Late last summer we partnered up with CORSA Performance and Smokey’s Dyno and Performance on our Operation Air Flow project as a way to show some easy ways to get more power out of your Corvette. We began with a CORSA carbon fiber intake on our 2009 C6 and then backed that up with a CORSA Sport performance exhaust system. For Episode 4, we headed back to Smokey’s for a custom ECM tune to help get the most out our freer breathing LS3.
Recall that the end goal of Operation Air Flow is to show you some easy ways to unlock some extra ponies from your ride then show you real world results on a real dyno so you can see just what each component contributes to the overall output. We decided to focus on a C6 since they’ll become more attainable price-wise now that the secondary market is becoming more populated with C7’s. Instead of buying a $65,000 Stingray buyers may now look at lightly used $40,000 Grand Sport and put some extra money into mods instead.
Now that our C6 can suck in more air via the CORSA carbon fiber intake and then get rid of it more efficiently through the CORSA Sport exhaust we need to teach the car’s computer how to best manage its new bits. The Smokey’s team use a systematic, disciplined approach to tuning each car. They don’t use off the shelf type tunes. Based on experience they vary countless settings and verify with live data from the dyno to ensure that they milk every last pony out of the car. Most tunes will take right around 4 hours to do.
Out of the box last year we showed 372hp which became 374.5hp after the intake install. After bolting on the exhaust we had 387.1hp. An increase of 15 on the day. Not too shabby. Prior to changing any settings during our return to Smokey’s we re-baselined the car to see what type of numbers it would produce under the current conditions. The early morning pull yielded 381.4hp. Yes, that’s lower than what we saw last year, but note that the weather conditions were less than favorable and significantly different than the last on the dyno. The humidity was easily over 1,000% after some overnight showers. It was just a downright sticky Midwestern summer day. Here’s a look at our baseline dyno run.
[Operation Air Flow] Episode 4: Name That Tune
After the baseline run our technician, Matt Smith, dumped the factory tune from the car’s memory onto the Smokey’s network. If you ever needed to go back to your factory tune, you can just have Smokey’s swap the old one back in. Next up Matt began the custom tune using their HP Tuners software. Everything from air/fuel ratio to top speed and available torque is optimized. The intent is to overall smooth the performance / settings of the car and take full advantage of that new intake and exhaust. We even changed the speed and temps at which the cooling fan kicks in. Finally we moved in to the (auto) transmission’s computer and increased its line pressures in addition to upping shift speeds by roughly 25%.
After 45 minutes to an hour the new program was downloaded to the car then it was back to dyno pulls to check out how the car reacted. The first step is to monitor drivability – that is, how does the car react under normal operating conditions? For this test, the car is held in 3rd gear for each dyno pull and several engine parameters are monitored live on the laptop. If any issues are found here the ECM can be quickly retuned on the spot to make improvements.
[Operation Air Flow] Episode 4: Name That Tune
Once drivability was confirmed it was on to wide open throttle (WOT) pulls to measure max horsepower, torque, and air fuel (A/F) ratio. A/F is the main metric Smokey’s uses to evaluate the effectiveness of the new tune. Based on results from a given pull, incremental tweaks were made as needed and then additional dyno pulls done. Once everything was verified on the WOT pulls we did one last check of drivability. Having passed that test we let the car cool a bit and then performed back to back WOT runs to confirm our final horsepower and torque numbers. The last step on the dyno was to perform a multi-gear check. Here the car was run through several gears to verify everything is still functioning as intended. After that it was time for a road test with Matt monitoring the ECM real time on the laptop checking for signs of detonation (knock) or other anomalies while esteemed author drove around Akron. We’re happy to report that our C6 had no issues during any of its checks.
So on to the final numbers. We already had a 15 horsepower increase from the 2014 intake and exhaust installs. Our 2015 baseline was 381.4hp which grew to 389.5 at the end of the day. So if we add the existing 15hp to the 8.1 we got with the ECM tune that’s a total of 23hp gained through all 3 modifications. The tune also yielded a 5.5ft-lb gain in torque as well and when added to the 8ft-lbs gained earlier we get a total increase of 15.5.
[Operation Air Flow] Episode 4: Name That Tune
Here’s a look at one of the dyno pulls.
Fuel economy after the tune was up very slightly. We averaged 27.6mpg on the 200 mile drive to Smokey’s and 27.8 on the ride home.
We’ve got about 500 miles on the new tune now. Overall performance is noticeably smoother than before. The transmission shifts quicker and with more confidence than before. It feels more like a Corvette should and makes for an overall better driving experience. If you’re looking for some easy ways to add more performance to your ride you should seriously consider the easy things like intake and exhaust improvements backed by an ECM tune.
Once again we want to thank the team at Smokey’s Dyno and Performance for their help on this project. We had a blast working with them and look forward to bringing you more content from them in the future. Check out Smokey’s at www.smokeysdyno.com, call them at 330-644-0021 or shoot them an email at info@smokeysdyno.com.
https://youtu.be/B87smtaeTUw