Installation Time
(approx) 15 Minutes
Difficulty Level:
Simple installation for anyone.
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Hey, guys. Adam here with americantrucks.com. Today, we're taking a closer look at, dynoing and installing the 5 Star Rev-X by SCT Tuner with 3 custom tunes available for the '09 to '14, 3.5-liter EcoBoost F-150. You should be checking this out for your own EcoBoost if you're looking at increase some horsepower and torque numbers with a very easy to use hand-held tuner costume-tuned to your specific vehicle with your specific mods, stock or otherwise. Now, we have our 2011 3.5 on the dyno today and I'm gonna be taking you through our stock pull, our after pull, breaking down the numbers and showing you guys all of the features of the Rev-X in just a little bit. Just know that this device here comes with your 87, 91, and 93 tunes respectively, street performance and race for your 3.5.So, we ran, of course, our 2011 3.5 F-150 with our stock tune, 93 octane, and guys keep in mind, we have 33 tires on this. So, all of that takes into account when running our stock number. Now, baseline, we walked away with about 285 horsepower, 339 foot-pounds of torque. Not too bad for stock numbers. Now, of course, we uploaded our 5 Star 93 octane tune, same thing, 93 in the tank, 33 tires, nothing changed. Walked away with 326 horsepower and about 415 foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels. Definitely a significant gain in both horsepower and torque peak and under the curve. Now, peak gains are about 41 horsepower, 76 foot-pounds of torque. That's exactly what you'd expect with an EcoBoost completely stock or otherwise with just a simple 93 tune, they can pick up pretty significant numbers. Now under the curve, it gets a little bit better. Now under the curve, we're looking at about 4,000 RPM. So, low end torque. We're looking at about 88 foot-pounds of torque, 68 horsepower under that curve. So, really good gains at the low end, which is what we want from a truck, right? These big boaty trucks are gonna get a lot more torque at the low-end, making it feel a lot faster, picking up some good acceleration. So, with low end torque like this, low end horsepower under the curve at about 4,000, that's really the sweet spot for these trucks, that low end torque it's really accessible, especially getting off the line here. So, that's something we can really feel on a daily basis. So, I'm really impressed with this tune. Why don't we break down some of the aspects of the tune that 5 Star focuses on?The Rev-X device here comes with those three tunes custom-tuned by 5 Star. It's also gonna come with capabilities to read and clear diagnostic trouble codes. It's got Wi-Fi capability. It's also got NGauge features, meaning you can track some engine vitals on the fly, like your air coolant temp, your air/fuel ratio, so on and so forth just by plugging it into your OBD2. There's a lot of really cool features here, and it's as easy to use as a simple hand-held phone. Now, again, I'm going to take you through all those features in a minute. Just know the tuner comes in right around 500 bucks and you get the tuner itself, including the tunes once you submit your form online.Now, the install for this, I'm going to give a very simple one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. It's something anybody can tackle with the hardware included in the kit, no tools necessary. The first thing we're going to do here is plug this into the OBD2. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. Once I show you guys how to tune the vehicle, we're going to do a couple pulls, stock, and on 93. We'll talk some dyno numbers, run through the features, and we're gonna wrap up.Now, before we get going, I wanted to break down some of this 5 Star specific aspects in the tune because when you're shopping in the category, you can see there are a number of different tune options available with the same Rev-X by SCT device. Now, 5 Star does focus their attention in a few key critical areas, including fuel strategy, the drive-by-wire, torque limiters, the different driving modes, you know, daily driving, sport, and tow-haul. So, let me break down a few of those aspects for you.Now, the factory refuel strategies are pretty lean off the factory line and they have moderate delay timers in place, especially at wide open throttle before adding additional fuel. Now, 5 Star does focus their attention in altering that to make sure that they can add moderate amounts of additional fuel at wide open throttle and take advantage of some of that torque at the higher end. Now, again, those EcoBoosts are a little lean in their factory strategy, so this can do wonders for some higher end torque, especially at wide open throttle. Now, drive-by-wire is also an issue with the 3.5s. They're pretty sluggish and laggy at the low end getting off the line, you can feel that delay in the time you hit the pedal and the time you get going. 