Fedex came this morning, hello Mr stinger. It was well packaged and by the looks of it most folks should be getting theirs intact. Quality of the product looks fine and is about what I would expect at this price point. The filter is huge and the media is fairly heavy. The boot rubber is high quality and I expect it should be a while before there would be much concern over cracking etc. The bridge is made of a plastic much like the factory material. Digging around in the box revealed no instructions. Not much of an issue considering the simplicity of the install, but an FYI nevertheless. Halltech claims a 5 minute install. Nope, not unless you have done it before a few times. I spent about 15 minutes pulling the stock unit and getting everything pretty much in place. From there adjusting and fiddling around tacked on another 10 minutes minutes before I was fully satisfied. There really isnt anything in the way of a gotcha during the install. I would be careful when pulling the boot off the maf. It took quite a bit of force to get the two pieces to part company and I could see somebody denting the maf screen during the process. Hood closed without interference. The car ran a little rough for about ten seconds at startup but then cleaned up. No codes. Now as most of you know Halltech has an 11 hp gain claimed on his website. I have seen three different cars dynoed showing between 8 and 11 hp. To my mind its a little early to be comfortable with saying that a person can expect to gain that amount of power. Im not however going to argue with anyone in regards to those numbers. If they prove out great, if not then thats fine too, they are what we have to work with now. At any rate this is still only a 3% increase in rear wheel hp and you would have to have a pretty highly calibrated butt to feel that. For this reason I was not expecting to feel any SOTP. I cant say I did. Driving along I thought I might be able to feel a difference. Couldnt say for sure. Wishful thinking perhaps. If it is there its just not enought to claim a real SOTP gain. I was expecting to get a nice increase in induction sound with that wide open filter. Nope. Can barely discern the difference at idle and low throttle settings. With heavy throttle it becomes more up front but still quite modest. I was hoping for more because I grew up with it and wanted it back on my vette.

 

Thanks for a great write-up. And it's nice to see someone add a performance mod and not say "you can't believe how it pulls now- feels like a whole new car....."

I agree that 10 - 20 hp is hard to feel. Keep us posted on how you like it.

 

At this point I am not dissapointed. I had hoped for more induction sound but you certainly cant blame the intake. I cant imagine any of the others giving more. Im contemplating pulling the hood insulation or perhaps some on the firewall. Been searching around looking for information on how the paint will hold up on the hood and that sort of thing but its been pretty scant so far.

 

and no water fears.

 

Just received mine today and installed it. Took me about 10 minutes for everything. Regardless of gains, it looks good, at least IMO. My car has just under 500 miles so I have yet to break it in. I will now break it in with the stinger.

 

That is a typical installation time, but some folks have indicated a little more time is needed just to take off the stock unit. I didn't count the removal of the stock system in my 5 minute install.

I received an email from a customer that just installed his system and some of the email is not good for Halltech, but the last sentence is, so I'll share the good, the bad, and the better (how to avoid his problem)

Before his quote, our pdf instruction manual is on our front page. We are not a supporting vendor here, so I cannot link to our site in good conscience.

Here is his quote:

" I received the C6 Stinger today and installed it. Everything went okay except for the filter connection to the bridge. I made the marks on the bridge and installed it right on the marks. The problem is when I would tighten it the filter would slide down the bridge until it would come off if I continued tightening it. So I just tried to put it on snug. When I returned from a test run and opened the hood I noticed the filter had came off. I reinstalled it with the bridge a little further in it. This seemed to work better but I have yet to take the car back out. Do you have any suggestions to solve this?

BTW using a G-Tech meter I did run my best ever 0-60 time by .4 on my first try!
Thanks, Brett"

We recommend pre-installing the bridge into the filter until the end of the bridge is all the way in, but NOT past the inner flange. Protruding edges of the bridge into the filter will disrupt the airflow bigtime. Turbulence at the mouth will rob most of the horsepower gains.

I actually put my hand into the bridge and I can feel the edge of the bridge vs. the flange opening and line it up. Mark it for future reference with a felt-tip marker, or just leave it installed.

It is more difficult to install the filter, bridge, and MAF unit into the rubber transistion hose, but you can do it with the help of a screwdriver to guide the rubber opening around the plastic MAF. The hose clamp should not be installed on the end of the rubber hose at that point. Just open it up completely, and then put it around the hose.

One more hint. Push the PCV nipple into the hole only to the first barb.
Again, the nipple will go all the way in, but will disrupt airflow right at the mouth of the throttle body.

Jim

 

One of the problems with the GEN IV motors is the placement of the cats so close to the headers. This helps with getting them hot to satisfy the gov, but attenuates the sound of the motor, and robs power. My guess is that the old twin cats of the Z06 flow much better being placed further back, but the intake sound of the engine is very hard to make sound like the old small block quad sound. I remember those days too.

Air fuel ratios of 12:1 instead of 13:1 can somewhat muffler the intake noise. The more air in the swept volume, the more bang.

