Hey, guys, Adam here with americantrucks.com, today we're taking a closer look at, installing
and dyno testing the 5 Star SF4/X4 Tuner by SCT available for the 2015 and newer 3.5-liter
EcoBoost F-150 excluding the Raptor.
Before we jump into the details of the X4, let's take a look at that dyno graph.
We have a 2016 3.5 EcoBoost on the dyno, we've got 35-inch tires, 93 in the tank, bone stock
otherwise.
We, of course, establish our baseline run with our stock tune, walked away with 307
horsepower, 338 pound-feet of torque at the rear wheels.
We then, of course, uploaded our 93 performance tune from 5 Star using our X4 device, ran
it under the same conditions with the 35 and 93 in the tank, walked away with 367 horsepower,
405 pound-feet of torque at the rear wheel.
So, of course, we broke 400 for torque, that's looking really good.
So, peak gains, we're looking at 60 horsepower and about 67 pound-feet of torque over stock,
really impressive with just a simple 93 octane tune.
But if you look at the curve gains, that's really the difference you're gonna feel out
on the street.
Now, at about 4600 RPM, so right at the mid-range, we're gaining 83 horsepower and 83 foot-pounds
of torque at the rear wheels over the stock tune.
That's a good sweet spot, low to mid-range is what we wanna see for gains on these trucks,
big rigs, especially towing and hauling a bunch of cargo you really want low to mid-range
gains to really help your truck wake up a little bit and not feel as sluggish especially
when you add bigger wheels and tires into the mix.
The results from this tune I'm definitely impressed with and I definitely think it'll
make a difference out on the road.
Now, as you saw, pretty impressive gains from just a simple 93 tune from 5 Star and those
guys really dive in deep to alter that stock tune to bring your F-150 to life while also
keeping safety and reliability in mind.
Of course, they dive into some of those aspects of the tune altering air-fuel ratio, timing
spark advance, so many other parameters.
They're altering the turbo spool time and responsiveness which is definitely gonna wake
up that truck and given the results we just saw at the dyno graph, there's proof to back
that up.
Aside from the tune though you're, of course, getting a couple of tunes for your truck,
the 87, 91, 93 which is also gonna help with towing and hauling.
You're also getting a number of other features with the X4 itself.
This is gonna have Wi-Fi capability, wireless updating which makes life a whole lot easier
if you're in range of Wi-Fi, you get to take advantage of the gauges and data log features
of the X4.
Basically what that means is you can track live engine vitals on the fly using the gauges
on the screen to look at boost, air intake temperatures, coolant temp, voltage, so on
and so forth.
You can look at up to eight vitals at once.
Data logging is also cool for the guys who wanna take advantage of maybe tracking the
engine performance with the tune to maybe make revisions contacting 5 Star.
You can do that at any point using this device here.
You also get a DTC code reader and able to clear the codes which is definitely useful,
don't need any other devices to do that, you can handle it right on the X4.
You get a couple of other features and I'll walk you through that and just a little bit,
know the device comes in right around 400 bucks.
That's including all the tunes from 5 Star and the install is gonna get one out of three
wrenches on our difficulty meter.
Anybody can tackle it with about 30 minutes in the driveway at home.
I'm gonna show you every step of the process starting with uploading your tune, selecting
your tune, and then we'll walk through all the features.
All right guys, jumping right into it.
Once you have your X4 plugged in, we're gonna take you through the process of actually uploading
your 5 Star tune.
So, from the main menu, select program vehicle, continue on street notice, make sure your
key is in the ignition and on but don't start your engine.
Continue.
From here select you tune.
Now, we're gonna focus on a 93 octane, that's all we have loaded here but you'll have multiple
pick from, 87 and the higher octane, so select the one you want.
From here you can adjust any of the options if you want to.
Now, we are gonna use strictly what was sent to us from 5 Star but you can make adjustments
to speed limiter, rev limiter, tire revs per mile, axle ratio, global spark, there's a
number of options to mess with here.
