LS1 Tuning Explained - Why do they gain so much from tuning?

hi this is Steve from odds track this video aims to give you a bit more information about why LS 1 engines gain so much from tuning they've become a very popular engine worldwide in especially in engine swap cars now it's pretty much if you bought a secondhand LS 1 and and tuned it it's probably the cheapest highest power engine that you could use in Australia they started using the LS ones in the VT at the end of 99 and kept using them halfway through the VZ until around 2005 after that they change to the 6 litre most of the way through the ls1 engine was the same very minor adjustments in camshafts very slight changes in air boxes between the models the VT had a slightly inferior intake manifold but but really to sum it up if you put the same exhaust and the same air intake with the same camshaft on any of the LS ones any of the stock stock camshafts and analyst one the power should be very very similar between all the different models so yeah let's get started in Australia the VT was listed as being a 220 kilowatt engine and then the HSV 285 was rated at 285 kilowatts that's sort of the range of powers that were claimed by the manufacturers and pretty much you could see a little bit of evidence of holding them back especially in the earlier models the VZ has got probably the best of the factory tune settings of all the models so yeah we'll just open up one of the files and have a look at it the VT original at the end of 99 was rated at 220 kilowatts and here's its file open inside of efi live if I go to the main spark table and to a high octane table you'll see a section here in blue which is has been selected from a log that's at full throttle so it's giving you a bit of an indication of the amount of timing advance available as a maximum value on a VT LS one there's two tables there's a high and a low octane table but pretty much the PCM sees any sort of knock sensor activity and learns itself between the two tables the high to the low so that's the high that was the high there and there's a low and you'll see that the high is starting at around 14 degrees at 2200 it's probably up here at lower rpm and then ramping itself down to around 16 to 18 degrees at 5600 if I check quickly in the fuel mixture correction we'll see there's none there's none happening there and if we look in the intake air temperature correction we'll see that you know pretty much once the standard air box gets up to sixty degrees that has numbers like minus seven in there at full at full load and it's got a multiplier so will in fact pull seven degrees out when the standard air box says 60 degrees intake air temperature sensor at the intake air temperature sensor and that this is one of the reasons why we gain so much from cold air intakes with intake air temperature sensors that are in the correct place is that the standard air box really takes a lot of timing out based on heat so that timing values that you'd see there could be as low as 9 degrees of advance at full load or even less if it's been seeing knock sensor activity if we look in the requested air fuel mixture area we'll see that these are the air/fuel mixtures and you'll see a really high rpm that it's commanding an eleven point two to one and because of what's called cat enrichment which happens from repeated full load in a standard car it could even be richer than that at high rpm all right so if we go to the VX next this is the VX standard dumb Holden engines and if we go through to the same tables again and have a quick scan through them here's the high table so even lower than the VT s there's the low table even lower again there's the intake air temperature sensor table if we had sixty degrees it's saying minus eight but there's ik there's a multiplier and a multiplier is not near as active so in fact the multipliers not wanting to pull any timing out at high rpm no matter what the temperature is it's pretty interesting so yeah that's it's got less timing the main table but the corrections are pulling out less timing I'm still quite low timing values and the mixture commanded is still very similar now one thing to notice here is the shape of the high-octane table and if I put it on 3d that's a final total timing table it's actually in every V X standard holden ls1 that's ever was ever produced right if we go onto the V Y is the V Y standard Dalton V Y quickly through the same tables again here's a high table there's the low there's the intake temperature if we look at it around 60 that would be what the standard air box would say a lot Corrections a little bit more right through the range but it's pulling out less so the end result would be at really high rpm that these cars could have less than 11 degrees of timing advance at full load the commanded air/fuel mixtures are a bit leaner and that's probably what is given the V Y a little bit more power than the VX when they're in standard form the timing table is interesting to have a look at it to see the shape of it and you'll see it's a lot smoother looking than the table from the VX which was that one and while we're at it we'll just quickly grab the V T table and have a quick look at it and that's the V T and you'll see it's a lot lower timing really down here at very low rpm and the V T in particular all right if we go on to the V Z here's a V Z original Holden tune same timing table there's a fair bit more timing advance in the V Z and still fairly low in the low table to give a protection the correction it's got - sixes at 60 degrees standard airbox sort of temperatures and it's pulling most of that out so it's it's pulling out a factor of 1 or 0.9 over the six so you know basically when the timing is being assessed and what actually happens to the car is a combination of a few different