The firing order of this engine affects the sound output as well.

 

A lot of my time was involved in seperating the maf from the boot. That sucker did not want to come apart. Also Im persnickity about things being right and I fiddled with it probably more than most would. I made some pieces to put under the filter body to support the filter. I wasnt too sure of how well it would want to stay put considering the whole filter was suspended in the filter area hanging strictly on the hose clamp connections. This looks to me like something bad waiting to happen without some support at the filter.

 

The filter is suspended rather than locked to the bay. When you lock your system in, you must use the stock accordion bellows to absorb the torque twist of the engine.

The problem is, the bellows points downwards, which is nice if you are looking to route water flow. Airflow prefers to "see" where it is going for best results.

We try to keep everything straight, including the airflow to the throttle body.

We have some preliminary test results from a customer that look pretty interesting. Maybe he will share them.

Jim

 

I thought about that. What I did was use a high density foam chunk cut to fit on both ends. My theory was that it would allow it movement while also providing support. Real world testing today showed that the engine moves enough that they became lose and both were just sitting in the bottom of the filter nook. I believe this would work but the pieces need to be anchored. All well, seemed like a good idea. I made a road trip today to get a better handle on the unit. An interesting observation is that I could hear more induction sound with the top off than with it on. That is till you pick up speed and wind noise starts to overcome things. Today I was able to push it pretty hard and I think maybe I did gain some oomph. There is just not enough there for me to claim a SOTP gain but based on todays drive Im harboring the suspicion that I did get a little. Its pretty tough to seperate wishful thinking from real gains when its such a relatively small increase when compared to total power.

 

Where da Pix

 

Arggg, this would require that I figure out how to post them. Or you could do it for me if I sent them to you?

 

Where the Pics?

 

This just in from one of our customers:

Stock unit
Max Tq 359 ft/lbs
Max MAF Airflow 302 gm/s
Max Air Flow Calculated 33.5 lbs/min
Max IAT 136 F
Min IAT 86 F
Avg IAT 106 F
Stock ran 10 degree above ambient on the road

Stinger

Max Tq 373 ft/lbs
Max MAF Airflow 308 gm/s
Max Air Flow Calculated 33.2 lbs/min
Max IAT 134 F
Min IAT 82 F
Avg IAT 102 F

Stinger ran ambient on the road

 

Ah, saved. That was close.

 

I have been in Houston all day so I missed this post. I'll add just a few things from the test.
The Min IAT numbers you see on the stock unit was at startup. The IAT on startup with the Stinger was 104 F so the min was actually on the road with the Stinger.

 

just dabbleing some tap water or little spray of windex will help loosen it up, you should then be able to twist it to break it loose then it will come off.

 

You cant twist it till you have pulled it down some because there is an alignment tab that sticks out on one side of the maf that lines up with a groove on the boot. Good advise though. Were I smart I would have checked to see what kind of lube could be used without damage before I started. I did use a little water and pryed around the edges with a chisel I modified some time ago for this type of thing. Basicallly it was just stuck on in the same way a gates hose will be sometimes. I didnt want to damage the maf so I took care.

 

Halltech dyno tested by FasterProms in Florida:

"Hello all, we just had a C6 in the other day with the Dynatech systemaxx and the stock intake system.
The first pull was 345RWHP and then 347RWHP on the next immediate pull. (I let the car decelerate to 50MPH and then pull it again on back to back pulls.)
Next we pulled the stk intake off and put on the Halltech. Took about 15min .....yeah yeah yeah I know it should have taken me about 5 or less. I was fumbling around a bit .... a lil excited like a little girl with new shoes. Next pull 360RWHP followed by 362RWHP.
That's a good solid 15RWHP that you can feel. Great product JIM!!
I am under the belief that in about a 3400lb vehicle it is going to take about 15RWHP to have that SOTP difference.
The AFR was a bit rich up top so we leaned it up and then the next pull we made 371RWHP and 365RWTQ.
I thought that it was a bit odd that these cars made the same power as the other C6 with the same mods. That is quite uncommon because each car is different and the early stages of each motors life can dictate how it will make power later on in its life. I find that the ones that were babied are whimps and the ones that were beaten hard make great power. I compared the 2 curves of the cars with the same mods, pk HP and torque was the same but underneath the curve there was as much as a 10 RWHP difference. There is something to be said about weather and correction factors. One was dynoed in the rain and the other in much hotter air temps. I have never seen an accurate dynojet weather station with the exception of one and been to some 30 er so dynos. kinda makes you wonder huh? Quite often I am a bit skeptical of this mod and that until I do it myself because I know that I do my best to control variables. All in all I was very pleased to see the difference for myself and even more faith in a great product."

Jeremy Formato

 

I know my "****" feels better because I got the first one! Thanks again for coming to Wisconsin Jim!

We will have some Stingers at Bloomington. We are inside! Stop by and I'll tell you about it in person.

Jim Booth
www.CAU-LLC.com