BadCon

added PBD review at end

Hello all,

I have been on the upgrade path with my 2016 Roush supercharged F150, and part of that was looking for a competent tuner to support a pulley swap (75mm) and a few other odds and ends. This is a brief (ok not so brief) review of the above listed tuners, and my thoughts on the HP Tuners nGauge and SCT GTX.

Cliff notes version: VMP wasted my time, Lund/AED declined my business, and ID Motorsports is awesome. The nGauge sucks, the GTX is somewhat less sucky, and I wish I had a 2000hp twin turbo Dodge Viper! Oh and my otherwise stock 2016 Roushcharged F150 made 540whp and 544ftlb of torque.

I started my adventure with VMP, and ordered an nGauge, 56lb injectors, pulley, and a tune from them. The parts shipped quickly and email communications was prompt. Fast forward almost 1.5 months, and I had still not received my tune, with the excuse being its their busy season. Never mind the fact I purposely purchased parts that match their own supplied supercharger kit to make tuning easy for them. I told them no more and returned all the parts, eating a 15% restocking fee for my efforts. I'm still dumbfounded how they can be that far behind in tuning and still be taking orders. After having now gone through the complete tuning process with another tuner, I can honestly say VMP would have given me rushed garbage because I doubt they would spend the time to get it right. Its been months since I went through this debacle with VMP and I'm still irritated about the restocking fee, especially since all the parts I purchased were worthless without the tune. But whatever, I've sworn off that company forever and will avoid them and their products if at all possible.

Next I went to Lund and was told they do not work on F150's. I know I've seen Lund tuned F150's before, but I'll just assume they were busy and had the common courtesy to not waste my time like VMP. I appreciate it Lund, thank you!

Next I went to AED and again was told they do not work on F150's. This time however Shaun himself from AED referred me to Matt at ID Motorsports, going so far as to CC Matt in our email. Having a hard time up to this point finding a tuner, I really appreciated Shaun pointing me in the right direction, and having been referred by one of the best Mustang tuners in the business I went with ID Motorsports with a high level of confidence.

Having now landed at ID Motorsports, I noted they were a sister company to a larger diesel tuning outfit out of Florida named Innovative Diesel. I emailed Matt at almost 10pm on a Saturday night and had a response within 3 minutes. A short back and forth via email, and the following day I placed an order for an SCT GTX and a custom email tune. Matt had stated I'd have my parts and the first iteration of my tune by Friday the following week. However like sometimes happens, there was a delay getting stock from SCT which was going to delay the timeline, and to make up the difference Matt upgraded the shipping from him to me (at his cost) and I had my parts and the first version of my tune on time. I loaded the tune and installed the GTX device and went on my way, recording the first of several datalogs for Matt. I noted the first tune was great out of the box, but I did not go WOT until Matt had reviewed the first datalog, which he did SAME DAY. I sent him the log in the morning and by the afternoon I had a thumbs up from Matt to got WOT for my second log. I was out of town for a week during this time, so when I got back I recorded the second log for Matt and again, he reviewed the log and sent me a revised tune within a day. For this tune I had requested a slight change in the transmission shift logic, as the first tune had the truck holding 1st gear too long for me to sneak out of my neighborhood at night with my loud exhaust. Matt accommodated my request and the next tune was perfect. I recorded another datalog, this one being #3, and Matt gave his seal of approval and sent me the final version of my tune. All I can say is the truck is beastly and pulls like a monster. Matt has kept it very conservative as this is my daily driver and I'm still on the stock fuel system with the 47lb injectors that come with the Roush kits. His tune addresses all the complaints I had with the stock Roush tune, and even improves drivability I did not want to post anything until a got the truck on the dyno, and that finally happened today.

It took me a couple of weeks to get on the Dyno, as everybody in my area is either booked up or simply never replied back to my inquiries. If anyone is curious, I ended up going to Calvo Motorsports in Austin Texas, and they specialize in Vipers. I hadn't thought of reaching out to them, but when I did they replied back right away to my emails and got me in the next day. They were super professional, super friendly, and if I had a million dollars and a Dodge Viper they would get my money. HOLY **** was their garage packed full of badass cars, I can't even imagine the money on some of those builds. They had their 2000hp half mile Viper and that thing was BEASTLY. But anyways, onto the dyno my little truck went and out comes Mr. Calvo himself to push the go peddle. He hops in the truck and asks "ecoboost" and I say no, 5.0 and he goes "oh," and shrugs. He stomps it in 4th gear and the first pull was 536whp and 551ftlb of torque, he looks out the door at the screen and says "holy ****, that's more then a raptor!" I guess he wasn't expecting much as he had not bothered to look under the hood. He immediately rolls into a second pull and she makes 540whp and 544ftlb. He shuts her down, gives it about 3-4 minutes, starts her up and does a 3rd pull for 534whp and 544ftlb. The pulls were in 4th gear, the ambient about 85 degrees F with 50% humidity. Picture of dyno sheet posted below.

As with any gear head I'm already planning for more power, but as it sits now this is the perfect daily driver for me. I'm fuel limited with my 47lb injectors at the moment, but my numbers are right in line with what I've seen other Roush TVS units with custom tuning do in similar conditions. To recap, this is a Roush TVS with 75mm pulley, and everything else stock apart from a 3" catback.

BadCon

Ran into the text limit....I type too much.