We're just gonna hit approve, make any changes that you want, from there press Continue.
Next on any notices or disclaimers, if you wanna change your tire size, you can, we are
going to change your tire size because we do have larger tires, so we're gonna hit Yes.
So, you wanna hit tire size in inches.
Now, we're running 35s, so we're gonna put 35-inch in there, press Done, 93 octane, change
that tire size, perfect.
Once you're finished making any changes, follow the instructions, so turn key off, wait.
From there, it'll instruct you to turn the key back on and wait.
From there, it will save your stock tune to the device so if you ever wanna revert back
to stock you can do so and then it'll go into writing your file.
From here it says, download complete, you can hit Done, takes you back to the main menu
and you're good to go.
All right guys, so I wanna take you through some of the other features of the X4.
So, underneath program vehicle, which not only can do the preloaded but also custom
tunes, you'll be able to read gauges and you can data log your vehicle's performance.
So gauges, you get to monitor live engine vitals.
Once you press Continue, key on, it'll bring up configurations and I'll take you through
that.
So, select your vehicle that it applies to.
So, we're in a '16, so we wanna hit Ford gas '08 and newer, press Continue.
From there, you'll be able to track things like boost, air-fuel ratio, coolant temp,
intake temp, voltage, so on and so forth.
So, just off the bat here we have two gauges.
Top one says boost in PSI, and bottom, control module voltage.
Now, obviously car is not on so we're not actually reading any boost.
But if we wanted to change that, we just select that, then item, say we wanna monitor intake
air temp.
Select it, hit approve, and it changes that gauge.
So, really interesting stuff you can monitor on the fly every single day.
Now, if you wanted to change the gauge layout, you can monitor up to eight vitals at once.
So, we can select that from the menu and now we have eight different gauges and we can
change all of them to monitor whatever we want out of the list.
You can also start recording data.
So, if you get a new custom tune from your own tuner here, you can data log, you can
send that to them via email, plug this into your laptop, you'll have access to it.
So, that's really useful right here on the device.
So, if we wanna hit stop data log, it goes back to the main menu.
Vehicle functions under that, read and clear DTC or diagnostic trouble code.
So, check engine light comes on, plug this guy in, read the code, get the code and description
and then you can clear it.
Special functions most people won't touch, something like cam relearn, most people won't
have to worry about that.
If you go back to exit, vehicle info will display your VIN, your ECU strategy code and
things of that nature.
So, whenever you're requesting a custom tune, you'll most likely need that piece of information
you can access right on the device.
Device info will give you software update, firmware version, how many pairs you have
left, married status.
You'll also get device serial number, things also needed for writing a tune but the serial
number is also located on the back of the device.
Device settings.
You can check for updates and you can connect to Wi-Fi.
So, these kind of go hand in hand.
If you wanna check for updates, you're gonna need to be on a Wi-Fi network so you can connect
that here.
You can also control the brightness of the device itself during day and night, it can
automatically change.
You can rotate this from portrait to landscape, change the theme, there is red, blue, and
then dark.
Blue just switches things up, dark changes the whites to black.
Under that you have sensors, management mode, audio, has a little beep every time you hit
a button, and startup function I think is pretty interesting too.
So, if anyone wants to actually read the gauges on the fly every day you might mount this
to a windshield mount.
It has these two mounts on the back here so you can hook that on if you wanted to buy
the SCT windshield mount.
Now if you were driving and you want this on all the time, you can select this to startup
directly into the gauges screen.
Anytime you put your key in and this is plugged in, it'll go right there.
So, from there, you can hit factory reset or hit exit back to the main menu and you're
done.
Well, guys, that's gonna wrap up my review, install and dyno test for the 5 Star X4 SF4
Tuner by SCT available for the 2013 and newer 3.5-liter EcoBoost F-150 excluding the Raptor.
As you saw we have pretty good results with this.
Now, if you wanna pick up this device and reap all the benefits for your truck, you
can do so right here at americantrucks.com.