A local shop is going to use my car as a guinea pig to test the effects of their porting of the LS3 intake manifold. The only mod my car has is a Callaway cold air intake. Other than that it's bone stock. They already have a manifold ported and ready for me. On January 31st I am driving over to put it on the dyno the way it sits. Then we will strap the new intake on and dyno it again with no tuning changes. We are hoping for 7-10rwhp since my car is stock. Not a bad return for $300 if it goes as planned. If it doesn't pick up power, they will put my stock manifold back on and not charge me anything. He wants to test it on my stock car because there are so many variables if somebody already has headers or a cam. I may even bring my stock LS3 air intake with me also so we can see if the Callway makes a difference or not. He told me that they don't cut the intake apart, just port what they can reach in the intake.

Edit:

We are going to take the Callaway off and test it with my stock LS3 air intake first.

 

Will be looking forward to your results..

 

 

Either some details are missing here or this doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

So some shop who doesn't regularly port LS3 intakes wants to use your car to test their work and then charge you the same price as the experienced porters do if it produces any results at all?

Are they going to charge you for the dyno testing too? Are they going to include tuning to extract more power after the stock tune test? If they include the tuning, will they tune with the stock manifold first and then put the stock tune back in for the testing with the ported one? Do you get to keep your old manifold? Is there a minimum power increase that must be reached? How many dyno pulls are they planning to do with your car? What percentage of dyno error from test to test is acceptable? Who pays for any damage that might result from the product, the labor, or the testing?

Without good answers to the above questions, I wouldn't let them touch my car. The dyno operator can create some HP without any changes and if all the other conditions aren't identical (and they never are perfect) you won't get two identical pulls anyway.

I used to give away products costing thousands, just to get the testing feedback like most businesses do. In your case it sounds like they are charging you for their prototype development education and the use of your car as the test bed. If the results are good, they get a lot of advertising mileage for a small amount of labor. If the results are minimal or none at all, they go back to the drawing board for a small amount of labor. Either way, you'll have time, fuel, and wear & tear invested, plus $300 assuming there is any improvement at all.

 

You already know who is doing the work HOXXOH since you are an ACE member also. They have done LS3 intakes, just on already modified cars. Ones with cam, headers, etc. Joe just wants to see what kind of gains can be had on a completely stock car. He already has shown it picks up great gains with mods. He's not charging me any labor. There will be no tune adjustments. I am only having the intake ported. I'm leaving the throttlebody alone.

Here's an example of their ported intake and ported throttlebody:

 

Interesting especially since ive been wondering if porting is worth it on my cam only LS3. Keep us posted.

 

I really don't know who the porter is. It's been a vague reference to someone on the East side, but I posted here to avoid issues on ACE. It really doesn't make a difference, but you just seem to be on the losing side of the deal. Getting a ported intake without any tuning doesn't make sense unless they just want bigger dyno numbers when it goes lean. The only way to find the true value is to tune from stock, then add the manifold and retune.

 

I can see your point. I won't let my car leave running lean. I'll talk with Joe about it.

 

replying to you on ace so i don't get locked on here

 

Results are in:

Manifold ported by a local shop(Cordes Performance Racing in Mesa Az). They wanted some data for a bone stock LS3, so I volunteered my 2011 C6. They covered labor costs and dyno time. I just paid for the ported intake if it picked up power. It did, so I paid them.

My car is a bit of an anomaly in that it is right about 400rwhp in stock configuration. My dyno a year ago was 404rwhp/399rwtq on a Dynojet with my Callaway CAI installed. We used a Dynapack today and baseline was 397.2rwhp and 402.8 rwtq with the stock LS3 air intake. Right after the baseline we put the ported intake on and dyno'd it again. 407.8rwhp and 410.9rwtq was the result.

We then put my Callaway back on and it was 413rwhp. For some reason it was pulling timing to 10* and ramping back up to 17* with the Callaway installed. It wasn't doing that with the stock air intake on the car. I don't know if it was heat soaked by that point or something with the Callaway causing the car to pull timing.

This was all done within about an hour and a half on the dyno with no tune changes. We noticed the mid range AFR went from 11.7 with the stock intake to 11.9 with the ported. At the top of the RPM range over 6000rpm they were both reading 12.2-12.3. I'm happy with the results as they can only get better as I further modify the car. It sure is a heck of a lot easier than putting an underdrive pulley on.

Next week I will be installing Pfadt headers, catless mid-pipe, and factory Z06 axleback. The car will be tuned by NicD of Phoenix Az. I'll post up those results in a separate thread.

Stock intake manifold and stock air intake vs. ported intake manifold and stock air intake. Stock GM tune.





Old dyno sheet with Callaway installed and stock GM tune: