Installation Time
(approx) 1 Hour
Difficulty Level:
Light to Moderate mechanical skill required.
Installation Guides
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Hey, guys. Adam here with AmericanMuscle.com and today we're taking a closer look at, installing and dyno testing the Roush Performance Power Pac Level 1 available for the '18 and newer Mustang GT. Now, if you're the owner of an S550 5.0 you might be in the market for not only a new cold air intake but maybe a tune to go with it, but you're not looking to break the bank on something insanely expensive like a Power Pac Level 2 or 3. This is going to be one of your entry-level Power Pacs to really increase your horsepower and torque, give you a better breathing engine, better throttle response and acceleration and a number of other increases for your either 6-speed or your 10-speed auto. Now, we've got a 10-speed auto scrapped down to the dyno here. A customer came in. I'm going to show you guys the results. We, of course, established a baseline run first in seventh gear, one-to-one gear ratio, then did the exact same thing under the same conditions in seventh with our tuning intake installed. So, before we jump into the details, let's take a look at the dyno graph. Now, of course, we ran it with 93 octane in the tank both before and after and for our baseline number, here's what we made. 413 horsepower and about 386-foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels. We then, of course, flashed it using our Roush voucher with our new cold air intake installed, 93 in the tank under the same conditions in seventh gear. Walked away with 428 horsepower and 391-foot-pounds of torque at the rear wheels. That's good for peak gains of 16 horsepower and 5 torque. Those numbers alone are pretty good, but curve is where things get pretty impressive. Now, curve gains, we're seeing really good peak curve gains at about 3,500 Rpms, maybe a little under there. Curve gains of 16 horsepower, 25-pound-feet of torque at the rear wheel, so those are just about on par with what Roush claims. Now, Roush typically claims somewhere between 24 horsepower, 19 torque. We're seeing something like the opposite happened here and that real wheel torque at the low end is something you're definitely going to feel on a daily basis, but we are seeing pretty good gains all across the Rpm band, especially at the top end as well. So, overall I'm pretty happy. All right. Now, back here under the hood, I want to show you guys more about this cold air intake. Now the Roush Power Pac Level 1 is going to include the Roush Cold Air Intake and the Roush Voucher Tune. So, what this is going to do is replace your factory intake with a larger MAF housing and it's also going to be giving you a washable dry filter. The dry filter is going to filter out all the unwanted particles coming into the engine bay that you don't want getting in there while also giving you a nice reusable one. When it comes time for routine maintenance, you can pop it out, clean it and throw it right back in without having to oil it. It also comes with a brand new heat shield or airbox. This one's got a more extended lid, which I think looks a lot more aggressive under the hood, but it's also got this clear see-through window. It can give you a nice view right into the condition of your filter. So, I think also that adds to the appearance underhood, but it's also a lot more functional, so you don't have to uninstall anything to see how your filter is holding up. Now the tubing itself, ABS plastic, all using CAD data, so it's a perfect fit and it's going to reuse all of your factory ports. You are deleting your sound tube, so that's something to keep in mind, which isn't too big of a deal. They give you a plug to make sure it's properly deleted. Now, this entire kit is going to come in and right around $1000 and it's also going to be two out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. Now, as you can see, our factory engine cover did have to be trimmed to make way for this heat shield. Now, if you don't want to do any cutting, you can have the option to not use the factory engine cover. That's obviously up to you. We decided to go with the cutting. Our customer wanted to take care of that so we have that done for him. Now, two out of three wrenches means that it is going to require a few extra tools that a simple cold air intake doesn't normally require. What that means is I used the body saw for this, so you want to have a cutting tool of your choice. You're also going to want to have a full socket set on deck, a couple of ratchets and extensions. I'm going to use an impact gun as well. So, when it comes to actually installing your tune, you're going to receive a Roush voucher included in the kit, you'll need a laptop and a diagnostic tool like a J2534. We're using the DashBridge CX tool. That is essentially an OBD2 tool that goes into a USB for your laptop. Now, I'll show you guys a little bit of that tuning process