Bama Livewire TS+ with 2 Custom Tunes (99-04 Mustang GT, Bullitt)

Video Review & Installation

Hey, guys. Adam here with americanmuscle.com and today, we're taking a closer look at, installing and dyno testing the Bama Livewire TS Plus Tuner with two Custom Tunes, for the '99 to '04 GT and Bullitt Mustangs. You should be checking this out for your own New Edge if you're looking to pick up a handheld tuner that's got a little bit more to offer than that simple tuner that I'm sure you're familiar with on the market. The TS Plus here has a 4-inch touchscreen, it includes two custom tunes and it has a number of other features I'll walk you through in this video.Now, before we jump into the details of the tuner itself, of course we wanna take a look at that dyno graph right off the bat. Now, of course, we strapped our '99 GT down in the dyno, 93 octane in the tank, bone stock otherwise to establish our baseline run, walked away with 231 horsepower and about 279 pound feet of torque at the rear wheels. We then, of course, uploaded our 93 race tune from Bama using our Livewire TS Plus, ran it under the same conditions with 93 in the tank, walked away with 240 horsepower and about 289 pound feet of torque at the rear wheels. Good for peak gains of 9 horsepower and 10 torque.Under the curve, we're seeing curve gains of about the same, right around 4,000 RPM, so about 8 horsepower, bordering on 9 and 10 pound feet of torque at the rear wheels. Now, I know these aren't exponential gains, but we're talking about a very simple, 93 octane tune on these old 4.6s. And, guys, this is something you're definitely gonna feel out on the road. Those curve gains are something that you'll feel right at the low to mid-range. We're seeing pretty consistent gains all across the RPM band. So, at the end of the day, with just 93 in the tank this thing can definitely wake it up a little bit and make driving just a little more enjoyable.Now, aside from numbers itself, this tuner has, like I said, a little bit more to offer than your traditional handheld tuner. The TS Plus here, the Livewire loaded with Bama tunes, comes with a 4-inch touchscreen with an ambient light sensor. It also comes with Wi-Fi access and wireless update capabilities, which is definitely nice. You're not gonna need to take it off. Go to your laptop. Update this thing whenever SCT provides one. Do it all wirelessly in range of a Wi-Fi network.In addition to that, you're also getting a performance calculator which is actually pretty interesting, not something that the Rev-X or the X-4 offers. You can track 0 to 60 times, quarter mile times, braking times, a number of your engine's performance vitals that you can really put to the test. Really you're testing out that tune. You can all do that with this device.In addition to that, you get, of course, the gauges and data log capabilities so you can track live engine vitals. And I think if you're taking a look at the Livewire TS Plus, you're probably gonna wanna take advantage of that at all times, given that it does have an easy to read touchscreen. It's a lot bigger than a traditional tuner. So you might wanna have this displayed at all times using that gauge and data log screen. In order to help you out with that, there is a windshield mount included in the kit. You don't have to pick it up separately. You can mount that using the slot already cut into the back here. You just slide that into the windshield mount, put it in arm's reach, and you can watch this thing on a daily basis every time you start your vehicle and go for a ride. So I think that's a really cool feature. The fact that the windshield mount is included definitely goes a long way, especially with this big touchscreen.Aside from that, you're also gonna get a DTC code reader, so diagnostic trouble code, being your check engine light. If it comes on, this guy's plugged in. You can read what the code is, get a description and clear it off from this device. Now, you also get to hold two of those custom tunes, an 87 and a higher octane, 91 or 93 tune. What we took a look at in our graph here, of course, is that 93 but you have that option. Eighty-seven is maximized for the daily driver, someone who wants something a little bit more fun, maybe just wakes up throttle response, gives you a little bit better acceleration, things like that. And it still keeps it pretty tame. The 93 tune is definitely gonna maximize the performance of your vehicle and, of course, ours is stock which is why we saw those numbers earlier. But you have a tune customized to your vehicle. So if you have power routers, like a quarter intake, long tubes, intake manifolds, so on and so forth, this takes all that into consideration and maximizes their potential, especially on that 93 tune.Last but not least before we jump into pricing and install here, guys, you are automatically enrolled in the Bama Free Tunes for Life Program. What that basically means is, guys, any time you need a tune revised or rewritten for additional mods or changes to your vehicle, you get it for free. All you have to do is have the same tuner and same vehicle paired and, at that point, you just resubmit a tune request. You get it rewritten from the guys over at Bama for free and they'll send it over to you via email. Now, that's a really cool thing to have in your pocket. Now, we all know we're constantly modding our vehicles. These New Edge guys have a ton of mods available for them. So any time you pick up anything new, request that new tune and you'll maximize its potential.Now, pricing for this is a little bit higher than a