Bama Rev-X Tuner by SCT with 2 Custom Tunes (07-09 Mustang GT500)

Video Review & Installation

Hey, guys. It's Joe from AmericanMuscle. And today, we're gonna be taking a closer look at the Bama Rev-X tuner by SCT with Two Custom Tunes, fitting all '07, '08 and '09 GT500s. Now this guy right here is gonna be a great option for you if you're looking to improve power and drivability with some great tunes and tools that a tuner like this one can offer at a budget-friendly price tag.So before we get into the video here, let's go over some numbers, that's what I want to talk about, that's what you guys want to hear. So what do we do? '08 GT500, 93 octane in the tank and for a baseline run we got 434 horsepower and 432 torque at the rear wheels. Respectable numbers here, but for our after run, 508 horsepower and 479 foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels, that's good for peak gains of 74 horsepower and curved gains of 56 and 64 torque. Definitely, really respectable numbers that this Bama tuner is putting up. Again, that is definitely something you're gonna feel on the good old but dyno and definitely some respectable numbers put up from Bama.So next up, let's go into how you can get those kinds of gains on your GT500. Well, this comes with two custom tunes and when you order this thing, Bama is gonna send you a form to fill out in an email and they're gonna ask you a few questions that are really simple to find the answer to. First thing's first, they're gonna ask you some facts about your car, is it a manual, is it an automatic? They're also gonna ask you the computer code for your car, that's really easy to find. We have a helpful guide posted on how to do that. Secondly, they're gonna ask you for any modifications. Cold air intake, mass airflow sensor, basically stock cam, stock intake manifold, injectors, fuel pump, stock exhaust. They're also gonna ask you if you have redone the rear gears as well as the rear stock tire size, and most importantly, do you have an aftermarket pulley and what's the size? That's all really easy to find out. Lastly, they're gonna ask you what kind of octane you want in your tune. Obviously, you're gonna go with 93 for at least one of them and then you can go with either 87 or 91 for the second one. If you're just looking for a streetable tune, I would recommend doing that.Now once Bama has all the information about your Shelby, it's gonna take them around two to three days to actually nail down the tune, at which point they're gonna upload that right to the cloud. And this is a great feature of the Rev-X. This thing is completely Wi-Fi capable so you don't have to use this cable right here, you don't have to plug this thing into a computer at all to get your tunes uploaded to your GT500 and that is a great little piece of convenience and that also means that this thing is gonna stay nice and up to date easily and wireless leave whenever you go make a change on the tuner.A couple more features to go over here, this is gonna keep your stock tuned on board, so if you do ever need to go back, it's gonna be right there for you. And on top of that, this is also going to include Bama's Free Tunes For Life Program. Now what that means is if you do get a part that requires a new tune, all you're gonna have to do is fill out another one of those forms. With respect to the new mod, Bama is gonna upload a brand new tune for your right to the cloud and the process is gonna start all over again. You're gonna be up and running with a brand new mod and a brand new tune in no time.The Rev-X also has a full-color screen which you could display in portrait or landscape mode and that's a great feature because this thing does do five gauge readouts for stuff such as your air/fuel ratio, intake temperature, stuff like that. You're gonna be able to keep a close eye on if you throw this in the regular old iPhone holder. And the back is magnetic if you have one of those, that makes for a nice little bit of convenience to get this thing up and running and displaying the numbers that you need to see on your GT500.Also, this is gonna be able to read and clear those DCTs, diagnostic trouble codes, more commonly known as check engine lights. You can see what's wrong with your GT500, diagnose, and clear if need be as well. Pricing for this is gonna drop in right around 400 bucks and that makes this definitely more toward the budget-friendly side as far as custom tuning goes. This is not only going to unlock some of that power left on the table by Ford, but it's also gonna be a great tool to have around no matter what you're using your Mustang for, this is a no-brainer, definitely money well spent.The install for this is going to be a simple one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. No need to open the hood, no need to plug this thing into a computer, plugs right into the OBD2 port. And once you have a tune uploaded, you can pull this right out, throw it in the glove box and your all set. We're gonna show you a clip on one of our S19's, it's not a GT500 but it is a member of the same gen. The process is gonna be the exact same thing. So let's hop over to the Mustang, we're gonna show you exactly how to upload a tune and what this thing can do.So here we are in our S197, this is gonna be a really, really simple process. First thing's first, we're gonna take this wire right here. It's got an HDMI port on one end and it's also got the OBD2 port on the other. HDMI, gonna drop right into the top of our Rev-X like so. And then the OBD2 port that's gonna plug into the OBD2 port. Basically they're all in the same spot for all the S197s below the steering wheel and to the left. Just gonna make sure that's a snug connection. This wire is gonna be facing toward you and then our tuner is gonna power on.Here we are in the main menu and you can see there's a bunch of stuff in here. First thing's first, I like to do this with all the electronics. We're gonna go down to device settings, check for updates real quick, and then just hit confirm. Now we do have updates, so we're gonna hit continue and it's gonna ask you to connect to your Wi-Fi. I know this isn't the most glamorous thing to start with, but hey, trust me, making sure this guy is up to date and make sure works correctly interfaces with your vehicle is a little bit more important than being flashy right out of the gate in my opinion. So this is what this looks like. I'd recommend doing this first, obviously, but, hey, I think if you go through the tune menu, it'll prompt you for an update, anyways, I just like to hit this right out of the gate to make sure it's done.Here you can see the actual updates going through, just the little load bar there at the bottom, couple files here for us to