Yes, you can.. That's how mine is sitting right now.

 

Wow nice work! Anxious to see the fi Kagee product!

Sorry iPhone over corrects sometime. I meant to say finished product

 

Thanks!

As of the end of this weekend, I've put a couple hundred miles on it with mixed highway and stop-and-go driving. I tried to downshift when I could for deceleration and have been putting heat cycles on the engine, going up in boost over time.

I'll be scheduling some time with Vince hopefully this week and see if we can finish polishing up the tune.

Power is smooth and progressive going up the RPM range. It doesn't have that sudden surge of torque and then letting up feeling as you get way up in the RPM range like many SS/TCs . It has more of a freight train feeling that the TVS SS/SCs and a few of the tuned or turbo swapped SS/TCs feel like, with the pull getting harder and harder as RPMs climb. I currently have the limiter set at 6,500 RPM, so I haven't gone any further than that. I probably shouldn't anyway for now, for the sake of the turbo. It does feel like it could use a larger turbo though, as it feels like it's really hitting its pace on the top end, and then it's time to shift.

Vince was saying that the ported head has typically allowed for a lot more mid and high end timing, so this might end up keeping the traditional SS/TC mid range torque while allowing for more timing on the top end to help offset the turbo running out of breath. We'll have to see.

 

Just another update:

The clutch is getting more driveable now. As it's getting broken in it's becoming more slippable from a stop. It holds like Chuck Norris' hands pressed together though when you're getting on it.

Still working on the tune, but it's pretty promising so far. Last night I moved 35.5lbs/min of air with LTFT of 0 and STFT of +5, so that puts it around 37.25 lbs/min. I'm currently topping out at around 18.5* advance and using E85. Limiter still set at 6,500 RPM.

Vince worked a bit on the cam phasing on the last revision and it greatly helped. The off-boost power, response, and economy improved. On a ~100mile round-trip highway cruise out of town and back I averaged ~40.5mpg.

 

40.5 mpg? You sure you didn't mean 30? I can't see that on E85. What did you use to measure?

 

40.5 mpg on E85?

 

i was getting like 14mpg

 

stamina, congrats bro glad to hear and see this build going well. Can you report more on the phenolic spacers? I got the throttle body and intake kit for my build. The 40.5 dors seem high but i can believe that a huge improvement in gas mileage occuring. On my 05 Gli i did the same phenolic intake spacer to help prevent heat transfer to the manifold and wow just in 2 days i had upped my mpg by 7 gallons( real time and at 80mph). Is your manifold cold to the touch? What sealant did you use?

 

Full disclosure:
40.5mpg is correct, as reported on the DIC. If you want to be exact, it was 40.5mpg right up until I was about to stop and then flipped to 40.4mpg, so I'm rounding up since it must be like 40.48mpg or something. lol

I started it right before getting on the highway, was being easy on the pedal, and kept it in that 60-65mph sweet spot. It wasn't city driving, but mainly highway and a little bit of stop and go driving. I've been running E85 for a while now so the DIC should be pretty accurate (it has been the last few times I've checked it, so I assume it is this time). Vince doesn't use the same method to enable E85 as some of the HPT methods, so it shouldn't affect the calculations as much as some of the methods of enabling E85.

So, due to some setbacks with the Phenolic Spacer during the engine swap process, we aborted the spacer install for time sake. I'm planning on going back and doing it when I have some time again.

In general, the two holes in the top of spacer were not large enough to fit around the intake manifold studs coming out of the head, so the holes will need to be enlarged. We also needed to pull out the stud where the intake manifold support bar and vacuum tank plate bolts to and installed a longer stud (since when the small included washer-spacer to make everything align correctly with the IM support bar was installed, there was no longer any stud thread left to spin the nut onto). There also wasn't a washer-spacer included for the bolt on the other side of the vacuum tank plate, so I guess they're thinking I'm just going to leave the plate cockeyed on there. All that taken into account, there seems to have been a bit of a shortcut taken in the R&D aspect of it, since they would have run into all of these things had they actually tried installing it on a Cobalt.

The spacer uses a super thin (like you can still see through it) layer of RTV on both sides.

I'm looking forward to getting it on there. I didn't get the TB spacer too because I felt like that would get minimal gains and be like changing things just to change things. It might have messed with the charge piping geometry too, depending on its thickness.

 

I don't buy what the DIC says. You should fill it up, write down your mileage and then drain the tank and see where you end up. That's the only way. I just don't buy 40.5 mpg on E85. If you do this and still get 40mpg, I'm going straight E85

 

Forget that.

