Anyone think the design has been finalized already?


I talked to someone in the know and was told Direct Injection is a sure
thing, because I asked about it but thats the only thing I was told.

And its not going to look like the Bat Mobile.... "Thank "

 

The 5.5L is supposed to be a direct injection V8. It's also going to have a new design for heads and combustion chamber. Other technologies for it are unconfirmed though.

 

Variable Valve Timing would be nice..

 

Yeah, and I'd like to see variable lift as well, but from what I understand this is going to be an OHV motor still (which is still good), so variable lift would be a difficult task.

 

I would think the design is pretty much done.

Probably doing/done FEA and making small changes.

Starting tooling production soon.

I would think first parts on tooling will be coming early January at the latest.

assembly of first unit probably planned for mid to late January.

Manufacturing/assembly layout planning should start in early January as well.

Evaluation/testing first unit through march.

Production Tooling finalized and built by First of May.
First articles off production Tooling and evluated by first of June.
Production Equipment staged to go by July 1.
Plant Changeover during shut down.
I bet thats close to the timeline.

probably early by six months. as first vehicles probably don't roll off until January 2013.

eeh, I made it all up!

RFLMAO.

 

I am excited to see the fuel economy numbers when the vehicle finally arrives. Direct Injection is a wonderful thing and we have all seen what it can do for vehicles like the Equinox. 32mpg for a small SUV? That is certainly impressive, and the C6 already gets impeccable mileage.

 

There was DI on my dad's Solstice GXP. I took the car on a road trip from Los Angeles to Phoenix. Got 42MPG going there, and about 38MPG coming back. I'm sure the difference was mostly going down and then up hill as well as the temperature changes. But either way, that's a fantastic MPG to average. Especially doing 75MPH the whole way.

 

If this is going to be a revver capable of 10 grand, I highly doubt it'll be a pushrod engine. About time for GM to step into the fray and go with an overhead cam V8!

 

It won't rev to 10 grand, and it won't be an overhead cam engine. It will be a 5.5liter pushrod V8 with over 400hp.

 

It's not the 5.5L V8 that will rev high. It's the turbo 3.0L V8 that supposedly will be OHC and will rev high.

Correct. It will probably rev to about 6500.

 

Then I don't get it. Why would GM build an all-new pushrod engine when they already have state of the art with the LS3? I can see an evolution of that engine, which makes a lot of sense.

Personally, I have nothing against pushrod engines. They are more compact and have fewer moving parts than their OHC counterparts. "All-new" would strike me as odd however for a cam-in-block design. GM already has state-of-the-art OHC, direct-injected V6 engines, so why not a V8?

Interesting though.

 

The 5.5L engine mentioned is the next gen of the LSx engine. It will have at least direct injection. It is a shorter stroke that the LS3 and maybe smaller bore. I don't think we have seen those specs yet.
The targeted HP is 440.

It should get 10-15 percent better fuel mileage than the LS3.

 

I don't know if it's actually going to be the next gen LSx. The 5.5 has a new combustion chamber and new heads. Since it's not the same tech as the LSx platform, I'd doubt they'd call it an LSx. Unless I'm miss-understanding how they're naming their generations of motors. All of the LSx motors, up until this point, have been similar to the point that you could (for the most part) swap out parts from one to the other. Same intake design, combustion chamber design, heads changed a little but were still swappable to other blocks and they all used compatible computers (reluctor wheel aside).

From what I understand, this new 5.5L isn't going to be like this.

 

 

If Ford can produce a 5.0 making 412 hp this would ratio to 453hp in a 5.5. Surely GM can do better than Ford. How about a base with 460 hp!

 

 

I think OHC motors are over rated. Who cares if a motor revs high when it lacks low end torque vs LS motor that has plenty of low end tq so has a plenty wide power band. In reality, I prefer an LS motor to a Ferrari when cost & durability are considered.

Regarding DI, a few friends of mine that are mechanics claim that technology is not completely worked out yet & if so, 15% better mpg does little good if motor has issues @ 100K miles.

