At last, Mustard has an Accessport and a proper Stage 1 tune!
Since the swap was completed the car has been running a factory ST tune, but of course has not had a completely stock ST drive train – which was surely very apparent to anyone who has heard the car given how unbelieveably loud it is. While Mustard inherited the hardware from Ketchup, the reason it didn’t inherit the software (the Accessport and tune) as well is because Mario’s original AP went to live on in Sriracha. Since the swap was completed buying an AP was at the top of my to-do list as far as additional modifications were concerned, and thanks to Rebel Devil Customs I now have one!
Before going further I wanted to clarify something that some have found confusing, and that’s why my car doesn’t have an aftermarket intercooler – arguably one of the most important modifications for FoSTs – but it already has a downpipe and basically every other common upgrade. It has been mentioned before but it’s simply because Mario’s aftermarket FMIC and charge pipes were destroyed when Ketchup was hit. The other parts survived the collision so they were all transfered over, but in the interest of getting the car up and running first before buying more modifications, the OEM intercooler and pipes went back in. I didn’t need to replace them to complete the swap, so I didn’t.
Anyway, back to the Accessport. Here you can see all of the components spread out – the cables, sticky mount (and wipe for cleaning the surface to which it will be stuck), holder, second faceplate, and of course the Accessport itself.
It’s the V3 model preloaded with COBB tunes, but the plan is to switch over to a custom tune from Rebel Devil later on.
The “install” of an Accessport is of course very simple, as this is a literal example of something being plug and play. One end of the cable goes in to the OBD2 port in the footwell and the other end goes into the AP. The cable was also routed in behind the dash for a clean install and so it won’t get caught on anything. After sitting in the driver’s seat and looking at my options, I chose to mount the AP just left of the radio, a common location. It keeps it in my line of sight but doens’t block anything (aside from the vent dial which is still easy to reach) nor does it get in the way.
Once plugged in the AP came into life and from there it was just a matter of following the on-screen prompts. Before long the new tune was loading!
Once the tune was loaded the next step was then to configure the gauge display on the Accessport. There are literally a few hundred choices here and you can have anywhere from 1 to 6 gauges displayed together on the screen, as well as a shift light. I have it set to read – from left to right and top to bottom – boost pressure, actual air/fuel ratio, and ignition correction for the cylinders in order of 1 through 4. This is technically optional as once the tune has been loaded the AP can be removed from the car, but I wanted to use this gauge feature to keep an eye on more parameters.
At the time of writing this I’ve only had the AP on for a couple of days but there is a definite difference in the way the car feels and drives, and I am especially happy to have the ability to monitor more parameters than the factory gauge cluster alone allows. Additionally, with this now in place I am only an intercooler away from Stage 3. Once I get my hands on one I can load the Stage 3 tune and enjoy another significant bump in power! Mario has always had the faster car, but now I’m catching up.
To go with this quick post today I also uploaded a new video over on the YouTube channel, so please feel free to hit play and check it out!
I want to say thank you again to Rebel Devil for sending this out, and thanks to Cobb for the easy to use and well-made product! Now, about that intercooler…
-Bill