coming up in just a little bit. All right, guys. Tools used in this install include an impact gun, a variety of extensions including a very long one, quarter-inch ratchet, 7 millimeter and 8 millimeter deep sockets, 10-millimeter deep socket and a 10-millimeter deep swivel socket, 15-millimeter deep socket, T20 Torx bit, pliers, and a panel removal tool. Recommended tools include a body saw, a magnet, scissors, super glue or gorilla glue, painter's tape, and a diagnostic tool such as the DashBridge CX J2534 tool. All right. Now, because our 2018 GT here has that strut tower brace, we do have to remove that in order to get to our engine cover to remove that to then do our cold air intake. Now, before we get to that, we actually have to remove our battery cover. So, we're really just removing layers to gain access to the intake tubing. So, to get this off, there's a couple of twist pins that you just twist off by hand and pull straight back. About three of them there holding the battery cover in place. All right. Once you have those off, take the battery cover and just set it aside. Next up we have to remove the two 15 millimeter nuts holding on both sides of that strut tower brace. Now, you'll notice that it goes under the positive terminal harness on the battery and it also has that brown retainer clip, which really you just kind of wiggle back and forth and pull straight up on and then rotate out of the way. Grab a 15 deep socket and remove those two nuts. Same thing on the other side. Now, getting this off, it can be a little tight under this positive terminal harness. You're going to lift up and carefully get this over that stud. If you find you need to, you can disconnect the terminal itself and remove that harness too. Now, on the engine cover, there's two 10 millimeter nuts holding them on right under these two caps. Grab a flathead screwdriver and just pry that cap off on both sides. Grab an extension and a ratchet as well as a 10-millimeter deep socket, go down there and loosen up those 10-millimeter nuts. Now, it can be really tricky to get the nut out but once you have them loosen up, we'll be able to remove this all in one piece. I'm just going to lift straight up, pop them out of their clips and set the whole thing aside. Now, to remove your factory intake, what you're going to do is loosen up the 7-millimeter clamp holding the tubing to the throttle body then remove all of your tubings as well as your MAF harness and then unbolt your airbox. So, we'll start here at the throttle body using a 7-millimeter socket. If you don't have one, you can use a flathead screwdriver. Gently loosen that up there. All right. Now to remove your tubings, your vacuum lines, you're just going to push to release these clips and pull back. On this tubing, it's a little bit different. You're just going to pull back on the gray locking tab which you'll see here. It's really just pulling back here to release it and pulling straight back. Now, for your sound tube, you're going to need a pair of pliers to pinch this post clamp and pull off. But before we grab that, let's do a MAF sensor. The MAF sensor, there's a red locking tab on the bottom. You're just going to pull straight back on that, pinch and disconnect. All right. For the sound tube, pliers, pinch and close that gap there and pull straight back. All right, now you can grab a 10-millimeter socket and extension and remove the one bolt holding on the airbox. All right. Now, with everything disconnected, we're going to pull back on our tubing to get it off the throttle body. Lift up on the entire assembly to remove it all in one piece, including that air duct going into your front grille. Now, you can see the MAF harness has a clip right here you're just going to pull back on to disconnect. Set this aside. All right, now we are going to have to remove our sound tube. This is your factory sound tube, which basically lets you hear some of that intake noise inside the engine bay. Our Roush Performance Pac actually has us deleting this. It gives you a plug to plug the hole that leads all the way back to the firewall. So, what you're going to do is have to remove this, it's retainer clip right here on your strut tower. It's as simple as using a panel tool or something similar to just pry up on this to get that to remove just like that. Now, this, again, leads all the way back to your firewall, right behind the engine. Now you're going to have to pull straight back to unplug it and then grab the plug in the kit to plug up that hole. That's going to be really tough to see, but we're going to go all the way back there and pull it out of its housing. So, that's unplugged. Now, there is one single 10-millimeter bolt holding this on, so you're going to need a couple of extensions and maybe a swivel socket to get that off. So, like I said, it's really difficult to see so you weren't able to get this on camera just for you guys on video, but what I'm going to show you guys is what I used. I used