Installation Time
(approx) 1 Hour
Difficulty Level:
Simple installation for anyone.
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Hey guys. Adam here with americanmuscle.com. Today we're taking a closer look at, installing and dyno testing the Airaid Race Cold Air Intake and the BAMA Rev-X Tuner Combo Kit available for your '05 to '09 GT. You should be checking this out for your early S197 if you're looking for a convenient combo kit. It's guaranteed with horsepower and torque gains as well as just a better breathing engine and a Rev-X tuner that is so easy to use and it has a number of really cool features. It'll definitely come in handy. Now this particular cold air intake is gonna be a big upgrade under your hood, giving you a better breathing engine, some horsepower and torque gains, of course, but it's also gonna give you a big upgrade for the filter. You're going from that factory paper element filter to a conical SynthaFlow oiled filter. It's washable and reusable, very convenient, has a very big upgrade in filtration capabilities and how much cold air it's gonna be pulling in. In addition to that, you're really maximizing its potential with your octane tune from BAMA. Now this is something that is specifically made for your vehicle and your mods. So whether it be just the cold air intake or say you have a cat-back, long tubes, so on and so forth, all that's taken into consideration from BAMA, but write it just for your vehicle and you'll see some pretty good results. Now, of course, we established our runs, our baseline number with a bone stock motor, 93 octane in the tank with our factory tune, dynoed it, walked away with about 270 horsepower, 299 foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels. We then installed our Airaid race intake and our BAMA 93 octane tune combo, ran it again under the same conditions and walked away with about 291 horsepower, 310 foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels. That's good for peak gains of 20 horsepower and 11 torque at the rear. Pretty good gains as far as peak is concerned but curve gains are a lot more impressive. Now we found our curve gains at about 5600 RPMs which is towards the top end, a little bit under redline. Now, at the top end, we're walking away with 28 horsepower, 27 foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels. We see pretty good gains across the entire RPM band, seeing our max torque at about 4000 RPMs which is just in that sweet spot to feel it every day on the streets to make a big difference. So it's definitely something that we can feel. I want you to know that this tuner is gonna come with an 87 street tune and a 93 octane race or performance tune. Now those tunes are gonna take in your air fuel ratio. It's gonna change timing and spark to optimize everything you got going on for your S197. The kit comes in right around 700 bucks which is definitely gonna save you money if you want to pick up an air intake and a tuner separately. This convenient kit is definitely worthwhile if this is on your radar. Now the install, I'm gonna give everything one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. It's very simple to install. Anybody can tackle it in the driveway at home and you're enrolled in the BAMA Free Tunes for Life program, and what does that mean because it sounds awesome? Basically, when you pick this kit up with your BAMA tunes, you're automatically enrolled to get free tunes for life as long as you have this tuner and this vehicle combo'd. Now, basically, every time you wanna make an adjustment to a tune, any time you pick up an additional mod, you request that new tune, you get it for free, sent to either the Cloud wirelessly or you can download it right in your email from BAMA. Very simple stuff and it's included for free with this combo kit with the BAMA tunes. Tools used in this install include an impact gun or a ratchet, extension, 8 and 10-millimeter deep sockets, 5/32 hex socket, T20 Torx socket and a box cutter or knife. All right, now the first step 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 8-millimeter socket and an impact gun or a ratchet. We're going to 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. You 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. So we got the factory airbox off of our 2006 GT you see behind me. We've got it on the table next to our Airaid race cold air intake and I wanna take you through some of the similarities but mainly the differences between the two kits and we're gonna start upfront with the most important aspect which is gonna be our filter. Now, you see, I took the lid off of our factory airbox to expose that factory paper element filter. You can see it's just a night and day difference here. The Airaid option is a conical SynthaFlow filter made of a synthetic nano fiber technology that filters up to two microns of particles which is just not something you can say for not only the factory paper element but even the common aftermarket cotton gauze filter. So a big upgrade in the realm of the Airaid filter and they're known to be one of the more premium options in the category so we expect them to have that premium quality material. The filtration capabilities of the