the same process, return
to stock will be one of the options. So you're going to turn your key off and then back on
once it prompts you. It'll save your stock data and then it'll get into writing your
tune. Guys, keep in mind it'll load 0 to 100 several times. You just wanna make sure you're
not unplugging the device or turning your key off at any point. All right, now it begins
writing your tune. It will let us know when it's complete. It may ask you to turn your
key off and on a couple of times so just be on standby, be paying attention, just have
a little bit of patience and we'll be done in no time. All right, programming complete.
You can hit done, takes you back to the main menu.
All right, let's walk through some of the menu options for the Rev-X. Now, we've already
looked at program vehicle. Underneath that is gauges and data logging. Now this is gonna
allow you to monitor some of your live engine vitals. So you wanna make sure your key is
on and press Continue. It's gonna tap into the ECU. You're gonna wanna select your vehicle.
It'll give you a list of different options there including, you know, Ford '07 and newer,
Ford '08 and older, things like that. Once you select that, it'll move into the gauges.
Now, in this case, we've got one gauge layout that has eight different vitals. This is the
most you can track at once. Super useful. As you can see, we have battery voltage, intake
air temperature, coolant temperature, idle, so on and so forth. If you wanted to change
any of them, why don't we go into gauge layout, we'll change it to something a little easier
to read like just two gauges. We'll have one on the top, one on the bottom. Battery voltage,
coolant temp. If you wanted to change one of them, all you have to do is select. So
we'll change battery voltage. Go to item, we'll change that to air intake temp. Hit
approve and it swaps that out. So you can track so many different engine vitals all
at once. Super useful. You can change it so that it mounts in landscape or portrait orientation.
You can start recording the data log to communicate that with your tuner, to make any updates
or if you want to track, you know, how things are performing. So we're gonna hit stop and
that'll take you back to the main menu.
Vehicle functions is underneath that. Read and clear DTC or diagnostic trouble codes.
Check engine light comes on. Plug your Rev-X in. You don't need any code reader. You can
do it right with the device. Read the code. It'll give you the code and a description.
You can clear it. Special functions, most guys won't need to worry about. That's more
like a cam reset or cam relearn. We're gonna go ahead an exit. Vehicle info, this will
give you important data such as your VIN number, your ECU strategy, all of the things you'll
need to request new tunes in the future. You can take full advantage of the BAMA Free Tunes
for Life. Occasionally, your tuner will ask for your strategy code or your VIN. That's
right on the device.
Device info, similar but more on the device side. You have serial number, part number,
firmware version. The serial number is something you need for new tunes as well. Under that,
device settings. The top four are pretty important: check for updates, Cloud file sync, upload
data to Cloud and Wi-Fi. You'll need Wi-Fi to be able to use the top three. So Wi-Fi
connectivity, connect to your local network. You can upload the data log I just showed
you to the Cloud to give to your tuner. You can download files that they upload to the
Cloud directly to your device and you can check for updates. I recommend checking for
updates anytime that you're gonna retune your vehicle. You can always do it right on the
device with Wi-Fi. Underneath that, there's just simple display options, you have day,
night mode, orientation, you can change the color. Real simple stuff and you can change
the orientation. That's useful for guys who maybe have a windshield mount, you wanna mount
it a certain way. You can orient it however you like. Hit exit. Right back to the main
menu and that's your Rev-X.
That's gonna wrap up my review, install and dyno testing of the JLT Series 3 Cold Air
Intake combined with the BAMA Rev-X Tuner with two custom tunes for the '05 to '09 GT.
If you wanna get this combo kit for yourself, you can do so right here at americanmuscle.com.