an extremely long extension, a 10-millimeter deep swivel, and I loosened up the 10-millimeter nut all the way to the end of the stud just so it wouldn't fall off. I used the long magnet to pop it off and pull it out safely without dropping it in the engine bay. Now, you might need a variety of extensions. You might need to do some kind of Frankenstein tool and get a couple extensions and a couple swivels or try out what works for you. And then if you have small enough hands you can just reach down there. But I, unfortunately, wasn't able to. Magnet saved the day. Once you get that 10 mil out, you're just going to pull back on the sound tube and feed it out of place. Now that the uninstall is out of the way, we're just going to plug that sound tube while we're here and we have extra room. So, grab the plug included in the kit, feed your hand all the way back there if you can and plug that somehow. Now, you might need an extension to push on it to really get it sticking. What we're gonna do is just feed our hand back, set it into place. This is much easier than getting that 10 mil out. All right, you just want to make sure the lip all the way around is seated properly and it's not falling out and you're good to go. So, right at the end of my extension here, I'm kind of tapping on that grommet we just installed to plug in that hole, just to give you guys a reference to where it is. So, we finally got that factory air intake off of our 2018 GT behind me. It's on the table next to our Roush Power Pac Level 1 Intake. Now, some of the similarities and differences I want to go through, mainly those big differences, and there are a bunch. Now, this new intake system focusing on the filter uses a 360-degree conical design with a dry filter material. The factory paper element filter is also a dry but it's not made of those cotton gauze materials and it doesn't have a double wire mesh outer layer to help keep shape. Now, this particular one, again, being a dry filter, does not require oiling every time it comes time for routine maintenance and you don't have to pick up a new one because it is washable. Just some pressurized air will do the trick, clean out all that dirt and debris and you're good to throw it right back in like it's new. This is going to filter out down to 2 microns in size when it comes to those particles and debris and all that stuff you don't want getting in, so much better job as far as filtration and it's also going to allow more cold air to make its way in especially thanks to his 360 design. Now, the rest of the tubing here is made from an injection molded automotive grade plastic material. The new one is a lot shorter than your factory, but it's also got a textured black finish, which I think looks a little better under the hood, gives it some more character, it's impact-resistant, UV resistant, so if you're at car shows with the hood popped, it's not fading over time and it's also got the silicone coupler similar to your factory one, just a little smaller and a lot stiffer to help streamline some of that airflow and prevent any air leaks. Now, your heat shield here is made from, again, that same automotive-grade plastic all using CAD data. It was designed to be an absolute perfect fit. What I do particularly like about this, even though it is not a 100% closed airbox like some of the ones that would have a lid, it is going to use weatherstripping that we'll install in just a bit to seal in underneath of that hood. What that means is it's blocking out extra engine bay heat and keeping that cold air locked in. It's also got a factory-style air duct that will make its way down to your front upper grille to pull in as much cold air from the front end as possible. It's taking a page out of the factory intake's book, which I do really like. Not everybody reuses that same kind of design. It's just going to help that much more pull in that cold air. Now, all this said, I want to assemble all this on the table. We do have to transfer over something from our factory intake and that's going to be your MAF sensor. So, we're going to grab the appropriate Torx bit, grab that off, swap it over to our new tubing. Grab a T20 Torx bit and a ratchet, and you're going to remove the two T20 screws holding on that factory sensor. All right. Carefully take that out and set your factory components aside. All right, so we're going to take our factory MAF sensor and insert it into our tubing. Now, there's a MAF tubing adapter included in the kit, which adapts the size of this tubing to a different diameter. Now, we're going to remove that because it will open that up a little bit more. So this is the 98-millimeter adapter. If you want to open it up and have a larger MAF housing, you can do so now, which I'd recommend if you want to get the most air coming in. So, what we're going to do is install this using those factory Torx screws. Grab your T20 and tighten them down. You just want to be mindful not to strip them out because this is