I've got a brand new eco on the engine stand, and I'm beating myself up about what I want to do with it. At first I thought about getting a turbo setup, but to be honest I don't really care for the way they are being tuned (example: no computer tuning, just fmu's, etc). I just don't think I could tune the car to run the level of power I want. FMU's don't seem to get the job done on a car running 300+ hp (correct me if I'm wrong). I've decided to forget about boost, and add nitrous. I have a lot of experience with nitrous, mostly on my Z-28, but it's the same concept. Don't try to change my mind on my build or give me any crap about it . I'm going to throw all new internals in the car and do a direct port setup, probably giving me a total of 200hp (above the stock number obviously).

I do want to do some na work to the motor before it goes into the car. I'd like to add a air intake (can easily make my own out of aluminum), header and full header back exhaust, cams and springs, and flywheel and pulley, and anything else I might find useful along the way.

My concern with all of this (and I've done a lot of searching so don't flame me) is the tuning. I have no way of changing the timing on this car... I have no way of tuning the fuel curve for the cams (won't really matter for the nitrous, it's a wet setup). I know I can get colder plugs and such, but nothing protects the investement better than a little retard.... I don't want to spend the time with megasquirt...it seems too time consuming for me right now, I've read the greddy setup doesn't exactly agree with our computers, and standalone is more money than I want to dump in a cavalier (no offense to anyone, I'd rather have money left for my Camaro though)

So what are the eco guys doing that add aftermarket camshafts? I know in the LT1 world it's simple. I plug in my laptop and program my own fuel/spark tables etc., and I'm off! I know this isn't available to the jbody crowd......so whats the story? I KNOW those cams change the fuel requirements of the cars.....so WHAT GIVES? Are you guys just installing them and not getting the full potential out of them? As for hptuners and such....I really don't want to sit around forever waiting on a product that may never be.....I would like any answers I get to be "here and now" solutions. THANKS!!

Sheesh, they really should have an edit button.


Forgot to mention, I want to do an aftermarket head, which will also change the fuel requirements.........

you can retard the timing with cam gears

aem makes those also patriot performance makes nitrous grind camshafts and aeromotive and accel make fuel pressure regulators for lt1 cars that fit ecos

Progressive controller, colder plugs, MSD DIS-II (so it can retard the engine while you get on the nitrous), FPR, better flowing fuel pump, and maybe rods. They've tested the Eco to stand a good amount of power but I still say be safe than sorry. I'd go ahead and get some pistons also.

Once all that's done, you'll have traction issues out the _ss. Good luck!


N2O + Bolt-ons = 220Hp/250Tq

Coming Soon:HpTunersPro, EagleConnectingRods, WiescoPistons, 13sec2200

deltron3030 wrote:you can retard the timing with cam gears

Quote:

aem makes those also patriot performance makes nitrous grind camshafts and aeromotive and accel make fuel pressure regulators for lt1 cars that fit ecos

cam timing and ignition timing are two completely different things... he's talking about igntion timing for nitrous, which should be retarded roughly 2 degrees per 50 shot. Oh, and you'll find that adjusting the base fuel pressure on your 04 won't do jack for you except screw up your adaptive fuel trims.

Quote:

I KNOW those cams change the fuel requirements of the cars.....so WHAT GIVES? Are you guys just installing them and not getting the full potential out of them?

unfortunately, thats exactly what they're doing. In some cases i'm sure its even robbing performance from stock.

Now mind you, from experience, the emanage doen't work for tuning big injectors on a boosted 04 eco (other years may work, there is some debate on this and some people claim that everything is hunky dory with emanage on their 03's). However, the ignition timing function of the emanage worked flawlessly, and never caused a problem. In fact, we managed to raise the trap speed of the car by i think about 1 mph just by tweaking the timing advance when it was still all motor. We didn't have the additional fuel working properly yet then though, so i don't know for a fact if emanage will or will not be sufficient for tuning an all motor eco. if you're daring enough to try it i know someone with a full emanage setup for the eco for sale, since he has since gone to Megasquirt.

I believe that the programmable MSD boxes allow you to adjust timing, and Rodimus Prime has set up a working MSD system on the eco, so if you can track him down, he'd be the guy to talk too. As for fuel tuning, IMO $$ for $$ megasquirt is totally unrivaled when paired with a wideband O2 sensor for use with the MegaTweak autotuning function. For the cost it can't really be beat either. My only question is this: if you're going through all the time and effort (and expense) to build a motor that can tolerate such power levels, why are you going to limit yourself in how you can tune it? Granted, theres not much out there for J-bodies, but if you buy a preassembled Megasquirt unit , it doesn't get much easier to install and tune than that, and for under $350, you won't find something with its tuning capability. You can also make that control spark but since we haven't used it for that yet I'm not going to yammer on about something I haven't actually worked with. The Megasquirt forums are also a valuable resource where you can find support all the time for your project.




Arrival Blue 04 LS Sport
Eco
Turbo
Megasquirt
'Nuff said

Scarab, thanks for the knowledgeable reply and constructive criticism

My initial plan with this motor was to just get some rods and pistons, get the mix balanced and throw it together, and throw a big shot of nitrous to it. There is no hurry, because my current eco (in the car) has only 60k miles on it.... I'm not even worried about doing cams right away, because they can be taken care of easily from the top of the motor. I don't need to tune to fuel curve to run nitrous....so I'm not really concerned about going out and spending money and time squirting the car.

I knew about the msd setup, but it just seemed it would be easier to program the spark timing, because thats what I'm used to doing. Looks to me like I'm going to just get a MSD setup, piece together a direct port nitrous setup (have most of the stuff), and obviously do the internals, which is also easy, because I've got a new motor which will not require machining. I'll put the cams on the back burner until someone comes out with a tuner......I just don't think that I want to spend money on cams and megasquirt. It adds a lot of time and money that I would rather be spending on the Z-28...which will hopefully break into the 11's off the bottle this year...

Thanks again!

Quote:

for under $350, you won't find something with its tuning capability

Try GM OBDI ecm's. There's almost 2100 variables to mess with, along with writing your own code if you're so inclined. Last one I bought was $20.

-->Slow

slowolej wrote:

Quote:

for under $350, you won't find something with its tuning capability

Try GM OBDI ecm's. There's almost 2100 variables to mess with, along with writing your own code if you're so inclined. Last one I bought was $20.

-->Slow

Ah, but they still can't tune themselves, can they?




Arrival Blue 04 LS Sport
Eco
Turbo
Megasquirt
'Nuff said

They can tune themselves with modified code. I rode in a turbo Grand Prix which had self tuning ability, along with 1% accuracy in air density calculations. And this was pre-wideband!

-->Slow