traditional tuner, comes in right around 600 bucks. That is to be expected. It offers a few more features and it's bigger and it's got a touchscreen. And it includes that windshield mount. So 600 bucks gets you what you see here, including the tunes and the Free Tunes for Life Program.Install, one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. Anybody can tackle this in the driveway at home or really anywhere in about 30 minutes from start to finish. I'm gonna walk you through every step of the tuning process and then I'm gonna show you all the features. Let's get to it.Well, guys, jumping into the install here. Of course, there's a windshield mount included in the kit and for this TS Plus, I'm sure you guys, given that you bought the touchscreen version which has a bigger display here, you'll probably wanna display it in your vehicle. So the windshield mount we have here, mounted on the left-hand side on our driver's seat, this one's within arm's reach, you can see it at all times while driving. I think that's a good spot for it. All you have to do now is take your device and the OBD2 port, plug it into the OBD2. The other end is gonna plug right into the back side of the device, a little different than the Rev-X and the X-4. Once that's plugged in, lights up, power's on. From here, we're gonna mount it. There's a slot on the back. Just line that up to the slot on the windshield mount and it'll slide right in.Now, once it's slotted, it's secure. Now, you can angle this whichever way you want. We're gonna put it right there and show you guys how to use it. Now, jumping right into tuning, from the main menu, select program vehicle from the top left. You wanna make sure the key is in the on position but don't start your engine and press continue.Now, at this point, it'll tell you again, turn the key on, and press continue. For the guys right out of the box, if you come to this menu, it'll automatically jump into the next stage. It doesn't allow you to press continue. It jumps right into it. If you get an error message, you wanna go back to the device settings and turn ignition key to none. So that's gonna be a quick thing. I'm gonna show you guys right now. If you get an error message, you wanna go to device settings. Go scroll down. Ignition key check. Change it from auto detect to none. It'll fix your issue. Just a quick thing that I know a lot of guys have been saying has been popping up for the New Edge. Now, you can fix that yourself and then we're gonna jump right back into program vehicle. So, from here, continue on street notice. Continue when the key is in the on position. It'll start loading up and it'll take you right into the menu where you can select your tune. All right, so there is a tutorial enabled. So, you know, every screen...every so often, you'll get this little tutorial of how to scroll. You can just hit the X on the top right.Now, here are your tune options. Now, guys may have a couple of different ones, an 87, a 91, a 93. We're focusing right on the 93 race, so that's all we have available right now. So that's what we're gonna select. But from here, select whatever tune you wanna load.All right. Now, at this point, you can change some aspects of the tune, if you would like. Global spark, a lot of spark options, Axle ratio, tire revs per mile, speed limiter, we have off here. Rev limiter, idle speed, so on and so forth, there's a lot of parameters that you can, you know, mess with. The speed of your fan, if you guys have heating issues or something, you can mess with some of that fan technicalities. We're gonna hit approve just with that base 93 file. Keep in mind that when you do upload a custom tune, it does disable your preloaded tune that comes with the device out of the box. It's more of a stock tune alteration kinda file. So we wanna hit continue on the custom tune. Follow the directions on screen. So here it says turn the vehicle or the key off. So you wanna do that. Back on.From here you'll hear your fan turn on. Couple of things come up on the dashboard. It's gonna save your stock file to your TS Plus tuner. Basically, so if you ever wanna revert back to stock, you know, you wanna take your custom tune off, put the stock one back on, you can do so right on the device. It'll save it for you. From there it'll go into writing whatever file you select. You wanna make sure you're letting it load 0 to 100, all the way through, however many times it needs to. You wanna stand by so you can turn off the key if it directs you to, but as it says, don't turn the key off unless it says it wants you to. Don't unplug the device as well. We're gonna come back at the end here. So now, download's complete. It is really that simple. You can turn your key off. You can select done. Takes you right back to the main menu.Before we get going, I wanna walk you through some of the features of the TS Plus. It's a little bit different than a Rev-X or a BD-X or an X-4, definitely different in the user interface and the display. So this is your main menu right here. Now, there's a couple of things to talk about, aside from program vehicle. Performance tests, you can select this. Key in the on position. You'll be able to track 0 to 60 miles per hour, quarter mile times, 60 foot braking. There's definitely a couple of things that you can really take advantage of to test the performance and the tune of your Mustang. So that's really useful. That's not something you get with some of the other options like the X-4 or the Rev-X, so on and so forth.A couple extra features there which I think is really cool and you can track