These are my thoughts on the SCT GTX and HP Tuners nGauge

Though I never tuned with the nGauge, I did drive around with one for over a month while waiting on VMP so I got a feel for how it works. I've also now had my GTX for about a month and have a feel for how it works. I wanted a gauge style tuner as I intended to leave it in the car and use it as such. On my prior Mustang I used an SCT x4, and that was never intended to be left int he car, and I felt I never got my money out of it by tuning once and then leaving it in the glovebox.

Well, both the GTX and nGauge are flawed devices in one way or another and in hindsight save your money on the cheaper tuning device and then buy a dedicated OBD style electric gauge like the Aeroforce interceptor.
The nGauge has a diabolical touchscreen that NEVER EVER EVER ****ING WORKS, and it was a source of constant frustration. The display is also small and crappy, and only displays a small selection of information at any time and switching to another screen is damn near impossible while driving due to the aforementioned ****ty touchscreen. However the nGauge boots up fast and from what I hear is very fast when loading a tune. I appreciated the nGauge's auto off feature, and it simply started up and worked every time I got into the car. The nGauge also by default monitored everything a person could want with a boosted car, such as IAT2 and oil pressure, and I never had to spend time figuring out why a certain PID would not display. Which brings us to the GTX.

The GTX has an infinitely better touchscreen that is pleasant to look at, and it can display up to 16 different parameters simultaneously which makes it a great digital gauge. However it suffers from other faults such as how insanely long it takes to tune the car the first time out. The GTX requires a web connection to tune, at least the first time. Fortunately I have wifi in my garage, but to speed the process up I plugged it into my computer and manually updated it with SCT's software. NOPE, wasted effort and time as it still required a web connection and updated itself prior to tuning, and loading the first tune took about 25 minutes due to the 5 million updates it went through. Mind you, it was not downloading the tune from the "cloud," as Matt had preloaded it. Next we go to the various configuration files for various styles of fords. These control the datalogs and the information that's displayed and are just an assortment of PID's. Matt had sent a configuration file with the device that he had preloaded, which included all the information he wanted to log. However, SCT's crappy software had conflicts with certain PID's, and in the default configuration file sent by Matt engine coolant temperature and IAT2 would not display correctly. After going line by line through every PID, creating a new configuration file with every combination of PID's available using SCT's livelink software, I figured out that if the DTC Count PID (diagnostic trouble code counter) was enabled, then engine coolant temperature and IAT2 would not display (or record/log) correctly. After HOURS of troubleshooting, simply deleting the DTC PID solved the issue and IAT2 and coolant temps now display correctly. Why this was an issue I don't know, and SCT has no information for me either. On another note, I still cannot figure out what PID the nGauge was using to display oil pressure. Everywhere I look people say our trucks don't have an oil pressure sensor, but the nGauge correctly displayed oil pressure...and by all measures it appeared to be functioning correctly. While we are on the topic of configuration files, one annoying issue with the GTX is that it does not save preferences between config files. In practice this is not super critical, as once you get a config set you'll be unlikely to switch off it, but if by chance you do, then any customization you've done to the gauges such as display ranges, alarms, etc, are lost forever and have to be reconfigured.

I've also had technical faults with the GTX. Occasionally it will boot up after engine start but the screen stays black. The touchscreen still works and you can here it respond, but nothing displays. Pulling the screen off the magnetic mount and putting it back on solves the issue. I don't think this is indicative of hardware failure, but instead some kind of fault with their standby mode as the gauge never turns off, it stays powered on for up to TWO days (in low power mode) after you shut the car off so that the next time you start the car it's super fast to boot up.

And I've saved the best for last! In much of the advertising for the SCT GTX, and even printed on the box itself, they tout a "test" mode that allows people to check 0-60 and 1/4 mile times. Yes, it's a gimmick, but a gimmick that factored into my decision to purchase the GTX. Low and behold when I get the device that they abandoned this feature. Their website no longer mentions it, but many of the videos they still have floating around depict it as a feature. Its even PRINTED ON THE DAMN BOX. Ok, rant over.

Anyways, sorry for the long posts. If anyone has any questions about the SCT GTX or issues with PID's displaying incorrectly, hit me up.

UNBROKEN

iTrader: (1)

RayoVac

Believe it or not, I read this whole review. Appreciate all the effort that went into sharing this.

justinb491

LTNBOLT

I have worked with Matt before tuning my 2016 Procharged F150. He was great to deal with and knew how to tune my MAP Forced Induction truck when nobody else did.

BadCon

Man I was rambling last night, those posts are out of control. But as promised, here is the dyno sheet, and by sheet I mean crappy photo that shows nothing. Its what I get for not snapping the picture myself. But the TVS is a TORQUE MONSTER, holy crap lol.



2016 F150 5.0 with Roush TVS (75mm pulley)

donk_316

I had a VMP tune for my '13 roush Raptor. Absolute waste of time. Ended up having JDM tune the truck

TX-Ripper

LTNBOLT

Yes. MAP sensor instead of MAF sensor. I just call it that because for me it was all about the sensor. Procharger told me it was equivalent to a certain car model sensor and it was not. It took 10 tunes to find the right tables. The first few he redid thinking he was doing something wrong. Then he just started trying different tables until he found the right one. It ended up being the same as a Mustang ecoboost 3 bar sensor. There was no part# that made sense to reference. Fun times.