Id love to see one of the sub 1k HP cars with clutches. All the ones ive seen are all that or higher and they still slip a little. One of these 700WHP cars may see better 1/4 times even without those few slips. I also think those trunk tanks are pointless after J5s results. The tank becomes heat soaked basically just as fast. Someone will have to figure out actual airflow options.

 

Someone else may have chimed in with this somewhere else in another thread, but it's useful to note.

If the clutch "slips" it throws a CEL and limps

What everyone sees in these boosted cars and thinks is slippage is an issue with the fuel system not keeping up (and/or a combination of the "tuners" basically programming too long of a power cut to ensure that no slip occurs). I know this from experience and testing. I'm due to take my car back for a reflashed tune to solve this exact phenomenon. It's not clutch slip... the clutch can actually hold a ton of power with its extra 30% bite force programmed in.

Part of why the piggyback systems were eating clutches early on in some of the YouTube wild west adventures of twin turbo'ing... we're because the car is programmed to reduce power by a % for a split second during shifts... the car from factory is obviously tuned for 475 foot lbs. Make that 700 and the car cutting x% of power isn't sufficient... and they would nuke clutches. (Sometimes).

With the ecm tunes (non piggy backs) this was addressed as I described above. I think in an effort to protect the clutch, some of the tunes are cutting power for too long... and also when the fuel system can't keep up (like in my car)... it has a weird slippy bit of lag on shift... again... not a slip. Been pretty far down this road on my own car trying to get to the bottom of my #s...

Hope that helps. Im not an engineer so this is sort of my characterization of many conversations and digging into my vehicles performance with several groups.

 

Another useless video. If you don't like it or feel it's silly, you don't have to comment.

 

Intresting. I’ve seen the high HP cars claiming no CELs but clutch slippage used an excuse of times. It even sounds like it to me. If the line pressure isn’t enough why are they not advising the clutch upgrade? If the clutch upgrade is installed why are they still cutting power? I understand it a different way now I guess but have more questions now lol

 

Little info from Alex Peitz about digging through the ECM. There is a way to turn off brake torque management, so we should be able to do some decent burnouts now. That's good news, the C8 had the lamest burnouts even when just trying to scrub the tires.

 

I know for me personally, if I was doing a TT/SC kit I'd want to do the clutch pack just as piece of mind.

 

I was at Pietz shop last week and watched that green car pull 1030 WHP on the dyno.

My 2023 convertible may be the first with an unlocked ECM. With a little luck Pietz is finishing up the install of a Bravo kit either today or tomorrow. I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas day!

 

That’s awesome. Congratulations on the install. Please let us know how it performs. If you could post some dragy numbers, that would be amazing to see how a tuned car runs.

 

degfu, can you share your experiences with the Vengence Racing Kit: drivability, install quality, power, issues, performance of the oil less turbo, etc? Interesting in this upgrade. Thanks!!!

 

I don't have any experience with that kit. My car is going in for the LPE/Magnuson Supercharger in 3 weeks. I'm hoping others that have the twin turbo kits would share some info on this forum.

 

I checked their web site. They want $12k installed for basically a full exhaust, intake, tune, and catch can. Oh, and they’re using Kooks headers, which lose power without using their cats, but of course they pair them with stock cats. They claim 30 HP, which I’m pretty sure is around what you get with ARH headers and Corsa cats on the stock tune.

 

Insane...but people keep paying these crazy prices so these greedy shops/companies are gonna keep raping corvette owners. Just to get a 93 octane tune and remove AFM would be in the $3k range which is absurd. Like the poster above stated, "If you want a fast car, buy one."

 

Probably why they sell those Kooks headers so cheap.....they don't do anything maybe gives you a little more sound. Together we're talking about $2700 with no guaranteed hp. Dyno results are showing absolutely nothing.

 

This is actually kind of funny. We wait 4 years for C8 ECU encryption to get cracked and then it kind of looks like.....dogshit...? I'm sure there will be some solid gains with headwork, cams, maybe some increased compression but at what price? $15,000 for 50whp doesn't make any more or less sense than the $30,000 people are paying to still run 10.8s in the 1/4.