5 Star can alter that to make sure that they're reducing or even eliminating that drive-by-wire delay. Now, that's something that you would get with say a Pedal Commander or some throttle response controller devices out there, but it can happen right in your aftermarket tune or your custom tune. They're altering that to make sure that your low end torque is more accessible and you're getting off the line a lot quicker. Now, torque converters are also locked earlier and stay locked longer, especially at regular cruising speeds to give you a little bit more access to some of that fuel economy.Now, in driving modes, there's a couple of different driving mode aspects that's altered in the 5 Star tune. Regular daily driving, of course, you're accelerating to fourth through sixth gear under your factory tune a lot quicker, which sacrifices some of the low end torque you access at lower gears. 5 Star alters that to put more attention on those lower end gear so you're taking advantage of low end torque. Now, that's something that we all really want in these big bulky trucks, especially with the larger tires. You can see here we've got 33 by 12.5s on our truck here, which can slow down the truck. By giving you access to those lower gears, we can start to make the truck feel a little more alive and a little bit more torquey at the low end.Now, something similar happens at sport mode. Now, sport mode from the factory, really only useful on these trucks at wide open throttle. We don't all always drive at wide open throttle, as much as we'd love to all drive at wide open throttle at all times, it's just not realistic. The 5 Star tune puts a little bit more emphasis on gears 2 through 5 to make sport mode a little bit more fun under normal driving, right? So, we're not always driving at wide open throttle, so 2 through 5 will have a little bit more torque. And you've seen that in our curve, right? The biggest curve gain is accessible at about 4,000 RPMs, which again is not wide open throttle for most of us. So, that's gonna make sport driving a little bit more fun. Now, tow-haul mode is something also edited in our 5 Star tune. Now, the V6s use a little less engine braking than the V8s. So, downshifting under heavy load when you're towing and hauling cargo is required. The 5 Star tune focuses again on 2 through 5, just a little bit more to give you access to the torque band on this truck with your new aftermarket tune, especially on 93 octane. So, a lot really goes into these tunes from 5 Star and just know they do a lot of their own R and D. They do all of their own R and D right in-house, focusing on drivability and reliability while also keeping all factory Ford failsafes in check.Now, the first step of the install of course is to grab the harness included in the kit. You're going to plug it right into your OBD2 slot located under the driver side dashboard. All right. At this point, once your OBD2 is plugged in, take the other end of that cable, plug it right into your tuner. Put your key in the ignition and turn the ignition on. You don't want to start your engine. You just want to turn the ignition on. From there, your device will load up. Of course, ours being a 5 Star tune, has that 5 Star loading screen, goes right to the main menu. And, of course, we want to talk about some of the functions, but we want to jump right into tuning the vehicle first and foremost. So, you're going to go right into Program Vehicle, confirm that the VIN is correct. And really it's just a matter of following the directions on screen. Now, if you need a device update, if you haven't updated your device already, you want to do so now. Ours is up-to-date, so we're going to hit skip. Now, if your tuner, in this case, 5 Star loaded your tuner to the cloud, you can do cloud sync now to get that file from the cloud on your device. Ours we loaded directly onto the device on our computer, so we're going to hit Skip because it's already downloaded. Just hit Continue on the Street Notice, turn your key on which we've already done. From here, you want to select your appropriate tune file. In our case, it's a single 93 Performance tune. If you've got multiple tunes from your tuner here, they'll all show up in the section, depending on how many you've downloaded from the cloud if you need it to do so. So, we're going to select our 93 Performance tune and move forward with that. At this point, it'll ask if you want to make any additional changes to the tune, including, you know, your tire ratio, gear size, speed limiter, rev limiter, things like that. So, we're not going to mess with that. We want to keep the tune exactly as it is for video purposes. So, I'm going to hit Skip, but if you wanted to change stuff, you can do so now. It'll you know, prompt you to continue, you know, confirm all of your changes if you made any, and we'll move forward tuning. Now, at this point, it'll start loading from 0% to 100%, probably multiple times. The first couple of loads will be saving your stock file from the vehicle to your tuner. That way, if you ever wanted to revert back to the factory tune, you'll have it right on the same device. So, that's basically what's happening now. Once that's taken care of, it'll move into actually writing the tune to your vehicle, the one that you've selected, in our case that 93. So, that's what's going on now. Now, again, it's going to load 0% to 100% a couple of