I've had the ECS kit on the car now for a week and 750 miles.

I drive a lot, that was 750 miles and it rained for a day and a half which I did not drive it. I figure I drive my car more than the majority on here.

I think about all the questions I had when I was looking at FI and the things that do not get mentioned so thats what this post will hopefully shed some light on.

After a week one of things I was not sure I would like is the constant whoosh at part throttle, this may only apply to M7 cars BTW. To me its not a good whoosh, this is personal preference and sounds like a vacuum leak to me. At WOT it sounds great but driving in 3rd gear at 25mph it doesn't, but thats just me.

I adjusted my driving style a bit and its not an issue, just shift up 1 more gear and its dead silent.

The most amazing thing to me is the level of traction I have. Under 65 degree's its useless in 1st and 2nd gear but over 65 I can do WOT in 1st and it holds....I doubt its truly holding but it feels like it is. Even coming out of corners, you have to be more liberal with the throttle but the image of me driving on a skating rink all the time have not come to reality.

I'd love to add more power but I worry about giving up the traction and control of the car which is excellent now. This is with the stock ZP's with 13K on them.

Maybe when I do a wide body I'll do meth and headers but right now the most enjoyable part about the car is to put it in any gear, hit the gas, and it goes.

Zero change at all to the driving characteristics, none. Everything about the responsive ness of the LT1 is there, just more of it, and not too much.

The lack of a hit of torque like in a turbo or a PD is deceiving because the car, at least to me, doesn't have that super fast feeling, but looking at the speedometer the acceleration is great.

A few things I have not heard others mention:

1. In Touring or Sport mode your regulated to easy WOT shifts from 1-2 and 2-3. Car just falls on its face and dies from the traction control. If your not taking a good pause between shifting and letting the clutch out it cuts pretty much all power. In Track/PTM 2 you can shift as fast and as hard as you can without issue.

2. Cooling...the fans running at high speed pretty much all the time. I've logged it and the car runs at 205-210 which is fine, even with the AC on in 90 degree heat, but to keep it there the fans need to run full time and its annoying and nearly every single person that has been in the car has commented on it before I said anything.

3. The Oil odor that a lot comment on was present the first few days but now I rarely notice it, once in a great while but very mild and not what I consider bad.

I have a new T-stat coming but I'm concerned about the swings in engine temp then. I'll do that first, have the fans adjusted and see what kind of range swings I get. If they are too much I'll do the radiator.

If this is part of the base tuning for most of the kits then unless you can live with that sound plan on a T-stat at minimum, currently $350 until LPE comes out with theirs, or over $1,100 by the time you add in a radiator.

If a once in a while odor odor is going to bother you budget another 1K for the LMR breather which right now I think is the only one that vents in a location where the smell does not enter the cabin.

No leaks or any other issues.

Overall very happy with the kit but I wish they would address the fan issue in the kit itself instead of leaving us to find out afterwards. The value of the kit at its current price, or even a slightly higher price to address the cooling is excellent. It makes the car better in every single way without detracting from it at all, except for the fans.

I would recommend one to anyone just with the reminder to budget in for T-stat , radiator, or both.

 

A little off topic but ECS suggested I change the SC oil at 500 miles than at normal oil change intervals.

 

I want to be like you guys next year !!

 

Yeah I was planning on doing that. I think there was some extra left over from the install but was going to call if not on Monday to order a bottle.

 

Interesting. Just returned from a Dragon/Snake run and definitely racked up some miles. Thought the interval was 2500 for the sc oil?

 

That is what Paxton recommends but Doug from ECS advised that I bring it back in 500 miles. Guess similar to the 500 mile initial oil change, it can't hurt.

 

http://www.jegs.com/i/JET+Performanc...FQiQaQodV6UPfQ

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/jet-10167

 

Sweet, thanks.

Most of us thought only the LPE unit and the LMR unit were the ones that were available. That is a 180 degree versus the stock 195, right? I take it you would not post this unless you think it will resolve my issue.

I need to bring it by to get the fans adjusted or is it close enough to keep it below the high speed threshold?

$22 and it does list the Stingray but not the Z06:

 

Like anything else I bet it has more to do with getting any tooling left overs rather than the oil needing to be changed.

Clear out metal or anything else that might have been in there from manufacturing.

 

The constant 'whoosh' can get really annoying the higher up you go in boost. It was unbearable for me when we maxed out the blower, so I went to dual Tial Qs.

If it gets to be an annoyance, ECS can sell you the Tial QR bottom-end replacement that can be used as a bypass or filtered atmospheric valve. That will cut that down to a much quieter level - just double-check to make sure it will flow enough.

That's on my list of things to do (swap both of my Qs to QRs).

 

Does the replacement bottom-end require any tuning or just a swap?

 

If you use it as an atmospheric (and simply put a filter on the discharge port), it will work exactly as the Q, so no re-tune is needed.

If you use it as a BPV, that gets a little trickier depending on where the air is dumped back in. Can't speak to that, though, as I've only ever used BPVs on turbo cars.

 

This matches my experience after 5 months and about 1500 miles or so with the kit. I don't have an issue with the fans. They do run more than a stock vette, but no more than my stock 2010 CTS-V did on hot days. That car had a PD and on a hot day you could stick hand out window and feel heat from side vents. In the winter, it would basically heat the garage after a long drive

I did get a bit of a oil smell on start or at idle on a few occasions during the first few hundred miles with ECS. I didn't notice when first got it because that was back in February (live in NJ) and the car was in garage on charger most of the time or if out top was up and heat on. I found now that get on it more, as actually have traction with warm weather, don't get the smell. This is even with top down most of the time.

The car was drivable down to like 30F on stock tires on dry surfaces, but you had to be careful in first gear (A6) and bottom of 2nd especially on a down shift. Above 65F+, I still find you can easily light up tires in 1st especially at the launch. You can do that even on 90F day with high humidity.

A good question is how often to change the engine oil. Do we just follow the computer like stock or do it every 2500-3000 miles along with SC oil?

I do want to bring it in for a check up this summer. I don't recall Chis mentioning to change the SC oil after first 500 miles. I thought he said 2500-3000 miles.

 

In my mind you change the oil in the engine at about 40 percent.

Part of the reason to change the oil is to get rid of contaminants and carbon is one of them.

If your making 50 percent more power, your putting in roughly 50 percent more fuel which leads to contamination.

The oil management in the engine is pretty lenient but I'll go back to a 3000-3500 oil change cycle regardless of what the computer says.

 

Thanks for sharing all of this info. You addressed some of the questions I had regarding maintaining a s/c. Keep us posted about the t stat and/or the radiator swap.