Airaid filter is unmatched and it's also going to be washable and reusable with an oiled filter technology. So being an oiled filter does require a little more maintenance than a dry filter would but it does also come with that washable, reusable technology. So, basically, when it comes time for routine maintenance, pop it off, wash it, re-oil it, throw it right back in. You don't have to worry about buying up a new one. Next we have a plastic, black, pretty stealthy intake tubing. It's a little bit larger than the factory one you can see here. So it's got a better airflow system going through, it's gonna dissipate heat a little bit better, it's got a built-in housing for the MAF sensor which we'll transfer over in just a little bit and an opening to fit that twin bore throttle body. It's also gonna come with a velocity spec to help streamline the airflow through the filter into the tubing. The heat shield's also a rotomolded plastic so it's gonna dissipate heat a lot better as well. Comes with weatherstripping to make sure it's sealing up underneath of your hood, blocking out excess engine bay heat, pulling in that cold air and keeping it in. Coming with all-new silicone couplers as well. Now looking at the factory intake, there's a lot of kinks, a lot of areas for restriction in the airflow. So not gonna be the case with the Airaids. We expect a better gain which is why they claim up to 35 horsepower and 30 torque. So what do you say we assemble our new intake, set the old one aside. The first step here is to transfer over our factory MAF sensor. Now that's held in to our factory tubing by two T20 Torx bolts. If you're using an impact gun like I am, make sure it's on its lowest setting and you're not stripping the bolts. We're gonna go ahead and just remove the two T20s real slow. Perfect. Slide the MAF sensor out, set it down, you can put this aside. Now you're gonna take your new Airaid race tubing. We're gonna take our factory MAF sensor. I'm gonna slide it into the housing slot. Grab those factory T20 Torx bolts, thread them in by hand. Just a couple of threads to get them started. Now we can tighten them down. Remember, you don't wanna overdo it and strip them out. Perfect. Next step we're gonna install our hose fitting for a new breather line. That's gonna go on the opposite end where your throttle body connects and you're gonna need the rubber grommet included in the kit. This is basically just going to line this little section to make sure there's no air leaks. Gonna push it and pinch it into place. Once you have that set in place, grab your fitting. Basically, just gonna push it in. Perfect. Next up, you wanna take your coupler that's gonna go to the velocity stack and heat shield as well as a clamp. You wanna insert the clamp over the outlet side. We're gonna install that on the end of our tubing. Once you have that seated, you wanna rotate the clamp upward. Grab an 8-millimeter socket, we're gonna tighten that down. Now we can do the coupler for the other side attaching it to the throttle body. That's the oblong shape here. You wanna grab another clamp, set it over the end. This one you'll just stretch and install that on to this side. All right, once you stretch it into place, you wanna rotate your clamp where you want it. I like to have the bolt head, you know, right around the side of your hose fitting. You can tighten it down. Next up, grab your heat shield and your weather stripping and you're basically gonna line the top end of it here and that's what's gonna seal in underneath of your hood. It's got little metal strips on the bottom to help just squeeze it into place. There you go. Next up, we're gonna take our heat shield and our velocity stack and we're going to install this using the three washers and the three 5/32 hex bolts included in the kit. You're going to install it from the inside going outward. So, as you can see, there are three holes. You're gonna line them up to the three holes around this circle here. Gonna just rotate it until they line up. Grab one of the bolts with the washers, set it into place. I'm basically just gonna try to thread them in by hand. It can be a little tricky trying to get them to line up. All right, once you have them threaded in by hand, grab the 5/32 hex socket and tighten them down again. Just use the light setting on your impact gun or a ratchet. Perfect. Now you wanna take out the rubber grommet and the metal spacer, this metal plug from your factory heat shield. We're gonna take the rubber grommet and we're gonna install it into the open pre-drilled hole on our new heat shield. And just pinch it, work it all the way in there just like we did with the hose fitting on our new Airaid tubing. Once that's taken care of, take that metal plunger, push it right back down. Now when we install this into our vehicle, we're gonna use the metal spacer provided in the kit and we're basically going to just slide it underneath and put the factory bolt through. Now this doesn't mount anywhere so we're gonna hold off on that until installation. Now this step guys, you can do in car but since we're on the table, we're already set up, we might just well keep going. Grab your filter, put the large clamp right over the end