RANT!!! Not Happy With American Muscle / Bama Performance

SilverS550

Active Member
Mar 5, 2015
162
44
38
East Alabama
Okay, so I order the X4 for the car. All seems good, it shows up today.....that's where it goes downhill.....first and last time I'll deal with American Muscle / Bama Tuning folks.

First, the package arrives....it's got my name on the shipping label, open the box and it's someone else's tuner and someone else's little data plate thing.

Call them up, talk to Justin. Explained the situation. Send me the correct files for my car and update the serial in the system. About half an hour later I get an email. Still has the wrong tune files.

I call back, ask to speak to Justin. He left for the day.

I talk to Van, again explain the situation. I have him verify my info so we get the right files. Files show up, I go to load them on the X4, and it won't show the 93 octane tune, only a 91 tune.

Okay, let's make sure this is all up to date, which it says it is "No Updates Available". Cool, let's see if it loads.

Go out to the car, hook everything up, keep getting an error, 110AD. Call back again, no idea who it was and didn't care at this point. Explained what was going on, gave them the code, they tell me it's SCT's problem and to call them.

At this point, I told them never mind, just process this thing for a return. I'll be calling Brenspeed and Lund in the morning.

First purchase / last purchase.
 
  • Sponsors (?)


SCT's tech is very good in my experience, very hard to get on the phone like you said but great once you get them. I went through a similar problem with my X4, the programmer locked up while updating and had our tuning license locked up with it. SCT fixed it no problem (after 2 hours on hold, haha) and we haven't had an issue since.

Were you able to load the Bama tune into the car? I'm curious to see how the performance is and if your afr issue is resolved with a box stock tune.
With that being said, I have worked with Lund before and the man is very good at what he does. Remote tuning has come a long way and you can easily have him remotely custom tune your car to its full potential. Currently Vortech doesn't offer any tuning for the automatic GT's and I have been recommending him to those who pick up kits for those cars and have only heard of good results.
 
I was able to get it to load last night, it was just too late to really play with it. I took it for a drive and it's certainly much improved over stock. Seems odd, but the car is actually quieter.....definitely smother, that's for sure.

I'm actually getting all the data logging set up now so I can really see what's going on. I'll be ordering the Advantage software this week so I can do the tuning myself. Remote tuning it okay, but I've always done my own on the LS's and diesel, so I'm sure I'll figure this one out pretty quick.
 
I was able to get it to load last night, it was just too late to really play with it. I took it for a drive and it's certainly much improved over stock. Seems odd, but the car is actually quieter.....definitely smother, that's for sure.

I'm actually getting all the data logging set up now so I can really see what's going on. I'll be ordering the Advantage software this week so I can do the tuning myself. Remote tuning it okay, but I've always done my own on the LS's and diesel, so I'm sure I'll figure this one out pretty quick.
Nice, If you've done other tuning before then you should be fine. The normally aspirated tuning is very straight forward, the boosted tuning was a little tricky since they added back the IMRC plates. We initially had a little bit of a surge under light load (0 vacuum-1psi of boost) but were able to tune around that in short time.
 
Nice, If you've done other tuning before then you should be fine. The normally aspirated tuning is very straight forward, the boosted tuning was a little tricky since they added back the IMRC plates. We initially had a little bit of a surge under light load (0 vacuum-1psi of boost) but were able to tune around that in short time.

It's only gonna be NA for so long. As soon as I get off my butt and finish the new turbos on the truck I'll get knee deep into this thing. I just haven't had a decent amount of time to sit down and finish the fab work on the header and piping. 30 mins here.....an hour there.....you just can't get in a groove that way.

4E418EA3-3CF3-4EA1-B7A2-DAA40B310224.jpg

C92EB078-B559-4C7A-82E2-B2C6EC5EF3FF.jpg

image-132.jpg

Especially when you're stuffing 3 of them in there.....

image-111.jpg

DF38B5B5-0EE5-48CF-97BB-6C3F895D0DEA.jpg

4609B8C2-2F30-43CD-98B7-A51ECF30C3A1.jpg
 

Attachments

  • 4E418EA3-3CF3-4EA1-B7A2-DAA40B310224.jpg
    4E418EA3-3CF3-4EA1-B7A2-DAA40B310224.jpg
    85.1 KB · Views: 310
  • 4E418EA3-3CF3-4EA1-B7A2-DAA40B310224.jpg
    4E418EA3-3CF3-4EA1-B7A2-DAA40B310224.jpg
    85.1 KB · Views: 272
  • 4E418EA3-3CF3-4EA1-B7A2-DAA40B310224.jpg
    4E418EA3-3CF3-4EA1-B7A2-DAA40B310224.jpg
    85.1 KB · Views: 293
  • C92EB078-B559-4C7A-82E2-B2C6EC5EF3FF.jpg
    C92EB078-B559-4C7A-82E2-B2C6EC5EF3FF.jpg
    109.4 KB · Views: 302
  • C92EB078-B559-4C7A-82E2-B2C6EC5EF3FF.jpg
    C92EB078-B559-4C7A-82E2-B2C6EC5EF3FF.jpg
    109.4 KB · Views: 341
Last edited:
As promised, here's the video of the runs. It's nothing exciting....the dyno is kinda boring when nothing goes wrong....

http://youtu.be/jX2ulcd1cuE

Let's put this into perspective....

Almost $400 on tuner / tuning, 3 hours on the phone, emailing 4 people / speaking to 6, fuel, dyno, reading data logs.......for 6 HP. I really don't even think it was truly 6, I forgot to turn the AC off on the stock pulls.
 
You're looking at it ALL wrong.



All you have to do is take the HP that the magazine gave you and add it to the HP from article in the other magazine from when you got a cat-back then put those on top of your (enter favorite here) mod.


Don't bother averaging the three as it will only make the number smaller. :(
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
But, but, but.....ricer math says.....lol

Let's see, my intake gives me 18 hp, my exhaust is 30, my tuner is like AT LEAST 80 (I gotz it on kill mode), ohhhhh and I got the biggest wing in town.

Don't forget the Monster sticker in the back window. That's the clincher.

;-)
 
Don't blame them. It was your fault for not putting the sticker on before the pulls. THAT'S where the real power is!

Damn it! NOW ya tell me. Stupid fancy dyno measuring thing.....it lies I tell ya! ;-)

It's always fun to watch people after they get off the dyno.....

Before: Man, my car makes like eleventy million hp...

After: WTF?........

The Heartbreaker doesn't lie.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Well, if this doesn't tell the story, I don't know what will.

Sorry for this being a cross forum post, if that's bad juju I appoloize and feel free to delete it....just didn't feel like reposting all of it.

Long story short.....NO GAINS using the Bama Performance tunes. NONE. Well, okay, 4 hp over the entire curve....

Putting it back on the dyno today - Mustang Evolution
This is honestly what I expected to see, far to often the out of the box universal tunes don't make any more hp and in some cases (diablo is the worst offender in my book) I have seen cars lose a substanial amount of HP. Sucks either way