a plastic housing. Definitely, don't use an impact gun. All right. Once that's nice and tight, we can move on. Now, there are two other things we have to remove from our factory airbox. This rubber grommet which pulls straight back, and if your rubber grommet is not located on the bottom of your heat shield it may be tucked on the inside of your engine bay on the outside of that wheel well. Now, we're going to take that and put that down for a moment. You're also going to remove this metal spacer and grommet from the side. That's where your factory 10-millimeter bolt was, so that'll come out. The grommet is seated in place, so you may need to push from one end and pull from the other. Just like that. Now we can set this back aside. So, you're going to take that grommet again and insert that into the knob on the bottom of your heat shield. Just like that. This little extra elbow on the side is where this metal spacer and grommet are going to go. Seat that grommet down there first, making sure the grommet sits all the way in and then take that metal spacer and insert that as well. With that taken care of, we can insert our air duct onto the opening on the side. Now, it really only goes in one way, so just line up that little puzzle piece there and snap it into place. Now, we can insert this into our engine bay. All right, so now we can drop this into place. Just make sure your MAF harness is out of the way and you're lining everything up properly. You want to make sure that the grommet and your factory 10-millimeter bolt are lined up properly as well. Grab that factory bolt and set it into place. Next, take that MAF housing and you're going to insert this from the inside of that heat shield through the hole to line up these two open holes to the threaded ones on the heat shield. So, grab your MAF, insert that upward so it slides through. And then rotate it so the MAF is facing the front of the vehicle and those lineup. Grab the 10-millimeter bolts included in the kit and insert them into those threaded holes. Thread them in by hand, and then tighten her down. All right. So, now we can install our filter. Now you'll notice on the front it says Roush and has an arrow pointing down. Just make sure that arrow is facing down when you install the filter and have your clamp installed on there as well. So, once you have your filter in place, grab your clamp and insert that properly. It may need to be loosened up in order to fit. Grab an 8-millimeter socket or a flathead and tighten it down. Now for this, we're going to use our tubing and a 7-millimeter socket to tighten them down to the appropriate sides. So, this little bellowed section is going to go to your tubing and the opposite end is going to go to your throttle body. There you go. Once you have it seated all the way, rotate your clamps upward and tighten them down with a seven or with a flathead. All right. Next up we can just reconnect our hoses. This will go to the fitting already pre-installed on the tubing and the other one from the valve is going to go to the inner fitting. Finally, we can route our MAF harness. As you can see, it goes right across the top here, so I'm actually going to feed this underneath to make it look a little cleaner and then connect it to our MAF sensor. Push down the red locking tab and you're good to move on. All right, next up, take that cover for your heat shield and you're going to insert it under this lip on the frame so that it lines up with the cover holes. Now, you're going to use the self-tapping T27 Torx screws included in the kit to tighten them down to those holes. I'm just going to insert these one by one to get them started just by hand, a couple of threads, so they hold themselves in. Grab our T27 and tighten them down. Now, because we are going into plastic, if you are using an impact gun, guys, have it on its lowest setting and take your time. You don't want to get it on too quickly and strip these guys out. So, take your time and get it done properly. All right. So, the last step here is to really put things back, but there is one caveat. When you're putting your engine cover back on, you'll notice that the heat shield now extends too far. So, if you want to retain your factory engine cover, you are going to have to cut off this corner. There's a template included in the kit, you can print that guy out if you didn't get it in the box, hold it up, tape it on, make your cuts appropriately and you'll be able to reuse that engine cover. So, I'm going to show you guys what that looks like and how to do that process here. So, let's get this on the table, get our template set up and we'll get to cutting. All right, guys. Now, when it comes time to cutting the engine cover, if you are choosing to retain that, what you might want to do is focus on your prep work. The prep work is going to make your life a lot easier in the long run and make the finished job a lot cleaner looking. So, print out that template included in the kit or included