SCT Performance Livewire TS+ Tuner (11-14 5.0L F-150)

So Ford left some power on the table when it comes to the '11 to '14 5 liter powered F-150. And the easiest way to unlock that power without actually turning any wrenches is to invest in a handheld tuner. Now, there are a couple of options available on the product pages. But if you want something that's gonna be a full touchscreen device with perhaps the most features and the most modern functionality, you should be checking out the SCT Livewire TS+ tuner that I got in my hand right now. This thing's got all kinds of cool features on it. You can datalog your truck. You can monitor gauges and engine parameters in real time. You can read and clear trouble codes. You can even update the device wirelessly. And it has a really nice pre-loaded tune file that you can customize. You can also store up to 10 custom tunes.Now, we're all here for power, right? So what kind of power can we get out of this handheld tuner? We went ahead, we ran our truck on the dyno bone stock. It made 280 horsepower and 305 pound-feet of torque. We then installed the 91 octane performance tune. We left everything else the same. And our truck ended up making 290 horsepower and 314 pound-feet of torque, which makes for peak gains of 10 horsepower and 9 pound-feet of torque. But if you take a second look at that graph, you'll see some really nice curve gains with our curve gains topping out an additional 18 horsepower and 30 pound-feet of torque. Now, those curve gains are really nice because that's actually what you're gonna feel from idle to redline when you're driving around on the streets. So again, you get some pretty nice gains without actually turning any wrenches.So, if you want one of the coolest and the most modern tuners currently available, go ahead and stick around I'll show you guys how to get this thing installed and set up. Shouldn't take you more than 15 minutes and you don't need any tools whatsoever. So I'm gonna give the install a very simple one out of three wrenches on my patented difficulty meter. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get started. So using the Livewire is pretty straightforward. You wanna set up your windshield mount and then plug the data cable into the unit itself. Obviously, the HDMI goes into the HDMI port on the back and the OBD2 cable goes underneath the steering column. All right. So once you got the Livewire plugged in, go ahead and mount it on your windshield and then you wanna put your key in the ignition and turn it to the on position. Once you do so, it's gonna bring you to the home screen for the Livewire TS+. And I'm gonna show you guys all the other features, but obviously, we're all here to see how much power we can make with this thing. So you wanna select program vehicle, that's gonna bring you to your tuning options. It's gonna give you a straight use notice. It's just a legal disclaimer. You can ignore that and click continue.Now, once the tuner has processed some information in the ECU, it's gonna bring you to the home page for programming your vehicle. And as you can see, we have our available pre-loaded tune for our five liter and we see our custom tune option there that would only display any custom tune files that you would have installed previously or downloaded wirelessly. Now, we just wanna see what the Livewire can do with the pre-loaded tunes. So we're gonna select our pre-loaded little tune option. Now, at this point, it's gonna begin pulling information from the ECU. And it's very important that you do not unplug the tuner and that you do not turn your key to the off position, because if you do so during the tuning process, you could cause an error in which case you might not be able to turn your truck over and you might have to have it flashed by the dealerships. So we wanna avoid that, obviously.Now, once you've selected the pre-loaded tune option, it's gonna bring you to this screen here. This screen allows you to make changes to the pre-loaded tune file depending on certain engine parameters. You only wanna make changes to some of the parameters in here if you really know what you're doing because this will allow you to change things like your shift points and you might actually be able to change things like your air and fuel mixture. But if you make unsafe changes to that, you could cause physical damage to your motor. We're only interested in seeing what the pre-loaded tune can do with a higher octane fuel. We currently have 91 in our tank. So we're gonna update our octane rating from 87 to 91. We're gonna leave everything else the same and we're gonna approve our tune.Now, it's gonna let you know that there are special options available and those are just other parameters that you might be able to adjust. Again, we're not interested in that so click continue. And this is gonna allow you to change any settings depending on your TPMS, your tire pressure monitor system. We're not interested in making any changes to that, so go ahead and click continue. Now, at this point, it's gonna ask you to confirm the changes you might have made to the pre-loaded tune. And you can see right there we have our 91 octane and we have our vehicle description. We can confirm