tables and there's nothing in the fuel mixture table now the commanded mixtures once again similarly lean to the V Y so there's a little bit more timing a little bit leaner that's what's happened with a V Z and the timing table itself the shape of it which is sort of conducive to smoothness about delivery there it is all right now let's go through the HSV here's the VX 255 HSV really not that different than the normal 4 X short headers a little bit better exhaust and a slightly better airbox but the engine itself is the same as a normal the XS s here's the high-octane table so it's got a lot more timing advance and it sits around the 23 degrees and holding 24 at peak power and the low table is even lower higher than in the high table of a normal VX we look at the correction table is -5 degrees in it at 60 and it's pulling half of that out so it's a little bit less aggressive with with intake air temperature protection nothing in the fuel correction table and if we go to the commanded air/fuel mixtures at full load it is actually commanding quite rich yeah and if we have a look at it again at the shape of this table I think you'd be pretty amazed there it is the blue highlighted areas where you'd be at full throttle and this area the back of the mountain here is where you are when you're cruising if we look at the tables you can see there you'll be cruising a light load in this area so a lot of people would comment that a VX 255 standard very weak down low a bit of picking involved so a lot of the time they don't leave on the top table they live on the lower table if you put race fuel in a V X 255 with a standard tune it would probably make a good difference to it all right we'll go on to the to 82-62 start with this is the vy2 60 tune just quickly through its tables as well slightly less timing than a VX more protection slightly lower again for in the in the low table seven degrees here with a factor of half half of the seven so about three and a half degrees is coming out at 60 degrees and then the commanding mixtures a asking lean i mean it can ask for 13 for and 39 it doesn't mean it's going to deliver that it could probably use asking for that in getting in the 12 now if i look at the shape it's a bit of a radical change very smooth and it's sort of like a hump sort of shape table almost the whole way we go on to the VX 285 which is common for people to put in a lot of the standard cars seeing it as is a pinnacle tune it generally has as you'll see it's got a lot of timing especially through here probably too much for the carter actually live on the top table without having a perfume better than 98 so a lot of the the 285s actually live on this table or down towards this table the timing has the ability to scale between the high and the low so you know what i'm saying is that these cars are so probably rarely 100% on the top table and when they are there they're likely to be pinging even if he can't hear it here's the low table he's the intake air temperature sensor table pulling out around minus six with a factor of half of that coming out or a little bit more and here's the commanding air fuel mixture table the flat 12 7 the shape of the table different again very very much smoothed out table it's significantly different than all of the others if we scroll through them especially different than this table come on to the 285 table all right so that's that's a fair bit of information about the tune tables that are in these cars one other thing you know when a car is custom tuned the fueling is able to be made accurate everywhere one of the questions that a lot of people ask me about is you know is a massless tune better than the math tune well when you tune with a math it's just one table it's this one and it's just changing the values in there to get it accurate but the problem is that at really high loads at say 2,000 revs you might be at sort of this sort of position in the table but a low rpm at sorry at low loads and around 3,000 rpm you might in fact be in exactly the same location in the math table so the math is trying to account for it it's trying to cover all situations but it can't all it can do is match air flow with fuel and that's what a carburetor does is much if you f you have vacuum with fuel so in this situation yeah you can a map is trying to do cover all situations and a car when a car is tuned with a massless tune you can adjust it at high loads up here high load 2,000 rpm is here and low load 3000 revs could be here and you can adjust both situations where a MAF would have to account for this high load situation and this lower load situation and the fueling accuracy is not going to be as good when a car is tuned massless with a factory operating system the first thing that happens on the LS ones is the cars lose the top timing table so they can they only ever run on the low table and so you've got less protection unless a custom operating system is you is by the HP tuners VCM suite or if I live both got high and low tables and the other factor is that the standard operating system when you run a massless it drifts and tends to be leaner in hot weather and richer in cold weather and with a good custom operating system that's got the numbers sorted properly in from a lot of logging from a tuner that really knows what they're doing has had a lot of experience with tuning these cars you can get it so that in a math let's tune there isn't a drift of air/fuel mixtures with intake air temperature sensor you can you can control it as long as you can control a sensor because a lot of the time the sensors are located in you know in a location that gets incorrect readings if you put a intake air temperature sensor near something very hot it'll measure the hot material that's near it and it won't get enough information from the