I can probably try doing another DIC comparison next time I fill up. It's been pretty close historically. There have been a few times it's been wrong before, but I think it was because I forgot to reset it after topping off the time before. Regardless though, even if it was on straight 93 that's pretty awesome in my opinion.

 

I agree. I don't want to sound cynical but if you are really getting 40+ mpg on E85 then that's about 10 mpg better than anyone else who uses E85.

Either way, I would definitely like to see that kind of mileage when I get mine back together.

 

I don't think the DIC can be correct with the injector constant being changed for E85.

 

I'm running the phenolic spacer havnt notice any mpg changes but after a few wot the manifold is warm to touch and the sealant is high temp grey rtv

 

Oh sweet dude, i didnt know. Thanks for the input!

 

Oh I agree that it's unusual. That's why I posted it up. My point though is also that, E85 vs 93 aside, it did great things for the low-end drivability and fuel economy once we started dialing the cams in. Before I was lucky to get much above 30mpg on gas. Even if the DIC is working off of the assumption I'm burning gas, I'd still take it. Maybe I can switch over to 93 and try that too if the injector constants throwing things off is a concern. It might help throw out some possibilities.

On that note, I'm wondering how much the Stage 1 cams and ported head have to do with it.

I'm wondering how much of that is head-transmitted heat versus just radiated engine compartment heat.

 

Before I installed the spacer after pulls the manifold would too hot to touch now its a lil warm. It really is a big difference the spacer works really well

 

Remember, Vince is also doing something a little different with your cruising AFR too which would yield you a better MPG number while cruising. Didn't want to disclose the 'what' if your not comfortable

 

The only true way to calcualte mpg with your setup is going to be to reset your trip meter and divide by gallons of gas at the next fill up.

 

Update on the gas mileage thing:

So I spoke with Vince about the calculation and he stated the reported mileage was BCM related and was still subject to the 93 octane calculations. That was weird because I seem to remember doing a DIC vs fillup calculation on E85 too, but I guess I hadn't.

So the calculation difference I knew of in his tunes was with relation to the issues of some non-Trifecta cars on E85 having phantom KR issues. By fattening up the tables for E85, it causes the knock sensors to become more sensitive. This means the car pulling timing when it shouldn't.

So I admit I was wrong about those things.



Now on to the fuel topic itself:

Tonight I filled up on E85. The pump clicked off at 8.011 gallons. I had also filled up on E85 earlier in the week with one of my jugs that I had put exactly 5 gallons in. I had gotten 274miles on the odometer since my last fill-up at the station.

So... 274miles / (8+5gallons) = 21.08mpg

The DIC at the time said I had gotten 24.1mpg since the last fill-up.

So... 21.08/24.1 = 0.874

This means that the mileage I was getting on E85 was ~87.4% of what the DIC has been saying recently.

So... 40.5mpg reading from the other day... take ~87.4% of that. That gives you ~35.4mpg on E85.

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen. ~35.4mpg on E85 and ~40.5mpg on 93.

 

I understand your logic with the .874 correction factor, but I don't believe it will end up working out that way. You should keep track for a few fill ups and divide it out manually like you did to make sure you get the same results. I don't believe how you can get almost 10mpg more than everyone else on both E85 and 93.

 

Yeah, I see what you're saying. I only posted it up because it caught me by surprise.

People also need to keep in mind that the car is far from stock, so there's no telling what the engine dynamics are now between the different engine and associated mods. The car's even got some weight reduction and slightly altered aero properties that could all in their own way change things a bit. Comparing a stock SS/TC or even a bolted SS/TC is a bit like apples and oranges at this point.

Since this seems like such a tough crowd, maybe I'll top off the car, repeat my route, and then end the trip back at the gas station to see how many gallons it took.

 

But your sig says you have g85 and a dashdaq

I'm just interested to see if you are making the kind of power you are, what kind of mileage you are still able to squeak out of it.

 

People started flaming me for having a ridiculously long mod list, so I kept it to the basics on my sig and stuck the mods in a listing in the Garage if people were really that interested.

Yeah, I'm tempted to just do another test and then take pics of the DIC and gas station pump readout or something. It would be interesting to see if I can recreate it. A part of me's like what's the point though because people will still find something to complain about and say there's some part of it that's still doubtful. I dunno.

So if I do it again and take pics this time, will people finally believe it? lol

 

I would believe it as long as you are not using the car for anything but it's mileage counter when it comes to calculating the mpg... I think the car can't handle the changes you made to it when calculating the mpg.