times, so just let it do its thing. Don't unplug it. Don't turn your key off. Just be patient.At this point, it's applying some of those options that we've selected. If you made any changes, this is basically what it's doing. It's applying those selected options. From there, it'll unlock your processor and move forward. At this point, it'll clear all the DTC codes, prompt you to turn your key off. Turn your key on again. It might ask you to do that a few times. At this point, programming is complete. You can unplug your device and you're good to go.All right. Now that we walked through the actual tuning process, I want to show you guys some of the features in the Rev-X by SCT Tuner. Now, aside from Program Vehicle, you can come down to Gauges and Datalogging. If we select that with our key in the ignition turned on, hit Continue. Basically, what this is going to do is allow you to do two things: track live engine vitals, such as, you know, air/fuel ratio, coolant temp, trans temp, so on and so forth, but it's also gonna allow you to datalog. If you get your tune, run your truck, you can record the datalog, communicate with your tuner, if something's going wrong, or if you need updates, so on and so forth. That's all available here. But this is basically your gauge screen. So, that's really basic stock looking gauge screen. Up top, we have Control Module Voltage, same thing down the bottom. So, if we wanted to change that, we can change the gauge layout if we want to, you know, monitor more. So, in this case, we can select this option and monitor four things at once, you have boost, control module voltage, coolant temp, and intake temp. We can also take it further if we want to change what we see here.Now, if we go down and select one of these, say we don't want to track your control module voltage, you want to change that to let's say, measured air/fuel bank 1, you can hit approve. So that changes that little block or that little gauge and tracks your measured air/fuel. So, this is a really vital thing for the guys who want to track some of these things on the fly. You can mount this device within arm's reach, within the eyesight of your driver's seat and you'll be able to take a look at this. So, if you wanted to stop recording, you can do that here, start recording so on and so forth, reset, that's all available here. Can hit Stop Datalog, it'll take us back to the main menu.Going down to Vehicle Functions, you have read, clear, and special functions for your DTC codes. DTC being diagnostic trouble code, otherwise your check engine light, right? So, check engine light comes on randomly, plug this device into your OBD2, hit Read Codes, and it will do so giving you the code and a brief description of it so you know what to tackle. Now, once you to take care of that, you can come down and clear your diagnostic trouble code and get that light off the dash. So, we're going to go back. Other than that, you're given Vehicle Info, so you can track VIN number, strategy code, so on and so forth. If you ever needed to request a new tune, you can plug your device in and read your strategy code, which will pop up as ECM strategy. So, that's all available right here on the tuner as well. Device Info is just going to be your device name, app name, serial number for the device, that's needed for new tunes.And then Device Settings. Here are a couple of things we want to talk about. First and foremost is Wi-Fi. You have Wi-Fi capability built right in, you can connect to your local Wi-Fi network, which is going to help you download files from the cloud if your tuner uploaded them to the cloud. But it's also going to allow you to upload a datalog to the cloud to send to your tuner and it's going to allow you to check for updates wirelessly. So, if firmware software updates from SCT ever drop for the Rev-X, you can check for updates on the device connected to your Wi-Fi network. So, all three of those features, very crucial in this particular device. There's a lot of hand-held tuners in the category, so having this Wi-Fi capability, wireless updates, cloud sync, cloud access, and data logging via the cloud is something that's very unique to the Rev-X device in some respect. So, that's very useful to have on hand. Other than that, very simple device features. You can adjust the brightness, the orientation of the device. You can have it in landscape mode if that's something that fits your preference. You can change the theme, power management, audio, so on and so forth. You can hear a beep every time you hit a button, you can change that. So, lots of different editable features.And that's really everything that is encompassed into this device, know that this can also hold up to 10 custom tunes, so you can have a number of different options modded to a number of different aspects of your vehicle. Contacting 5 Star for that. Can also hold preloaded tunes. There's a lot of different functionalities just in your program vehicle, not just the three: 87, 91, and 93 octane.Well, guys, that's going to wrap up my review and install for the 5 Star Rev-X by SCT Tuner with 3 custom tunes for the '09 to '14 3.5 F-150, which you can find right here at americantrucks.com.