cold air that might be actually passing through it so there's a little bit of an extra bit of info there that needs to go into it but you know to put it simply a muffler tune when it's sorted out properly with a custom operating system will be very stable and be more accurate at all loads and all rpms in terms of air fuel mixture than the MAF with a custom tune you can optimize the timing and get the shape right and the values right and take account of all the corrections properly so that on a hot day there is less timing when the engine gets hot with coolant there's less timing and you need to have the appropriate amounts of Correction to protect the engine and and this varies from car to car some cars are going to need more protection than others earlier and it really is relevant to the car and the position of the intake sensor and so on yes so there's a fair bit in getting it customized but there's plenty of scope for a custom tune of an ls1 to be much much better than any of these files that i've i've shown you today but just a couple of other things to throw in there people often ask how much power gain is there from tuning an ls1 well we've seen on the dyno we use the highest ever result of around 265 rural kilowatts which is which is a pretty rare result I mean there's a lot of cars that have been 20 kilowatts less than that but this car had the standard cam and had full exhaust and a good full exhaust and a good over radiator it was very very old engine that had been probably Frost all its life which tends to be the type that make the most power and it made a big number now that car if it was brought to us absolutely stock with a standard exhaust and a standard intake it probably would have been 205 kilowatts somewhere in that vicinity because the LS ones are getting on a little bit now it could even be less than that because the cuts could be restricting more and there's a number of things but yeah pretty much a lot of the LS ones will end up with a pretty good number the ones that gain the least are the ones that probably are making the most to start with and they're making closer to that 265 number I was talking about the start with some cars perform incredibly well by accident some of them there if their fuel systems are on the way out maybe they're rusting out or the pressure from the fuel system is lower and that causes them to be accidentally leaner than the normal and you know when the cup asking for 11 - and getting 12 3 it probably will be making a lot more power just purely by accident so yeah there are some situations that pop up where cars are making a good amount of power with the standard tune but there's still plenty of space as I said for improvement in smoothness and improving fuel economy people often ask me why they improve so much in fuel economy and it's because if you can maximize their torque at low rpm the driver can use less throttle and then they can also use a lower rpm in 6th gear and there's massive gains to be had in fuel economy a lot of the time the data we see on especially on the TV X's is gains of 15% or more from from exhaust and intake in attune some cars are already got a cap back and when they put the intake in a tune on now that they've seen 15 or 20% B rare than an ls1 when it's tuned doesn't gain by at least 10% in fuel economy now a couple of other things one of the things that I've considered is as is upon a lot of ls1 engine owners is that their fuel injectors are getting too old now a lot of people have got fuel injectors that are dirty and because of that not all your cylinders are getting the same amount of fuel now if one cylinder is down by 15% in fuel it's going to mean that that cylinders a fuel mixture is at full load are 15 percent lean and that's a massive amount to Lena to be on that cylinder now that cylinder will probably ping a lot easier than the others and because of that if you would have a car tuned you would need to have a lot lower timing values for timing advance in the car then another than if you had brand-new fuel injectors in your car or at least ones that were equally balanced from being cleaned and flow tested and so on my suggestion for a lot of people if they've got an ls1 that's not making the power that you hope that it should or not as fast as your friends get some new fuel injectors you can buy a few you can buy them from a few sources fairly cheaply get them fitted you probably be amazed that the gains that you'll get the same also is with standard engine pipes and standard cap converters I mean they're 10 years old now in a lot of cases we've seen a fair few catalytic converters that are that have collapsed or are very close to being blocked up not enough to be severe that you would notice but we're seeing a fair for you that I've got cats that are much much more restrictive than they would have been when they were new I'm just changing the cuts and changing the injectors could gain you a lot of horsepower well that's it for this video if you want more information you can go to our website at odds track on that are you the number of articles that we've produced that are at the top a link from the top and we'll be creating many more videos like this one thanks for listening

Channel: Oztrack

Views: 95,796

Rating: 4.7647057 out of 5

Keywords: Oztrack, Oztrack Tuning, Holden, Commodore, HSV, V8, ls1, ls1 tuning, mafless tuning, GM LS Engine (Engine Type), V8 Engine (Engine Type), efilive, efi live, Hp Tuners, Dyno Tuning, Duspeed, tuning, dyno, mail order tuning, mail order tune, mail order tunes, mail tuning, mafless, remote tuning, ls2, tune, holden commodore, gm ls engine, hptuners, EFILive, ls6, ls, tuner, hsv tuning, camaro ss, e38 tuning, how to tune

Id: VfpmNhCKBis

Length: 23min 25sec (1405 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 02 2014