Bama Rev-X Tuner by SCT with 2 Custom Tunes (10-12 Mustang GT500)

Video Review & Installation

Joe: 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 '10, '11 and '12 GT500s. Now this is gonna be a great option for you if you're looking to improve the power and drivability out of your Shelby with some great tunes and some great tools that a tuner like this one can offer all at a budget-friendly price tag.So before we get into the video here, why don't we let the Bama tunes do the talking for themselves, let's talk dyno numbers. We used our 2012 GT500 with a manual trans, we used 93 octane for both the before run and the after run. For baseline, we put down 503 horsepower and 475 foot-pounds of torque at the wheels, then we uploaded the 93 octane tune. We put down 523 horsepower and 497 foot-pounds of torque at the wheels, that's good for 20 horsepower peak gains and 31 horsepower and 28 foot-pounds of torque under the curve. That's exactly what we'd expect out of our 5.4-liter and some pretty decent gains for our Shelby.So why don't we dive into a little bit on how you can get those gains on your Mustang. Now one thing to keep in mind with the Rev-X is cloud tuning. It's gonna make things really fast, really simple. So let me tell you how that works. When you buy this thing, you're gonna get an email from Bama with a form for you to fill out. They're gonna ask you a few simple questions, they're gonna start with some facts. Is your car manual? Is it an automatic? And what is the computer code for your Mustang?After that, they're gonna ask you what kind of mods do you have? Do you have a cold air intake? Mass airflow sensor size? Do you have cams? Do you have injectors, fuel pump, exhaust, rear gears? Have you changed those out? And do you have a larger rear tire on your Mustang? And then after that they're gonna ask you what kind of octane you want? I would recommend going with the full 93 if you can get that gas in your area. If you could only get 91, they offer that as an option as well.Once Bama has all the data, it's gonna take them about two to three days to write and nail down your tune at which point they're gonna upload it to the cloud for you to wirelessly download onto your Rev-X. You connect this thing to Wi-Fi. You never have to plug it into a computer and you can pull your tunes right off of the cloud and again, that makes this really, really easy and quick to use. And also firmware updates are going to come wirelessly as well.You bring it over to the car, it's gonna pull your stock tune off first and save that on the device if you do need to go back, and then you're pretty much off to the races. Now, let's be honest here, guys, the modifications never stop, Mustangs are always being modified, tunes need to be changed. Now a great thing about this one is you're enrolled in Bama's Free Tunes For Life Program when you buy a Rev-X. Now what that means is if you ever buy a part that requires a new tune, all you have to do is submit a new form, Bama will write it, two to three days, upload it to the cloud for you to download, you can put it right onto your Mustang and get the power out of the mods that you just installed and that is a great feature. Our Mustangs are continuously growing and this allows the tune to grow with your modifications.A couple of other features about the Rev-X that I do think are really worth mentioning here, this does support data logging, so if you need to, you can offload files on your computer with this cable in the middle here. Also this does support a full 3-inch LCD color display which you could do in portrait or landscape mode and that's great because this allows you to have up to eight real time readouts about your Mustang going on it while it's plugged into the OBD-II port. We're talking air fuel ratio, intake and coolant temp boost, and timing, all things that are great to know about your Mustang.On top of that, obviously you can use this as a diagnostic tool. You can read and clear those DCT, diagnostic trouble codes, better known as check engine lights for you guys out there that are fixing up and diagnosing your Mustang's problem. Pricing for the kit, you're gonna drop in right around the $400 mark and that makes this really, really budget-friendly as far as custom tuning goes. You get to unlock some of that power Ford left on the table as well as get some great tools. This is really a no-brainer for any Mustang owner out there. The install for this is gonna be really simple, sticking with the theme here today, this is gonna be an easy one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter at most. Once this thing is updated, I think this will take you about 15 minutes. Again, you don't need to plug this into a computer, you don't even need to open the hood.We're gonna show you a clip on one of our S197s. Keep in mind here, it's gonna be the same exact process for any S197 as they're all a member of the same generation. So let's hop over to the car, we'll show you exactly how to upload a tune and what the Rev-X can do.Man: Now the first step guys, for the tuning process is to grab the harness included in the kit. You're gonna plug one end into the OBD-II port under your driver's side dashboard and the other end into your Rev-X. You gonna go right under here, find that port, it should be just under your headlight knob right around there. All right. Now, we can grab the other end, plug it in here, shut the door and get the tuning.And from the main menu, I just want to show you guys how to jump right into the tuning process. So from the main menu, hit PROGRAM VEHICLE, confirm your VIN. Now it's gonna let you know internet is required to move forward especially when it comes to updates and pulling things off the cloud. So we've already connected to the internet, so we're gonna hit CONTINUE but if you haven't, you can use Device Settings to get into it or it'll connect through here.All right, so it looks like at this point it's gonna make an update. We'll come back when the update's done but if you do need an update, make sure you don't unplug your device, you want to make sure it's all complete before you do anything. All right, once the device is up to date, you can press OK. Once the software update is done, it will begin a firmware update. You have one