in the instructions. We pulled ours offline. You're going to cut out to the template itself and cut out that hole in the middle. As you know, there's that open hole that retains the engine cover with that 10-millimeter nut if you remember back to the uninstall. Cut out that hole just so you can make sure you're lining that template up to exactly where you want it to be. Once you have that taken care of, tape it down and make sure you like what it looks like. Make sure it lines up properly, make sure it's the proper size, if you have to rescale it on the computer you can do so. Ours is looking good. Now, what I like to do is fold it back after I have it taped in position and painter's tape underneath of it. What this is basically going to do is make it look a little bit neater as far as the burring is concerned. We're gonna use a body saw for this. You want to make sure you're using the appropriate blade for this kind of material. Since it is more of an ABS plastic, we don't want to use a full-blown Sawzall or anything like that. Body saw will do the trick the best. Now, it's up to you however you want to do this or whatever tool you want to use, but this is what I'd recommend. So, once you have the painter's tape laid down, bring that template back into place, taping it down again. What we're going to do is grab a sharpie and just draw a line right over that painter's tape. All right. Now, take a look at it and clean up any of the messiness if you see any. Make sure the line is straight and even. All right, so it's looking good. At this point, we can remove that template, but you want to keep the painter's tape on. We're going to cut through the painter's tape. Now, on the backside, I've already taken care of this, but it is worth noting. There is more of this padding or heat shield, whatever you want to call it, that's laid down like this. You want to peel that off. Cutting through this is just going to burn up. You don't want that to happen. Remove this. We can reinstall it later. We might even be able to cut through it as well, so let's re-install that later on. We'll worry about that when we're done, but for now, flip her back over. Grab your body saw or whatever cutting tool you're using and get to work. Now, make sure you're using glasses because safety glasses do come in handy here. Whenever you're cutting or grinding or any that, be protected. Be smart. Now, for that foam insulation on the underside here, obviously, you can see we obviously have to cut this, so that's what we're going to do. So, line it up here and make our cut. Might be a little trial and error here. All we need to do is just snip off this edge. Now, how you reinstall this is up to you. We did have to rip it off of the original glue points but grab some super glue, you can hit that right back in. So, hold that, let it dry up, let it sit, and then we can reinstall it. All right, so now that you have this cut, can re-install this into place. You can see it now clears the intake. Snap it into place over those studs by just putting pressure all around it, grab those factory 10 millimeters and insert them into those holes. Now, it's difficult to get them in there. So, what I like to do is just insert the nut into a 10-millimeter on a socket as well as an extension and feed it down there gently, just tighten it down by hand. Now, you can grab your ratchet or impact and tighten her down. Put your caps back in place. All right, now strut tower brace. Feed that over, feed it underneath of the positive harness and back onto your stud. Drop it into place on the driver side and replace your 15-millimeter nuts. On this side, you can just pop that retainer pin back down. Last step here is throw your battery cover back in place and reuse those little hand screw clips. With that all taken care of, it's time to get to tuning. All right, so when it comes time to actually tuning your vehicle using the Roush voucher included in the kit, all you're going to need is an OBD2 dongle that'll connect to your OBD2 port and to your laptop. You're going to need a laptop. You need something that you can have in the vehicle plugged into the OBD2, for the duration of the tuning period. This is something that you'll need an internet connection for, you'll need to download the Roush diagnostic tool software, which the link to that is on the back of the voucher. You can download that and you'll really just follow the directions. There's about 11 steps to get this done and really, most of it is taken care of on the program itself. Now, what you'll do is open up that program, connect it to the vehicle, make sure the key is on, and you're going to follow the instructions to enter the voucher code at the bottom, which is unique to yours, as well as the voucher family, which is, again, unique the one that you have in the kit. Once that's taken care of, you'll need your tear tag information if it's not able to pull it from the OBD2. So, what that means is you'll need your computer code. It's