Hi Guys,

I have a manual 2000 base, and I'm across the pond in the UK, my car has a corsa axle back and Blackhawk intake but otherwise is stock. My question is can I have the ecu remapped (believe you guys refer to it as a tune) for some additional gains? I ask as one benefit of being over here is I can get 99 octane fuel off the pump, given I expect the c5 was optimised for 93 or so I would expect there are some power/driveability improvements to be had just by adjusting it to suit our fuel.

If so what is the process for a c5, can it be done by the obd port?

Thanks

 

You won't gain a thing with a tune, your European octane rating at 99 is equivalent to 93 octane over here. Europe uses the RON rating, The US RON and MON averaged.

 

I have tuning experience.. this is not true.

With mild bolts ons and a quality tune you will definitely notice an improvement. Your biggest gains will be in part throttle power.

There are two way to get a mail order tune. 1. Use a flash device and flash (reprogram) it with the tune given to you by the supplier (aka "tuner"). 2. Send your ECU to a tuner and they can reflash it and send back to you.

I'm not familiar with tuners in your country.. surely there are some? If not you might contact ECS. They are a CF sponsor and have a lot of experience.

 

You’ll get some measurable power increase but imo it’s not worth the hassle or money of getting it tuned.

 

With your mods, the Blackhawk air cleaner will give you cleaner air than stock but it is not any cooler (more dense) than any other engine bay air cleaner. The exhaust you have will make the car louder (more appealing to many). The remapping of the PCM (ECU) should only be done after taking a scan log of the engine parameters and making changes based on that imput. Some tuners have had so much experience in tuning they can give you a "canned" tune that will optimize about 80-90% of the PIDs (Parameter Identification) Diagnostics you will encounter. Like WYDOPNTHRTL said it will be more beneficial to acceleration and efficiency in the lower to mid rpm levels (2000-5000 rpm)

 

Thanks for this guys, there are some tuners here, they're more monaro guys but can obviously do vettes too, one works with EFI and the other HP. It sounds like it'll be very minimal in gains so I won't make it a priority!

 

Tuning for the octane difference is what I was referring to, in that case no difference.

 

Sit back and let me educate you a bit....
#1 OEMs (I work at one) always have margin in tuning. Cars like vettes are parked for long periods of time and *often* will have fuel that is degraded / looses octane ratings. (OEM boating is even worse... I worked at one of those too where we tuned for 82 octane)
#2 There are reference tables for spark knock which are mapped in extremely controlled calibration room conditions. That is the high LIMIT that the OEM set based on commercially available fuel (91 oct for "hi-po cars"), controlled temp (72F) and some amount of assumed carbon build up and air temp at the intake valve. We assume a condition a customer might see at around 100k miles.

So, given the spark knock table in the OEM's tune and knock sensor inputs allow an aftermarket tuner to balance fuel -vs- spark to gain power over the OEM's stock tune. (tuners don't usually care about margin as much so they will find the limit and back off 2deg and might add 2% richness)

I have 1st hand experience w/over 200hrs of experimentation on NA, SC, and NO2 tuning. So say what you want but I've been on the road, dyno, and dragstrip experimenting. I've also spoke directly about this subject with tuners and even a software engineer for OEM engine control modules.

At the end of the day... we all have our opinions. I just feel that having insider knowledge makes mine more valid.

 

No, you won't gain much with the basic mods you have, but it will surely gain some. Until you get into headers, internal engine, etc., then the tune becomes important. If you on the fence, do it!

Also I don't believe you will gain drivability improvement at other than full throttle with a canned tune - you need to do a street tune and optimize your VE table for this to be the case..