more update if it's right out of the box. Again, guys, just have a little bit of patience and don't unplug the device.All right, update complete, hit OK. Now it'll ask for cloud sync. Now if your tuner, in this case, Bama uploaded your tune to the cloud, you can access it here wirelessly once connected to your Wi-Fi. Now we've already gotten our tune file on the device, so we're gonna hit SKIP but if you haven't done so already, hit that cloud sync. Make sure your key is in the ignition in the on position, but do not start your engine. Press CONTINUE. At this point, you can select your tune. Now for this purpose, we're only gonna use the 93 race tune, so I'm gonna select that but you want to make sure you're selecting whichever tune you want to flash to your vehicle. From there, it will load up. Sync your factory tune, your stock tune to the device, save it so you can always revert back to stock at any time and then it'll begin writing a tune. Before it does that, it'll let you know this is gonna disable preloaded tunes, so you could just hit CONFIRM there.If you want to make any additional tune changes, things like tire size, gear ratio, speed limiter, rev, limiter, so on and so forth, you can hit CHANGE now and go through that process. We're just gonna use that tune that we've received from Bama without any changes. At this point, it saves the stock tune and then tunes your vehicle. So again, don't unplug your device until it's finished. Now it may prompt you to turn your key off at certain points, in this case, you want to follow that direction and then back on. But when it starts loading, you definitely don't want to turn the key off unless it tells you otherwise.All right. At this point, it will let you know programming is complete. You can hit DONE, it takes you back to the main menu and you're good to go. Now, guys, I want to take you through some of the actual features other than programming your vehicle in the Rev-X device. Now under PROGRAM VEHICLE, you'll see GAUGES/DATALOG. If you click this, you'll actually be able to monitor live engine vitals on the fly if your key is in the ignition. What this basically means is you can monitor coolant temps, air-fuel ratio. You want to make sure you're selecting your configuration. So if it's the first time you're using this, you have to go in and find your vehicle. So this is a 2014 so we want to go down to FORD GAS 08 NEWER vehicles. You basically want to start with the proper configuration and then from there, it monitors your engine's vitals.Now as you can see, we have two gauges. This is super useful for guys who want to monitor things, have adjustability without having to have a bunch of gauge pods on your dash, your A-pillar, so on and so forth. Now as you can see we're tracking two things here, we have Control Module Voltage and Coolant Temp. Let's say you want COOLANT TEMP but you want a change CONTROL MODULE VOLTAGE, you're gonna click on that one, select item. Say you wanted to monitor INTAKE AIR TEMP, select it, hit Approve and it changes that block.One other thing you can do is select our gauge layout. Instead of monitoring two vitals, we want to monitor the max, up to eight, so you can select that layout. You have eight gauges listed on your screen with the data you want. From there, you can DATALOG, you can start recording data, send that to and from your tuner, in this case, Bama if you want to make revisions. You have free revisions with the Bama Tunes For Life Program and that's really useful to have here directly on the Rev-X. So if you want to get out of it, we're just gonna hit STOP DATALOG from that menu, it takes you back to the main menu.Under that, VEHICLE FUNCTIONS. Read and Clear DTC codes, DTC being diagnostic trouble codes. So if your check engine light comes on, you don't need a different code reader, you can plug your Rev-X right into your OBD-II like we have here. Select Read Codes, it'll let you know the code and a description. Once you have it taken care of, you can clear the code and get rid of that check engine light. SPECIAL FUNCTIONS, most people won't use. You can use CAM reset, CAM relearn, things like that. We're not gonna need to go into that today.Now VEHICLE INFO is useful if you're requesting a new tune or if you need access, say, your VIN number, your computer code, or your ECM strategy code. So that's everything you need for a new tune. DEVICE INFO gives you serial number for the device and you'll be able to see if you have the latest firmware version. How many unlocks you have left and if your status is paired. Now paired basically means that this Rev-X is paired to this vehicle, unlocks being that's how many times you can unlock it and go to a different vehicle. You are limited to three of those with the Rev-X device.DEVICE SETTINGS. Four of the top options are super useful. CHECK FOR UPDATES, CLOUD FILE SYNC, UPLOAD DATALOG TO CLOUD and WIFI, which you'll need for the other three options. Check for updates, I always recommend doing when you get new tunes, you just want to make sure your device is up to date. Cloud file sync's pretty obvious. When Bama sends you a new tune, they may put it on the cloud, you can wirelessly grab that from the cloud on your device with Wi-Fi instead of having to plug it into your computer to sync that way.The same thing goes for datalog but in reverse. If you datalog your vehicle on your device, you can upload it to the cloud wirelessly via Wi-Fi for Bama to grab and go for revisions. Under that, BRIGHTNESS, ORIENTATION, you can change the THEME, the background theme, there's blue options, red options, white options. STARTUP FUNCTION is pretty useful, you can start it up. When you plug your device in, it can automatically go to the GAUGES/DATALOG screen. If you, you know, always have it plugged in on a windshield mount, you can select this from the device settings if every time you turn your car on and this boots up, you want it to go straight into your gauges, so that's pretty useful. Other than that, you can hit EXIT, takes you back to the main menu and those are your features.Joe: That is gonna do it for my overview of the Bama Rev-X tuner by SCT with Two Custom Tunes, fitting all '10, '11 and '12 GT500s. For this one, and more great products, keep it right here at AmericanMuscle.