A few months back Team RV Magazine was invited to spend a day at Gale Banks Engineering in Azusa, California. It’s an industry-leading facility that honestly made us feel more like we were getting a behind-the-scenes tour of a NASA facility. One of the coolest and most useful tools we found that day was the new Banks IQ Flash programmer.
The Banks IQ Flash man-machine interface is a performance programmer with diagnostic and gauge capabilities that plugs into the diagnostic port of most any OBD2 vehicle (1996 and newer). The huge 5-inch touch-screen gives access to a plethora of useful applications from GPS information to performance tuning, navigation, back-up cameras and more. With dozens of options and upgrades there’s seemingly nothing this system won’t do.
Versus the prior Banks IQ,...
Versus the prior Banks IQ, the new Flash has more memory at 4GB, a quicker GPS update rate, and Bluetooth connectivity. Seen here in the information screen, engine vitals and other data are displayed. From grade percentages and speed to EGTs, boost, throttle position, heading, there’s just too many options to list. Customizing the display is as easy as clicking a gauge and selecting its new identity.
We tested the Banks IQ Flash...
We tested the Banks IQ Flash on a 2008 Class-A Damon Motor Coach. The install took literally minutes and once done we hooked the coach up to the dynamometer (dyno for short) to play with the settings and see the results. Post dyno we took the coach on a long testdrive. The AutoMind performance tuning woke this coach up. Power gains were not huge but the change in where the power came on in the V-10’s powerband made the Damon much friendlier to captain.
Fuel is not cheap. One of...
Fuel is not cheap. One of our favorite tools was the fuel-economy screen. Whether we liked it or not, we knew exactly how much fuel we’d used and how much the trip was costing us. Mpgs and fuel left till empty can be displayed here as well.