a four-digit alphanumeric code, so "KLA3," something like that. Now, obviously, it's different for every vehicle. Every single vehicle has its own, they're all unique, so you want to make sure you're getting that. Now, if you don't know what it is, if you have a handheld tuner, you can plug it in and read it off the tuner. You can also go under the engine bay and you'll find a sticker somewhere along the engine bay, either on the ECU or tucked under some of the modules, so you can look that up. There are specific locations for your generation. Now, we've already taken care of that. All that information is loaded onto our software we have tuning right now. So, once you have all that information, you'll really just hit flash and it'll do its thing. Now as of right now, we're on our seven-minute mark. So, really, 10 to 15 minutes is typically the range of time that this takes. If your battery voltage is lower than 12 volts, hook it up to a battery charger. You don't want to do this under 12 volts. So, in the S550 you luckily have a gauge on the screen you can navigate to to check your voltage. If it's low, charge the battery, it's definitely worth it. You may get error messages, you can go as far as bricking the ECU if there really isn't enough to connect to this. So, a couple of things to keep in mind. If you don't have a module, you can pick one up at an auto parts store. If you really don't want to do this yourself, you can take your vehicle to Ford and they can flash it for you. They have the proper tools. So, obviously, there's a lot of different ways you can go about this. So, we're almost done. Progress bar is almost at the end. We'll come back when we're finished and check out those results. And once you're done, you'll hear the noise coming out of the speakers in the car. It'll say, "Flash complete. You may now disconnect from vehicle," and you're good to go.Well, guys. That's going to wrap up my review, install and dyno test for the Roush Power Pac Level 1 for the '18 and newer Mustang GT. If you want to pick up the Level 1 Power Pac from Roush, you can do so right here at americanmuscle.com.
Features, Description, Reviews, Q&A, Specs & Installation
More Horsepower and Torque. The 2018-2020 GT Mustang arrives at your dealers showroom setup for the driving needs of the masses, not for you the individual driver. It is for this reason that Roush developed their Level 1 Performance Pac. By combining their Cold Air Intake and Flash Pack custom tune you will see an increase of over 25 Horsepower and 30 ft/lbs of Torque.
Roush Calibration. Roush engineers developed their dedicated premium fuel calibrations under laboratory conditions to increase the horsepower and torque of your GT across the entire RPM range with their Cold Air Intake installed. The improved throttle mapping of the included Roush tune will also give your Coyote powered Mustang a much more aggressive feel. Roush's calibrations have been optimized for 91 octane fuel, they are compatible with lower octane ratings with reduced power and performance output.
Cold Air Intake. Roush's Cold Air Intake was engineered using CAD data to eliminate restrictions and to optimize air flow. Injection molded from premium automotive-grade materials, this Cold Air Intake will last a lifetime. The included high-flow dry air filter provides excellent filtration of harmful power robbing particulates. The filter is composed of two layers of wire mesh for durability and is proven to retain its shape even under high airflow. Washable, this dry air filter does not require oiling, saving you time and money.
Straight Forward Installation. The Roush Performance Cold Air Intake Kit is designed to install easily with just basic hand tools. No extra modifications or special tools are required for proper installation. All necessary parts and instructions are included. Please note, if you would like to retain the factory engine cover on your vehicle, trimming to the cover is required.
J2534 Interface Tool Required. Just about any dealer can perform this calibration upgrade in under an hour without even breaking a sweat. The Roush Flash Pack Calibration is flashed on to your Mustang's ECU using Roush's RDT software and an industry standard J2534 interface tool. Please note that a dealer service charge may apply.
Optional Warranty. An optional 3 Year/36,000 Mile Limited Powertrain Warranty is available through Roush. The optional warranty must be purchased within 30 days of the service installation date. Click here to see more details.
Application. This Roush Level 1 Performance Pac is specifically designed for use on 2018-2020 GT Mustangs equipped with the 5.0L Coyote V8 engine.
CA Residents: WARNING: Cancer and Reproductive Harm - www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
Installation Info
Installation Time
(approx) 1 Hour
Difficulty Level:
Light to Moderate mechanical skill required.
Installation Guides
What's in the Box
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