that right on the unit. We can back out from there. Gauges and data log I think is what most people are gonna use this for. You can track live engine vitals on the fly. Key in the ignition. Press continue. You wanna select the Ford vehicle that applies to yours. So we're on a '99 GT, so we're gonna select Ford Gas '07 and prior.It's more of just a preconfigured template. And there hit continue.All right, so again, you get a quick tutorial. Single taps, gets you a dropdown menu. Tap on gauges to edit. Here you go. You see one of the gauges. We have coolant temp, we have battery voltage in a gauge form, and then these digital coolant temp and desired idle RPM. Looks like, maybe, we can scroll over. This configuration's not in use, but you can add additional ones if you want to kinda stack them so you can just get a quick swipe while you're driving to see something else. Now, what we wanna do is, maybe, change battery voltage. Give that a double tap. Opens up this menu. You can select item and change that. So if we wanna change it from battery voltage, let's scroll down here. Say we wanna track intake air temp. Fahrenheit, approve. Changes that gauge up for you. If we wanna change desired idle RPM...say, there, we wanna track...scroll down here a little bit. Track our RPMs. Hit approve. That pops up there. Of course, our vehicle's off so we're not gonna read any RPMs now but that's something that you can track on the fly which is super useful. You can also add more configurations to that following page. So really this is gonna be very useful stuff for guys who wanna take full advantage of it.You can give it a single tap and change the layout.So, as you can see, we have that gauge on the left, two digitals on the right, and you can change that to have four digitals, up to nine digitals at once. Under that, it can get a little bit more technical here. We have this graph pop up and it can track more live performance in that graph form with the three that we have on the bottom. So it really does get technical. It's color coordinated. Really easy to follow, really easy to use and, again, really easy to change some of these items from like battery voltage to desired idle RPMs. It'll read this very clear for you. And, again, you still have the option to scroll over and have that additional configuration.Change that layout one more time. I'll show you guys the last thing here.It's a lot smaller. Maybe a lot harder to read for some guys, but you have several of them on the left, two bigger ones on the right, again, just really useful. From here we're gonna go back. I think you guys get the point of the gauges screen. From there you can also data log in those menus. So you have a new tune from Bama, say you wanna data log it, see if there's any revisions that, maybe, you can have made since you're in the Free Tunes for Life Program, you can data log right on the device and share that with your tuner. That's super useful.Now bottom right, vehicle functions. Check engine light comes on. You have a DTC code reader, a diagnostic trouble code reader. Read the code, get a description, clear the code. Special functions. More like cam relearn. Most guys won't need to worry about that.Now, right in the middle, you'll see rear camera. Ours isn't set up for rear camera. Our vehicle doesn't have one. So that's not something that we're gonna see but this is more of the error screen that you get without a camera. So that's something you can wire in to have this work with your Livewire.Okay, exit. Hit the arrow over...and you can swipe to scroll or hit these arrows. I find the arrows to be a little bit more responsive than the swipe. Vehicle info is gonna give you things like VIN number, ECU strategy code, both very crucial to request a new tune. Device info gives you a software version, firmware version, device serial number, info about your device, married status, pairs you have left. Things like that that are related to switching it among vehicles if you wanna, you know, get it unmarried from a vehicle to a new vehicle, if you sell your Mustang, something like that, all done. Device info gives you some of that.Device settings. Again, we have a tutorial. You can actually turn this tutorial off. Device settings are very simple. You can change the brightness, the theme, orientation, things like that, audio from the beeping from every time you select something. The ignition key check that I mentioned earlier. If you get an error message while trying to load a tune, that's definitely something to change up. Startup function I think is very, very useful. You can have it for when you plug this in and you have it mounted on your windshield. You can have it automatically boot up to the main menu, the gauges screen, the performance screen, and I think that's super useful for guys who are gonna use this on a daily basis.Setting up a camera and navigation, you can do directly on this as well. Back here, you can update from this menu selection. And, finally, there's more of just an advertisement for SCT on the last, so really useful stuff for guys who wanna take full advantage of what the Livewire has to offer. Couple more features than the X-4, the Rev-X, some of the other device options out there. So this is really good for the guys who wanna use it every day.Well, guys, that's gonna wrap up my review, install and dyno test for the Bama Livewire TS Plus Tuner with two Custom Tunes, for the '99 to '04 GT and Bullitt Mustangs. If you're looking to take advantage of this and the Free Tunes for Life Program from Bama, you can do so right here at americanmuscle.com.