that and click continue. Now, again it's gonna ask you to make sure your key's in the on position during this process. And at this point the tuner will actually begin uploading the file to the ECU. Again, you don't wanna unplug the device at any point in time and also wanna make sure you don't turn your key to the off position.Now, once the tune is finished installing, it will clear any diagnostic trouble codes that might have been falsely triggered. It's gonna give you this nice little screen saying that your download is complete. Go ahead and turn the key off and select done on the tuner. And that's it. That's all you need to do to tune your truck. Now, if you wanna stick around, I'll show you guys the other features of the Livewire TS+. Something cool that you can do with this device is you can monitor your engine's performance and certain parameters in real time using the gauges and datalog function. Now, when you enter the gauges and datalogging screen, again, you wanna make sure your key's in the on position and that's gonna bring you to this configuration screen. You wanna make sure that you select the correct vehicle. We're working with our 2013 F-150 obviously, so we wanna select Ford gas 08 or newer.Now, once the device has connected with the ECU again and it has built a datalog file, it's gonna let you know that there are a couple ways you can interact with the gauges and datalog screen. Obviously, tapping the screen once will bring down the drop-down menu and double tapping on the screen will allow you to edit those gauges. Now, this is the default gauge screen here. Again, if you wanna see the drop-down, go ahead and tap once. That's gonna give you the options for layout, configuration, and you can reset your minimum and maximum values and you can also hit record. That's actually gonna begin recording your datalog file so you can review it later. Datalogging is excellent if you wanna custom tune your truck at a speed shop on the dyno or if you just wanna troubleshoot some information that requires more than just looking under the hood physically. But at any rate, I'll show you guys how to make some changes to the gauge screen here. So we're gonna single tap our screen and we're gonna select layout. Now, this is the default layout here. You can see we have one tachometer style gauge and we have two digital gauges. If you wanna display that information with different values or different configurations, you can scroll through the different layout options. You can see you can do purely digital gauges. You can also do graphs. And there are ton of other options that you can do in here. We're gonna select all of our digital gauges. Simply select it once. It's gonna process and it's gonna pull up all the available gauges that we can see here.Now you can see on this digital gauge here we're currently monitoring our voltage and you can also see things like our coolant temp and the intake air temperature. You wanna make any changes to any of these, go ahead and double tap each one. That's gonna bring up the item that you can monitor and you can change that. We'll change that from our voltage to a different value. We'll select RPM just for fun, and you can change the unit that it will be displayed. Now, obviously engine speed only has one unit and that's revolutions per minute, but depending on the item, it will give different options, for example, Fahrenheit or Celsius if you're monitoring temperatures. And you can also change the range on those gauges from minimum to maximum values. Again, that will depend on what gauge you're actually monitoring. But at any rate to simply change the gauge itself, again, select the item and then select approve. And now you can see here we have our RPM gauge displaying in a numeric value. Obviously, that will match the engine speed tachometer on your dash.Now, there are too many different parameters for us to review currently. But at any rate, if you wanted to take your time, you could select each gauge again and you can go through the items and you could see all the different parameters that you can monitor, anything ranging from voltages to your airman fuel mixtures to your short and long term fuel trims and the list goes on. Now, if you wanna get out of the gauge screen, really simple, go ahead and tap once and select exit. Now, another cool thing the Livewire does is it allows you to benchmark your truck in real time while you're driving around. And to do that, you wanna select performance tests. Now, there are a couple performance tests you can do. You can record your 0 to 60 time. You can also record your quarter mile time. You can even record your braking distance down to a complete stop. Now, we are sitting in our dyno currently and we cannot currently use any of those. But if you wanted to begin any of the tests, you would select the appropriate one and click continue. It's gonna ask you to put your key in the on position again and it's gonna walk you through the different steps that you have to take in order to perform one of the performance tests. Now, it's gonna ask you to select your vehicle weight in gross pounds. Obviously, that's gonna stay stock for now. But we're gonna select approve just for fun and you