there and we're gonna slide it on to the velocity stack. Now, this does go on a certain way. Find this metal strip, that's gonna be facing down. Put that on. Basically, just wanna slide up that clamp. Grab your 8-millimeter socket and gonna tighten it down. All right, the next step is to grab your factory breather line off of your GT and set it on the table. What we basically have to do is take the 3/8 new line included in the kit and transfer over the fittings to the new one. Now, I will say you can avoid cutting the line on your factory one essentially. If you wanna go out and buy hose clamps, you can use a very small hose clamp to clamp them down to the fittings without cutting if you wanna be able to put this back to stock. I will say, however, once you transfer over these fittings, you can still use this going back to stock. It's really all personal preference. Now what we're gonna do is show you what it would be like if you did do the cutting. So you wanna grab a knife and you're gonna make one slit, essentially, down this line where the fitting connects, pop them out on both sides, transfer them over. Right down the edge here, you're gonna have to go over it a couple times it's pretty hard plastic. There you go. Pop the fitting out, do the same thing for the other side. The other side we already cut so I should be able to just pull it out again. Perfect. Now we're gonna transfer those over to the new one. All right. So, basically, take your hose and your old fittings, just gonna push them in. Now the good thing is, on the fittings, they're ribbed so you don't need any clamp. Once they sit in there, they're already nice and tight. Perfect. All right, next, we're putting our Airaid tubing back on the table and we're just gonna lay clamps over the other end of each of the couplers. We're not gonna tighten them down yet. We're just gonna, like, set them in place. All right. At this point, we can grab our heat shield and install that first. Now, for the installation of the heat shield, we have to remove this 10-millimeter bolt from the side. We're gonna take our 10 socket and pop it off but it is immediately gonna get reused. All right, so now we can drop our heat shield into place. Take the spacer included in the kit, we're just gonna put it right on over the factory location and we're gonna use that factory 10-millimeter bolt to bolt it down to the side there. Once you have that threaded in with the spacer, can put the other one right on the front here. Grab your 10-millimeter socket and tighten it down. Next up, you can grab your tubing and we're gonna attach it to the throttle body and to the velocity stack on the outside of your filter. Snap it onto that velocity stack and rotate it toward your throttle body. All right, now she's a tight fit for sure but once you get it on, grab your 8-millimeter socket and just tighten down that last clamp. All right, couple steps left. Grab your factory sensor harness. Basically, just gonna route that on to your sensor, clip it down, drop the locking tab. Now we can do our breather hose. Now the breather hose, you might need to start rotating this to get it in the right direction. Essentially, you're gonna clip it on to the factory location on your head and then this part on to your fitting. Now guys, once your intake is done with the installation, you can grab your OBD 2 harness included in your BAMA Rev-X tuner kit and we're gonna plug this portion into the OBD 2 slot underneath the driver side dashboard which, on your '05 to '09, is gonna be on the left-hand side. So just find that, plug it right in and the other end is gonna go right into our tuner. Just like that. All right, now we can get to tuning. Now once you have this plugged in, grab your key, put it in your ignition and just turn the accessories on, turn the ignition on. Do not start your engine. At this point, go to the main menu of your device and we're gonna go right into programming our vehicle from the main menu. So click program vehicle, confirm your VIN. Now it'll ask you if you wanna update your device. If you haven't done so already, you wanna hit continue and go through the device updating. We've already done that so I'm going to hit skip. That might ask you if you wanna connect to Wi-Fi as well which it will be requiring if you're gonna do it wirelessly so you wanna connect your Wi-Fi network as well. Cloud sync. If your tuner, in this case, BAMA, sent your files to the Cloud, you wanna hit continue and sync them from the Cloud to your device. Again, we've already done that process but it's really just as simple as hitting continue, it'll connect to the Cloud, select the file, download. Just a quick notice, it's not legal for street use in California or pollution control vehicles. Just hit continue to accept. Turn the key on but do not start your engine. At this point, it'll prompt you to select your tune. Now, again, you'll have a couple of different ones. You have an 87, a 93. You wanna make sure you're selecting the proper one. Now, for our video purposes, we're only gonna focus on the 93 tune with our Airaid combo. So I wanna show you guys the maximum that we're getting out of this octane tune with our cold air intake. Now we do have a number of