Speaking of headers, anyone notice that Katech (the only other tuner so far to release 'packaged' NA upgrade paths featuring HP Tuners) does not feature any exhaust modifications in any of their packages all the way up to the '427' packages? I found that interesting.

 

It is not a huge surprise to me that headers are not a huge gain. The car comes with tubular headers. Most all the headers on the market are of similar length. If you watch Engine Masters unless you are making serious HP the differences in power between block huggers and short tubes is not that great. It is not until you get to long tubes that you start seeing real differences.

For the mild bolt-ons the stock ECU does a great job of adapting. So I did not expect big gains from tuning, as the AFR has stayed in the right range. Now if you go to a bigger cam that really needs more RPM, tuning is need to raise the RPM limit. If you go to big displacement, you need tuning, because you run out of injector, so you need to tune for the bigger injector for start-up and limp-home, and maybe for exceed the range on the mass air sensor. or table.

Instead of people complaining, people should be rejoicing. Maybe the tuners should be complaining, because headers no longer require a tune because the AFRs went off.

Forced Induction is another story. Heck you might be able to all kinds of interesting things, since the stock ECU has settings for twin turbo V8s and boost tables and all kinds of things. Well the E99 pre Global B did anyway. I haven't seen the post Global B settings.

 

This beggining of tuning is the future for these cars. It will always cost a lot to get into it,but with time and testing the power potential is there. Never mind the drivability which is most important to me.
I'm already planning a build for a forged motor setup to go with the procharger already on it. If a 427 stroker can fit a pan,that will be the route.

 

Trifecta when they broke the ECU sort of said at the time that they didn't feel like there was much juice left to squeeze out of the very capable "stock" tune and set up.

Seems like we are just asking too much out of the C8. Too often people add power for 1/4mile performance and tbh, these cars kind of suck for that application as a stand alone. They're built to be track cars and have more balanced uses. If we all wanted just 1/4mile speed, buy a hellcat and put a ton of Boost through it... or a GTO.

I myself get a little frustrated sometimes that my car isn't running 10.1 because if I spent the money I have, for say.... a hellcat. I'd probably be running 8.9... but if I tried to corner I'd be in the local paper with a where to send flowers blurb.

It's a give and take. I share the frustration that it feels like these cars should be faster but imo it has almost nothing to do with "power" on C8s... and everything to do with how the power is allowed to go to the rear wheels and at what RPM. GM absolutely blew it. If the cars weren't so damn pretty, and ride so damn smooth...I'd say we all drive them to the plant and set em ablaze as a show of protest for the abomination that is the transmission gearing.

That said... I do think with time we will see the tuning community shave some tenths off without having to remove the passenger seat, carpet, and anything not welded down.

 

If you're going to spend that much for those packages you might as well throw in the headers of your choice or most those guys probably already have headers. The quickest 2 guys are running with ARH. They definitely work with the others components. And yeah, I noticed that headers were omitted from those packages.

 

Bah, I'm still just going to sit on the sidelines while all this shakes out. I'd pay someone right now if they could build me a NA LT2 with 550-575hp for a reasonable price. Until I see that, I'm out. I guess if the kid at Starbucks is going to make $20/hr, I'm not getting a man to build me an engine for less than $20,000. Got it. I'll leave the engine stock and get the weight to under 3400 pounds and call it good.

 

Just noticed that Katech does have a bit of a more sanely priced pack on the page. It's not a 'stage' per se, rather they just call it the "K-spec Heads/Cam" pack. They claim 565hp for $14999. I'm wondering if 565hp would be enough to power through the too-tall 4th gear. Probably not. While certainly not cheap, it's not completely ridiculous if true.

As to the headers, very curious that several header brands have been verified by the community as effective based on time slips but they don't use them. Yet all of their naturally aspirated packs from Stage 2 and up utilize the Performance Design carbon intake manifold, which has definitely not been deemed 'effective' at this point. I wonder what they know that we don't?