The 3.5L EcoBoost motors are marvelous engines, overflowing with potential. They respond well to bolt on performance modifications, but they truly come alive once you have them properly tuned. We got right to work modding our F150 EcoBoost project truck by throwing on a cold air intake, Solo exhaust system, AFE intercooler piping and an SCT Livewire with 5-Star custom tunes to make incredible power. You can purchase these exact mods in the product section at the bottom of this page.
The aFe Stage 2 Cold Air Intake has been the go-to cold air intake system for the 2012 to 2014 F150 EcoBoosts ever since its release, and just like many of our own customers, it was the first power-adder we grabbed for our 2012 project truck. While the kit really requires tuning in order to make any real horsepower and torque gains, it looks aggressive under the hood and gives your truck a very distinct, high-performance sound. The intake is extremely easy to install, and simply drops right in place of the stock system. 2012-2014 F150 3.5L EcoBoost AFE Cold Air Intake
Our friends at Banks were generous enough to send over their 2011-2014 F150 EcoBoost Banks Ram-Air Cold Air Intake Kit for us to throw onto our project truck in place of the aFe. There was nothing wrong with the aFe Stage 2 Kit, we just like new, shiny things and we were eager to test out this system. The Banks kit features a specially-designed air box assembly that allows for improved airflow over stock while keeping noise down to a minimum. The kit comes with a deep-pleated Banks air filter and high-quality couplers for hooking to the turbo pipes. The intake looks clean and discrete in the engine bay, and we're extremely happy with it. 2011-2014 F150 3.5L EcoBoost Banks Ram-Air Intake System
While basic, bolt-on parts are plenty good, the truly massive power gains come from custom tuning, and our friends over at 5-Star Tuning are some of the most experienced F150 EcoBoost custom tuners out there. For our project truck, we grabbed a Livewire TS loaded up with one of 5-Star's 91-octane Performance/Tow tunes, and jumped on Dyno-Comp's dyno for a quick peek at our our power gains.
Given our baseline, stock run of 372 lb-ft of torque and 299 horsepower at the tires, 5-Star's tuning gave us an impressive extra 76 lb-ft of torque and 41 horsepower, bringing our totals up to 448 lb-ft and 340 horsepower at the wheels. This translates to roughly 510 lb-ft of torque and 386 horsepower at the crankshaft. Not shabby at all for 91-octane, daily-driven tune. 2011-2014 F150 EcoBoost SCT Performance Livewire TS+ Tuner & 5-Star Custom Tunes
The Solo Mach-X series of cat-backs have long been some of our favorite among the massive selection for F150 EcoBoost cat-back systems that we've tried and tested. So we went with what works on our 2012 F150 EcoBoost, and grabbed a Solo Mach-X system, this time with an additional resonator to quiet it down. The last kit we tested was Solo's standard kit without a resonator, so we wanted to give the resonated version a shot to hear the difference for ourselves. To help the Mach-X Kit fit in better with our truck, we sent the outlet tubes and tips down to Glendale Powder Coating to get a black thermal coat for a great look. Unfortunately, we no longer carry this specific dual exhaust system, but we do offer a selection of comparable Dual-Exit Cat-Back Exhaust Systems.
To help pull a little extra power, we grabbed ourselves a set of aFe's Hot-Side Intercooler tubes. These tubes connect to the truck's turbochargers and intercooler and are both slightly larger and much more efficient than stock to help generate some extra power and performance. While we didn't perform a dyno run, we have noticed that our truck's fuel economy increased by nearly a full MPG. Install wasn't overly difficult, but there were some finicky aspects to routing the tubing while getting the couplers fitted on properly. 2011-2014 F150 EcoBoost aFe Bladerunner 2-1/2" Hot-Side Intercooler Tubes