different tunes on here but we're gonna find our 93 Airaid race tune and we're gonna upload that. Now it'll take a few minutes to get this process done. It'll basically save your stock file from your GT to the device, that way you can always revert to stock if you ever want to. It's right here on the Rev-X. From there, it'll go into writing the tune process. It'll load 0 to 100 a couple of times so you just wanna have some patience, let it do its thing. Don't turn your key off and don't unplug the Rev-X until it's done. They'll let you know that it's gonna disable the preloaded tune on the device. Just confirm and hit continue. You also have the ability to change or make additional tune options which, essentially, is going to be things like rev limiter, tire size, gear ratio, speed limiter, so on and so forth. We're not going to change any of those parameters but if you wanted to, you can go ahead and hit change. We're gonna hit skip, confirm that's your tune and now it'll go into the process. It'll prompt you to turn that key off. Now back on. Saving stock data. All right, at this point, program is complete so we can hit done. It'll kick us right back to the main menu. Now I wanna take you guys through some of the features of the Rev-X device and from the main menu, we already talked about programming the vehicle but underneath that, you'll see gauges and data log. Now gauges and data log is something you wanna have your key on for it. Once you get in there, it'll ask you to select your vehicle so there's Ford [inaudible 00:18:09] '07 and prior years. So we're in an '06 so we wanna hit continue on that. It'll scan the data log file and boot you into the gauges. Now this is a way for you to track live engine vitals. Now, as you can see, we have two gauges up here: battery voltage and coolant temp, but if you go to the right, you can start and stop data logging, it can record data, it can select previous data log files and select the gauge layout. So instead of monitoring only two gauges, we can go ahead and select one of the bigger ones monitoring eight at a time. That'll give you a lot of data on the screen at once. So it's a good thing to take advantage of if you've got a windshield mount or somewhere you can mount this in eyesight. You don't need a number of gauges anymore. You can just track it right on your Rev-X and you can hit stop data log to go right back to your main menu. Now vehicle functions also has a DTC reader. Anytime check engine light comes on, plug in your Rev-X. You can read your trouble codes. It'll give you the code and a description. You can clear the codes and special functions would be something like a cam relearn. Hit exit, vehicle info, turn your key on. This is gonna give you information like your vehicle VIN number, your ECU strategy code, things like that that you need in order to request new tunes. So if you ever wanted an update, this is a good thing to have on deck. You can see our VIN and strategy there. Device info will give you similar information but this time focusing on the tuner, serial number, part number, firmware version. Device settings has a couple of unique features here as well: check for updates, cloud file sync, upload data log to cloud and Wi-Fi are the key ones in the device settings. Wi-Fi connectivity is pretty obvious. You can update your device and use the top three using this connectivity. So connect the Wi-Fi. You can upload your data log to the cloud for your tuner to grab. You can download files that your tuner provides for you on the cloud and you can update your device. From there, you can also change brightness, orientation and do landscape mode instead of portrait. I find portrait to be a little bit easier to use but it's all personal preference. You hit exit, back to the main menu and that's your Rev-X device. That's gonna wrap up my quick overview and install for the Airaid Race Cold Air Intake and BAMA Rev-X by SCT Tuner Combo Kit with two custom tunes for the '05 to '09 GT. If you wanna pick it up for your early S197, you can do so right here at americanmuscle.com.
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Features, Description, Reviews, Q&A, Specs & Installation
Cold Air Intake Type | Cold Air Intake & Tuner Kit |
Air Intake Tuning Requirements | Tune Required |
Cold Air Intake Filter Type | Oiled |
Cold Air Intake Tube Material | Plastic |
**Please Note: The Rev-X Performance Programmer ships blank from AmericanMuscle. Your custom tune files may take 2-3 business days to be written, meaning they should be available for download via the cloud when your tuner arrives.
It's highly recommended to download Free LiveLink and Updater Software. The LiveLink Application is used to view, data log, record and playback your Mustang's PCM data on a laptop computer. The Updater Application lets you update your device's Firmware, Tune Revision or to load Custom Tunes onto your device. Requires Windows Vista/7/8/10 and an internet connection.
Fitment:
DetailsCA Residents: WARNING: Cancer and Reproductive Harm - www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
Installation Info
Installation Time
(approx) 1 Hour
Difficulty Level:
Simple installation for anyone.
What's in the Box
10 More Questions