can see you have all the options here and all the instructions to tell you how to conduct each of those performance tests. Now, once you've gone through the options and the instructions here, it's gonna bring you to the actual performance test screen. And when you're ready to mash the pedal, you simply select start and it will begin recording your time and it'll record the values depending on which performance test you have selected. You wanna exit the test screen, go ahead and select exit.Now, another cool thing the Livewire can do is it can actually read and clear your diagnostic trouble codes more commonly known as check engine lights. In order to do that, you wanna select this little medical symbol here for vehicle functions. It's gonna bring you to the vehicle functions home screen. And the two options we're concerned with is reading and clearing our diagnostic trouble codes. Now, under special functions, you have two options called cam reset and crank relearn. Do not bother with those. You're only gonna be using those if you're doing some advanced work to your motor. And honestly, in the end, it'll probably be the speed shop you're working with actually using these special functions, so simply ignore of those for now. I'll show you guys how to read those diagnostic trouble codes. First, pretty straightforward, simply select that option. Again, make sure your key is in the on position. And once it is in the on position, the Livewire will automatically scan your ECU and it will display any of the diagnostic trouble codes that you might have. Now, currently our truck does not have any codes so it has nothing to display. But if it did have any codes, it would display it on that screen. And if you wanna turn off your check engine light, again, pretty straightforward, go ahead and select clear DTC codes and it's gonna ask you to turn your key on and it's gonna clear those codes. Now, keep in mind if you don't actually fix the underlying issue, those codes will probably reappear and you will probably get that check engine light once again.Now, we've covered everything on the first page here. Second page is some more information relating to your vehicle and your tuner. You can easily pull up your vehicle information using this tab here. Again, make sure your key is in the on position before doing so so that it could communicate with the ECU appropriately. Now, it's very simple. You can pull up your VIN information. You can also pull up your ECU strategy code and any other information that you might need, especially if you're tuning your truck. And device info is a similar idea here, some basic hardware and software information. You'll really only need this if you're troubleshooting the device or if you're building custom tune files.And lastly, we have our device settings. You can make some basic changes to the device itself. It's gonna give you a little prompt here letting you know you can scroll up and down the list to see the different options. So you can do a couple things. You can change the brightness of the screen during the day as well as at night time so it's not glaring you out when you're trying to see the road. Can also change the theme of the device to different colors and you can make some other changes including the ambient light sensor, which will automatically detect the ambient light and change the brightness of the screen depending on how light or dark out it is.You can also turn off the audio if you don't like the little beeping noises that it makes and you can also disable the ignition key check if you get tired of that prompt popping up. Last thing you can also do is power save mode. You can determine how you want the device to stay on or off depending on the position of the key in the ignition and you can also change the startup function depending on what you wanna see when the device powers up for the first time. You can also disable and enable tutorials and other things like that. But one of the most important features is the factory reset. That is going to completely undo everything you might have done to the tuner itself and it'll revert it back to its out of box condition.Now, the last function of the Livewire that in my opinion makes it super convenient is the ability to update the device wirelessly. In order to do that, you will need to configure a Wi-Fi and connect to one of your local networks. It'll scan for any Wi-Fi connections and you can select the connection you wanna connect to. It will ask you to input the appropriate password and username if needed. Once you've connected to a Wi-Fi connection, you can select the check for updates function. And again, we are not connected currently. It's gonna ask you that you have an internet connection, but it'll connect automatically and it will download any files that you might need in order for the device to be up to date. So as you can see, turning your truck only takes a couple minutes. And this thing's got plenty of cool features. Hopefully I helped you navigate through them. That actually wraps up my review of the Livewire TS+ tuner from SCT fitting your '11 to '14 5 liter powered F-150. I'm Travis. Thanks for watching, and for all things F-150, keep it right here at americantrucks.com.