New '16 Z06 owner. What to know and good mods
 

I just purchased a 2016 Z06 with 2LZ & PDR. This is my seventh vette, but have never owned a C7. What do I need to know about the car that I most likely wouldn't know from previous versions? What are some good modifications that I should do? I eventually want to gain around 75 - 100 horsepower.

Budget to get to 75-100hp? Want to leave room for future growth (i.e. different blower) or keep the stock unit? Using alternate fuels or only interested in pump gas? Several different ways to skin that cat.

I want to keep it on 91 octane. I figured a CAI and smaller pulley. The expansion tank for the inter-cooler sounds like a smart choice. I also want to install a 160 thermostat and change the radiator coolant mix to 70% distilled water/30% antifreeze with a heat transfer additive. I'm not sure I want to do a full exhaust switch, although those mods I mentioned probably won't get me there. This will be my regular driver during the week when I'm not riding my motorcycle. It may occasionally see the drag strip.

This pretty much my situation except for the daily driver. I would add to the above the insulators between the supercharger and the heads from FasterProms. Although this involves lifting the supercharger to install it looks like the return is worth the trouble with no downside. Looks to me like you can get a decent boost in performance with just a few boltons and heat management.

These C7 Z06 cars are prone to heat saturation on the supercharger. So, cooling the engine (t-stat, proper coolant mix with heat transfer agent like water wetter) and expanding the capacity of the supercharger inter-cooler (expansion tank) will help to resolve that issue. Of course, if you change the thermostat from a 187 to 160, the tune should be modified to turn the electric cooling fans on sooner.

This pretty much my situation except for the daily driver. I would add to the above the insulators between the supercharger and the heads from FasterProms. Although this involves lifting the supercharger to install it looks like the return is worth the trouble with no downside. Looks to like you can get a decent boost in performance with just a few boltons and heat management.

Just to update this thread I have gathered most of the parts I am going to install. I did a baseline dyno pull to see what my 2016 ZO6/ZO7/auto makes and had the tech pull the tune to verify no tuning had been done on the car. As expected the car made 649.64 HP at 5,770 RPM & 610.71 ft/lbs torque at 3,680 RPM. The A/F at peak TQ was 12.6/1 and at peak HP it was 10.8/1. Made three runs and all three were within 2 HP & A/F was essentially unchanged. I believe these numbers are average for a stock ZO6 auto trans car. The reason I had the tune checked was that my fan & intercooler pump both start when the car is started cold. Could find no reason in the tune for this and a quick look at the wiring did not reveal any alterations. I am going to make changes in stages and try and dyno for each step. Next up will be to install the Burger filter, the Mamo ported T.B. & drive the car for several hundred miles before taking it back to the dyno. The reason for the 200 mile drive is to give the car a chance to adapt to the changes. There has been some controversy here concerning the ECU compensating over time for bolt on changes & reducing performance back to the norm. This seems to be problem on 2017 & up cars if it is actually a problem. The next stage will be to install the Borla mid pipe (no secondary cats) and install bungs in same for A/F sampling. Same drill as before, drive a couple of hundred miles and dyno the car again with the stock tune. The last step will be to install Fasterproms expansion tank, Fasterproms thermal reduction plates, Fasterproms ram air duct, Fasterproms 2.31 pulley, AFE intake, 160 degree thermostat & have the car dyno tuned. I now have everything in hand but the Fasterproms 2.31 pulley and the 160 degree tstat which are both on order. Any further mods will be to increase the cooling efficiency if necessary.

Why dyno the car after every mod? Unless you are using the dyno for free, it seems like a waste of time and money. Even if you are looking to show what each modification does or doesn't do, every car is going to be dyno'ed in different conditions. So there will be variances between your results and others.

On the bright side, I now feel better about the mods that I have on my car. Seems my results are very good.

Because I am a curious guy and I can afford to do it :cheers: The dyno tuner in Louisville (Dynosty) is meticulous and all readings are SAE corrected so they should be reasonably comparable.

Those HP are really high if your car is stock typical A8 car is 540/550 ish then after heat soak it goes down, M7 cars make 570/580 ish.

I intend to re-dyno after installing the Mamo T.B & the Burger filter install. Both mods pretty common here. No sense in separate dyno sessions for each part in my judgment. There will be a total of 4 dyno sessions. The baseline which has been done, a second dyno session for the Mamo T.B & Burger filter install (no tune), a third dyno session for the addition of the Borla mid-pipe (no tune) and a final dyno session and tune for the addition of the AFE intake, Fasterproms 2.31 pulley, Fasterproms ram air duct, Fasterproms auxiliary intercooler tank, Fasterproms thermal induction plates & 160 degree thermostat.

It is stock as we pulled the tune before dyno runs to verify. Gas was 93 octane Shell reformulated. Engine temps were reasonable when we did dyno runs (185 to 195) & OA temp was 89F. All readings were SAE corrected. If HP & TQ are high they are at the high end of normal.

You meant 549.64 HP at 5,770 RPM & 510.71tq.... not 6xx, Im guessing? If not, and car is stock, then that dyno is broken

I could see the torque being 610 but no way the HP is 649 at the wheels on a stock car. The Z06 is only rated at 650 at the crank.

Yes it was a typo. The HP was 549.64 and the TQ was 610. Sorry about that. I got the Momo T.B. and the Burger filter installed about an hour ago. Easy install even for a senior citizen like me. It took just over 1 hour. Will take it out for a test drive this evening. :cheers:

definitely interested to see where this goes!

I hope you guys keep the thread going. I'm also interested to see your results. I have a 2018 Z06 w/Z07, M7 headed this way soon.