I just purchased a new 2013 Mustang GT and I am thinking about installing a cold Air Intake. I understand these will improve gas mileage and increase hp. My question is after installing a cold air intake is a tune required? (Bama tune?) Since a cold air intake will change the air ratio I believe I know the answer, however I really want someone smarter than me to weigh in and give me some guidance.

 

some intake require a tune and some do not. You will get more hp/tq if you install a tune with your intake.

 

As long as you chose a CAI that has a factory sized MAF housing, a tune is not required. Keeping the factory sized MAF housing allows the MAF to still be calibrated accurately and adjust for additional air. Plus, all 2011+ Mustang have factory widebands, which also accurately self adjust the fuel trims, even at WOT. If you search for intakes on our AM site, we list each type that is not tune required. Our most popular CAI and my personal favorite, is our Airaid CAI. This CAI does NOT require a custom tune, however with a Bama tune we've seen some of our best performance powerbands.

That being said, you will most certainly see an increase of power with a Bama SF3 tuner. Even though your factory PCM has the ability to adjust itself into a safe operating range, it's still not as efficient as it could be. Our custom Bama tunes will have the parameters already set appropriately, so no adjustment is needed by the PCM. In addition, we're able to run increased sparking advance, which allows for more power/tq and even more increased mpg!

This should clear things up a bit for you. Let me know if there's anything else I can do!

Shane