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Features, Description, Reviews, Q&A, Specs & Installation
Power and Performance. Improve the power and performance of your 2011-2014 3.5L EcoBoost powered F-150 with a SCT Rev-X Tuner that includes (3) 5 Star Tuning Custom Tune Files. When your F-150 rolled off the assembly line, Ford programmed it to cater to the needs of the daily driver, not the performance enthusiast who adds aftermarket bolt-on modifications in the search for more power. If you have added a cold air intake, throttle body, exhaust or other performance upgrades, you'll need a custom tune to see the full power potential that these aftermarket bolt-on modifications can make.
Three Custom 5 Star Tune Files. When you order a Rev-X Tuner by SCT, you aren't just getting a tuner. You're getting the tuner and 3 dyno-tested custom tune files that are written specifically for your F-150 and your particular modifications by a 5 Star Tuning calibrator. By optimizing the air/fuel ratio, adjusting ignition timing and tweaking cam timing, a 5 Star Tuning Custom Tune will squeeze out the extra power Ford left on the table. You even get your choice of octane level. 5 Star offers your choice of four different tunes including Performance/Towing, Performance, Economy or Transmission Only.
Performance / Towing Tune. This tune caters more to the day to day daily driver, who is concerned about low end power for towing, as well as performance for passing on the highway. The Performance/Towing Tune features increased throttle response for a more sporty feel. This tune is available for 87, 89, 91 and 93 octane levels.WiFi Updates and Cloud Tuning. The Rev-X Tuner by SCT is Wi-Fi capable meaning it will always be up to date. Once setup with your Wi-Fi password, the Rev-X will download the latest firmware updates via the internet. Besides firmware updates, your Rev-X can also download your custom Bama tune files via the cloud, reducing the hassles of transferring files from your PC to your Rev-X device.
Performance Tune. This 5 Star tune will greatly enhance the power and performance of your F-150. The with improved throttle response, the Performance Tune provides much firmer and more aggressive shifts when compared to their Performance/Towing Tune. This tune is available for 91 and 93 octane levels.
Economy Tune. The Economy Tune by 5 Star Tuning is for fuel savings just as the name implies. This Tune is for those F-150 owners who are concerned about fuel economy and want to increase gas mileage, but still want better than factory performance. This tune is available for 87, 89, 91 and 93 octane levels.
Transmission Only Tune. This tune was written to improve the shifting performance of your F-150, but leaves the fuel, spark and other parameters at their stock settings. 5 Star made sure you would have a noticeable increase in throttle response and acceleration with this tune, when compared to your F-150's stock tune. This tune is available for 87, 89, 91 and 93 octane levels.
**Please Note: The SCT Rev-X Tuner ships blank from AmericanTrucks, the custom tune files will be emailed directly to the end user within 5-7 business days from 5 Star Tuning.
This product will not ship to addresses in California due to state regulations. Additionally, support will not be provided for tuning for California residents.
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Fitment:
Details5 Star SCT-BDX(2011-2014F1503.5LEB)
CA Residents: WARNING: Cancer and Reproductive Harm - www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
Installation Info
Installation Time
(approx) 15 Minutes
Difficulty Level:
Simple installation for anyone.
What's in the Box
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