With the release of the new VE commodore
we felt it was time to start another Project car , Project
Monaro is still under construction with a cage and new
rear chassis which is in the final stages of construction
and update will be printed when complete.
The new VE opens up a whole new potential
for the GENx series of engines , the 6.0L is a great
starting base with its increased capacity and new redesigned
high flow heads , the downside is the Commodore has been
getting increasingly heavier with every model change .
The aim of Project VE is to follow the
path most people that buy the car would ,the car has to be
totally streetable , return good fuel economy and be street
legal.
We will be doing a full series of upgrades
from bolt on upgrades to find out what works and what
doesn't so the readers can make informed choices.
Also on the agenda is camshaft upgrades
which should yield good results given the engine package and
we will be looking at looked at forced induction . We had
intended to also look at a turbo setup but with the current
legislation a turbo car over 4.0L cant be registered in WA
legally and we have no intention of driving around a illegal
car with all the problems of insurance and public liability.
On searching the yards looking for a
suitable car to start modifying we decided to go with the
harder option of a SS-V auto due to this being a daily
city driver and we chose the V option for the better leather
seats, climate control and Stereo system which we believe we
will be able to get around the can-bus integration at a
later date to do a stereo install and DVD integration.
Initial test drives of the car to run the
motor in left us pleasantly surprised with the drivability
of the std 270kw package , the car launched out of the hole
nicely even with its 2.92 diff ratio due to a lower 1st gear
in the all new 6 speed gearbox , cornering is vastly
improved on the older series of Commodore even with the
added weight but we could feel there was room for suspension
improvement , even if it was just to get the car down in the
weeds rather than the factory 4wd look - next issue we will
look at a suspension upgrade as well as some cosmetics.
Down at the dragstrip things were a
different story with the car unable to crack a 13 sec time
card , the best of the day on its first outing in totally
stock form was 14.1@100mph
with the engine suffering badly from heat soak and every run
getting slower than the previous. Back at the shop the car
was strapped to the dyno for its baseline run , with the car
just warmed up the first run was 207 rwkw ( which equates to
approx 270 kw at the motor ) , but the most noticeable thing
was every run lost approx 4 kw due to heat soak which is
exactly what we experienced at the track.
We immediately decided some
quality cold air was required so purchased a of the shelf
cold air from a interstate company that was advertised to be the
"THING" , bolting it on immediately helped raising power to
211kw but after 3 runs it kept separating its hoses due to
its inflexible design and power dropped off as the
piping heated up. Back to the drawing board , we knew
that the cold air was working but could see a few potential
problems , in that a poor quality filter was supplied with
the kit and being aluminum where it passed in front of the
radiator it was absorbing too much heat. ( with any GENx
motor induction heat is the biggest power killer , with
earlier models we could eliminate the issue with a direct
over the radiator intake but with the VE this is not a
option )
It was decided to make our own induction
kit that had the flexibility of silicon hose bends
and used a full size K&N pod filter setup to maximize the
potential of the motor, this would ensure we didn't get the
heat soak into the intake and the pipe work wouldn't come
loose as the engine moved in the engine bay
.JPG)
On the dyno the results showed immediately
, power rose to
a honest 220 rwkw and repeated dyno pulls showed it
maintained consistent power. back at the track our results
where backed up with a string of 13.78@102mph
passes showing we had headed in the right
direction. A added bonus was the new induction roar when
giving it some stick.
After a promising result it was time to
put the car back on the dyno and see what we could do with a
PCM tune , knowing that we were going to be limited by the
std exhaust but wanting to find the potential of the std
package.
By carefully manipulating the tables in
the PCM with EFILIVE to maximize the power delivery we found
the new motor to be very spark sensitive especially with the
exhaust being so restrictive , careful modifications were
made to the torque management system as well as the fuel
control to optimize the tune resulting in a healthy gain of
power and torque throughout the entire rev range netting a
healthy 231 rwkw from our std package ( or approx 310
kw at the engine )back at the track again we where
pleasantly surprised to find the SSV consistently running
13.5@104mph not bad
considering the little amount of effort involved to drop
over 1/2 sec from its showroom spec time.
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Next issue we will look at different
exhaust designs to see what works best for these engines and
get the car to the track to see if we can get that 12
News
Flash , first pass at the track with new exhaust system and
tune the car ran 12.93@107
mph , more details next issue of PSC and we will try some
different launch techniques
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