 

http://wardsauto.com/ar/gm_makes_case_110831/


GM Makes Case for Small-Block’s Future
By Tom Murphy
WardsAuto.com, Aug 31, 2011 8:56 AM
It’s easy to think General Motors’ iconic small-block V-8 may ride off into the sunset as strict new fuel-economy regulations take hold between 2016 and 2025, forcing auto makers to favor 4-cyl. engines and electric vehicles.

But a GM powertrain executive says the small-block V-8 isn’t going away, as evidenced by the auto maker’s announcement last year to invest $890 million to produce fifth-generation small blocks in North America.

Mark Damico, GM’s small-block design system engineer, is leading development of the new engine and isn’t letting out many details, aside from telling WardsAuto the gasoline direct-injection system will employ solenoid actuators instead of more-expensive piezo-based units.

The new engine is expected in the usual applications, such as fullsize pickups, SUVs and muscle cars such as the Chevrolet Corvette and Camaro. But GM has yet to provide official confirmation.

WardsAuto forecasts GM’s next-generation pickups and SUVs to arrive in 2013.

The auto maker produced 955,200 small-block V-8s ranging in displacement from 4.8L to 7.0L in 2010. Some 72% have cast-iron blocks, with the remainder using aluminum, according to WardsAuto data.

Damico declines to say if all iterations of the fifth-generation engine will use aluminum blocks, but the intense need to reduce weight and improve fuel economy makes the lightweight metal attractive.

The 90-degree small-block design, which dates back to 1955 in the 195-hp Corvette, continues to use two valves per cylinder and an overhead-valve architecture requiring one pushrod per valve. “The 2-valve technology is not a disadvantage in terms of performance,” Damico says. “We can make the engine lighter and the packaging better.”

While most other auto makers have moved on to more sophisticated overhead-cam architectures, with the exception of Chrysler’s Hemi V-8, Damico says the OHV design offers some key advantages, such as the ability to integrate fuel-saving cylinder deactivation with little extra cost. Plus, OHV powerplants tend to be much easier to package because the cylinder heads on OHC engines – especially those with two camshafts per cylinder bank – take up a lot of room under the hood, Damico says.

“You can’t put a DOHC engine in a Corvette,” he says. Jamie Meyer, product integration manager-GM Performance Parts, estimates one-third of the approximately 40,000 classic vehicles at the recent Detroit-area Dream Cruise event used GM small-block engines, many of them under the hoods of competitor nameplates.

From 1929 to 1955, Chevrolet offered only 6-cyl. engines.

To address the growing performance market, Chief Engineer Ed Cole set out to design a Chevy V-8 that was powerful, light and affordable.

By 1960, the small block was capable of producing 360 hp with a 4-barrel carburetor in the Impala SS, making the engine popular with enthusiasts and racers.

Today’s small-block family includes 6.2L V-8s making 426 hp in the Camaro SS and 638 hp in the Corvette ZR1.

Sometime this year, GM will build its 100 millionth small block at one of the engine’s four assembly plants: St. Catherines, ON, Canada; Romulus, MI; Silao, Mexico; and the Performance Build Center in Wixom, MI, where high-output units are hand-built.

The location of that build is yet to be revealed, but a GM insider says Wixom is a good bet.

Bolstering the case for future assembly of the engine is GM’s plan to spend $400 million at its plant in Tonawanda, NY, and $235 million in St. Catherines for small-block production.Further investments are under way for casting and component production in Defiance, OH ($115 million); Bedford, IN ($111 million); and Bay City, MI ($32 million). In all, GM says the investments will create or protect 1,600 jobs.
Less certain is the future of V-8 production in Silao and Romulus, since no small-block investments were announced for those facilities. GM declines to comment on product plans for those plants.

 

I just hope that they REALLY focus on the interior of the car. The current car's interior is embarrassing IMO.

 

It not that tough to do in my opinion; just buy a BMW 6 series or a Audi RS8 and copy it in design and cheapen the leather quality; but keep the foam thickness and the nice trim pieces - color patterns, etc... Make sure to spend a lot on the steering wheel and shifter too. Go all out and buy an aftermarket audio system and speaker combo. Do not go with Bose system; since about 35% strip it out.