Let me first thank our customer Alex for bringing his beautiful black, carbon ZL1 to the shop yesterday to help us test fit a prototype cold air intake for one of the big intake manufacturers. Alex really wanted to see what his car would lay down stock so we invited him back today to make a couple of pulls and to see if we could persuade him into a calibration session.....and we were successful in doing such
Initial Impressions
Everyone at the shop was impressed with the build quality and the styling of the veicle. The car is very well built and we were excited to have the opportunity to work on a customers ZL1 so fast.
Stock Calibration/Dyno Results/Thoughs
Air-Fuel was measured with our Lab Grade ECM AFM-1000 Wide Band/Lambda Meter. Datalogging was preformed with EFI Live
The stock calibration is VERY aggressive so I knew I was in for a battle with this beast trying to make any more power. Compared to the CTS-V's we have tested, the air-fuel was found it to be leaner and final total timing is advanced compared to the V's. I am sure if the car was ice cold we could have made 480-485 but that is not what we were trying to accomplish.
In stock trim the car made 476/485 with a lambda of .79 until 4500 and about .74 above 4500 to redline (11.55-10.88 AFR based on GM's cal) with reported spark knock during our datalogs in various rpm zones.
Intake Air Temperatures are CRAZY with this car. It was 85* in the shop today and we were getting reported IAT 2's at the end of the runs near 145 and the start of the run reported IAT 2's were approx. 117. This is a rise of roughly 28* F, which is crazy.
We have dyno'ed CTS-V's and Supercharged SS's with reported temperatures much lower and the rise far less so we know there are a ton of improvements to be made with the car....and don't worry we have a couple great products in the pipeline we are testing next week and are already in stock ready to ship!!
We verified both the factory MAF calibration and VE calibration and found both to be off slightly.....which is expected from a mass produced factory calibration
Torq Calibration Process
Like most, we made our standard changes such as turning off the CAGS (Skip Shift), changes to the fan settings and started our calibration process. We dialed in both the MAF and VE surfaces to dial in fueling and starting working on our spark calibration.
Like all of our calibrations, we spend a ton of timing improving the overall feel and performance outside of WOT. This is where most of us/customers spend time so why shouldn't we spend most of our time calibrating these conditions. Surprisingly we found many areas where we could make improvements outside of WOT to help increase the performance/feel of the car.
We already knew what improvements could be made based on our initial logs of the factory calibration so we flashed the car and made changes. As I expected, we picked up some great torque and hp down low and on the hit and continued making runs to dial in spark and fuel to our liking. We picked up some good HP/TQ throughout the run but nothing mind blowing...again, what we expected from this car.
Results
Stock Results: 476rwhp/485rwtq
Tuned Results: 490rwhp/501rwtq
Highest gains are 34rwtq and 14rwhp. The big torque increase down low on the hit really wakes this car up. 14rwhp and 16rwtq peak gains. Took a ton of time and focus to pickup power. The around town gains, roll on throttle increases are really nice!
Stay tuned for our video!!!
Stage 2
The customer decided he wanted more power so we are installing the following:
2.55 Upper
10% OD Lower
Torq Hand Ported Snout
Aftermarket Airbox (pics and brand to be disclosed shortly)
Some other really cool pieces we have designed for this car with the help of CAD data provided through the SEMA Tech Transfer program