download. Not too bad, it shouldn't be too long until we're ready to go and just start to show off some of the features of the Rev-X. Couple minutes later, our tuner is up to date, you'll get this little congratulations menu, we're gonna click okay through that. Now we can start to get down to some of the nitty-gritty, we'll start with the good stuff. How to actually apply a tune. And to do that, we're just gonna go over to exit and then all the way back up to PROGRAM VEHICLE. Now we can get to the good stuff. First thing's first, confirm this is the right stuff. Hit confirm. We already updated our device, so we're gonna hit skip. Now this is one of the best features of the Rev-X on this menu right here, this is gonna be the CLOUD SYNC. So we've already submitted our tune files to Bama, it's been a couple days. They emailed us back, our tunes are gonna be on the cloud, you're gonna get this same exact menu right here and in order to download them, all we're gonna do is hit continue on that CLOUD SYNC menu and it's just gonna check the cloud to see if we have any files updated. We should have two tunes here, I asked for 93 and an 87, we'll see if they came through. So we have a bunch of tunes already in here on the cloud for our '06 GT, I put in an 87 and a 93 tune. These two right up at the top here, those are probably me, the rest of these are probably company tunes.So what we're gonna do, is we're gonna go with the one that I submitted, 93 race. Now we can hit continue and this is going to actually download it to our device. Our 87 tune, it's still on the cloud, we can get that if we need it, but for our cases here, we're just gonna deal with the 93. And we're just gonna go through the menus. It's going to ask you to turn the ignition on, we don't want to start the engine, just to the accessory position.So now that tune is downloaded to our device, you can see it right there at the bottom, 93 race. Just gonna click on the middle button to select it and it's going to reprogram the vehicle to that 93 octane tune. Just going to hit confirm through that menu then it's going to ask us to confirm 93 race which is exactly what we want. Just gonna turn the ignition off and turn it back on.Now this menu right here is a really important one, SAVING STOCK DATA. So obviously what this is doing is pulling off our stock tune and making sure that it's saved to the device for us if we do ever need to go back. So this is something that is really key in case you do have anything go strange with your car, you need to bring it back to Ford for any reason that stock tune is gonna be right there. Now one thing I do want to touch on during this process, try not to worry about the lights on the dash. The cars do tend to freak out a little bit when you pull the stock tune off, that's perfectly normal to see some weird error messages, weird lights pop up, service, check engine lights, stuff like that. If you see that, again, perfectly normal.After that, you can see that this is processing. We're just gonna let this go through the menus as our new tune applies to our S197. All right, so programming complete. Go ahead and take the key out and hit done. Now when we turn this thing back on, we'll have a 93 tune, make sure you have 93 in the tank before you do that way there was no 87 left in there before you start the vehicle. So now we're just gonna go through the rest of the features of this Rev-X on this main menu here. We're just gonna work our way down, I'm gonna show you what this thing can do. Basically what other features it has rather than just changing the tune around and upping the performance of your S197.So our first option here, GAUGES/DATALOG. We'll click into that, it's gonna ask you to turn the key on, ours is already on. So our default gauges here are gonna be INTAKE AIR TEMP, you can see 84 degrees Fahrenheit and MIN MAX at the bottom there. Same thing for COOLANT TEMP 58 degrees Fahrenheit. MIN MAX at the bottom there. We can definitely reorganize this if we want. In order to get to the menu here just click left, it'll bring this guy up. You could STOP DATALOG, START RECORDING DATA, SELECT DATALOG FILE, SELECT GAUGE LAYOUT. We're gonna click into that and you could really get a bunch of stuff going on here. Like I said earlier, up to eight readouts. These can be whatever you want them to be. You can see a whole bunch of things. COOLANT TEMP, INTAKE AIR TEMP, BATTERY VOLTAGE, LOAD, stuff like that. There's also a landscape mode. Not only do you have this portrait mode, but if you want to put it in a full and holder landscape, something like that to monitor your vitals, you can absolutely do so and again, the back is magnetic, so if you have a magnetic phone holder, this will work just fine.We're just gonna click on STOP DATALOG to go back to our main menu. Next option down VEHICLE FUNCTIONS. This is where you read and clear those check engine lights if you need so. So we're just gonna work our way back. And next, we jump into VEHICLE INFO and like it's been dong it's gonna ask us to turn the key on just so we can pull from the computer. And basically this is where you get your ECM, ECM strategy, VIN numbers, stuff like that. If you need to more easily reference that.DEVICE INFO, this is going to be, you know, the file name, the update patch, serial number, firmware version, basically everything you would need to know about the tuner, how many unlocks you have left, that sort of thing. Current tune 93 race, total flash is eight. Battery voltage, that is a really important one for tuning. You want to make sure that is the nice and high, mid 11, not bad.After that, we could dive into DEVICE SETTINGS. This is where we started off our walkthrough here, but basically this is gonna be all the settings for the tuner. CHECK FOR UPDATES, that's pretty obvious. CLOUD FILE SYNC is where you could download more tunes off the cloud if you do have them. UPLOADING DATALOGS to the cloud, that is a really nice feature. Changing your Wi-Fi connection that is in there as well. Brightness, pretty obvious how that works. And there's also a night mode here, which you turn that up or down. ORIENTATION, PORTRAIT or LANDSCAPE, again, pretty obvious. Then the THEME, if we don't like, the DARK RED, LIGHT BLUE is also available. POWER MANAGEMENT, AUDIO. So the click you've been hearing, you can turn that off if you want. This is going to change what the tuner defaults when you start it up. DEMO MODE, you guys are probably never gonna need that. And the FACTORY RESET there is at the bottom for you as well. Now that is pretty much gonna do it for features of the Rev-X. That's gonna do it for my overview of the Rev-X for '07, '08 and '09 GT500s. For this and more great products, keep it right here at americanmuscle.com.