I live in Cali and want to keep my 2001 Z06 smog-legal. I was planning on just tuning it NA with the Vararam Ram Jet II (name?) with a 90mm TB, the F.A.S.T. intake manifold, LG longtube headers (legal?) and probably Corsa exhaust. All I really hear about is Corsa exhaust, is there a site I can go to check out gains / acoustics? Thanks for your advice, all!
After getting this all done, I of course would get it Dyno Tuned, etc. Do you guys think I would need to add any fuel to match the flow of the air? And what about the ECU/chip? What gains do you guys think I should be able to get from all of this?
Alright, so I spoke with Al and he had this to say:
Hi
I was looking over your email and the first thing that comes to mind is keeping it legal. The first thing is that long tube headers are not legal no matter what brand, but we can work around this. I need to get an idea of what kind of power or gain are you looking for. The smog legal way we can make roughly 400 rwhp and about 390 rwtq. The fast manifold works reall well on highly moded cars making over 450hp. The stock LS6 manifold works great and would recomend using your stock manifold and throttle body in conjunction with the vararam cold air intake system. as far as the corsa goes it has a bright sound and really wont make anymore power than your stock titanium sytem which works reall well. What we can do to make more power and still stay legal would be to replace the stock cam with a mild aftermarket cam and this way you would be 100% legal and make a decent power gain. The cam I have in mind is a 222/222 with 571/571 lift with a LSA of 113. This cam is bigger than stock and will make more power from the bottom up to redline and pass smog. In fact the car will run cleaner stock after we tune the car on the dyno the cost for these mods are 329 fort the vararam 425 for the cam 475 the springs bases and retainers 475 installation is 700. and tune 650.
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I'm actually looking for a little more than that, maybe 430-480rwhp. Anyone have any idea how to make this legal? I'll call Al later today and see what he has to say but any heads-up from you guys would greatly be appreciated, thanks!
If you want that much power smog legal, simply slap a Magnusson blower on there. Lapd can do that as well. You will NOT hit 430-480rwhp without going with a bigger cam, a ported set of heads, and other crap. And by the time youve done all that, youve spent supercharger-levels of money.
No question, maggie all the way for what you want.
I think you should look in to LGs i Texas. They have a sniffer legal H/C combo that will make round 450 rwhp with a good tune. But that is with Long Tube Headers and high flow cats. Also heard the advise to get a ported FAST manifold. I´v got the above except the ported variant of FAST and I´m very happy. Only problem is with the Random Cats. They seem to get blown out. So perhaps som better high flow cats form the beginning. Also you can fill upp half petrol and half E-85 befor sniffer test, if you got that in CA
Regards Tomas
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Silver -01 Z06 with Vararam, NW 90mm and Fast Intake, LG pro headers w cats, 205 AFR heads 11:1, LG GXE cam so far.
Living in CA, you have to make some sacrifices to appease the smog nazis. CA has some rather stringent and unique laws requiring all of your parts to have a CARB (Caliornia Air Resource Board) certification, and these will be checked upon the visual inspection, which is part of the smog check. Thus passing the sniffer is the least of your worries. There are currently no longtube headers with CARB cert. The law says the car has to retain the stock number and location of cats; longtubes usually move cats downstream, making this modification illegal. However there are sets of short tube headers that are CARB legal, denoted by advertising as "50 state legal". Then again, you can throw on a set of longtubes and revert back to stock for smog, or just hope they miss them on visual (not very likely since you can easily see them from the engine compartment - though I have seen people get away with covering them with an ugly baffle). Aftermarket cats may or may not be legal; I can't remember. But anything from the cats back is legal in a smog shop, regardless of sound level. Thats for the cops to take care of. You can't legally run an aftermarket cam either. Though if it doesn't lope, theres no way they'll discover it. I believe CAIs to be legal as long as theyre not open element. Youy can't go wrong with a bigger intake or TB if its got a CARB number (though I'd go ahead and grind off the "FAST" logo and paint it black so it doesnt draw their attention). Still, I think the LS6 setup is more than adequete for any power you'd make with a passable cam. There isn't much you can do legally, but if you're discreet about everything and don't draw too much attention, you can get away with a lot. But you're never goin to make much more than 400-420 rear wheel very easily. If you want to be legal and make a lot more, blower is the only way to go.
Bryan
Last edited by weirdpanda : 10-14-2006 at 01:24 PM.
Did not expect that the CA law was that extrem. Sorry for you guys in CA, it sounds even worse than in Sweden and I did not think that was possible. Poor consolation it is that in our country it´s even more difficult to get a blower pass the inspection. Well, hope you can get your Vette faster with out getting into trouble with the law. And soon in two weeks time I´m on for the inspection in Sweden and I hope I can pass the test with the new mods.
Tomas
Im running quite the illegal set up and In my particular case Im at 415 rwhp with a decent cam.
Youre not gonna break 400 rwhp with smog legal bolt-ons NA.
For the power you want I would consider Vortech's 9 psi kit, it has a CARB # and will put you well over 500 rwhp tuned (520-550 or so).
Downside is, with 10.5:1 compression, piston ring longevity is questionable. And the fact that we only have 91 octane doesnt help. If you track the car you need to consider the fact that youre adding 70 lbs to the nose of your car.
Centrifugal power is exponential and very linear, great dyno #'s but street and strip performance doesnt mirror the pretty dyno numbers.
I had the opportunity of running a pro-charged C5 Z, due to fuel starvation issues his tuner had set his rev limiter to 5900 rpm. He still made 490 rwhp at that RPM and 450 rwtq. We ran from a dig, and by 120 or so I had a car length on him.
Most H/C LS1 cars will run on par with centrifugal supercharged LS1 cars making 50 more rwhp.
Some shops dont sweat LT's on the visual, as long as it passes the sniffer youre ok. You could make good power with a set of decent heads, LT's, FAST, a smog legal cam and a good CAI. Probably 420 rwhp at the most with the limitations stemming from the cam restriction.
If you want to be totally legal to include visually, I would consider going with a forged 402 LS2, even with a smog legal cam and CARB approved shorties you may break 500 rwhp with a much broader useable powerband and less weight.
This is the route I am going when I can afford to do so ($10k), albeit with my LT's, ETP or AFR heads and a GNARLY cam. There are plenty of ways to get by smog here in california.......
Thanks for th einfo, guys... I'm not so particular about visual inspection, just so long as it passes the sniffer. Thanks for all of the advice, and I'm sure you'll see plenty more questions from me in the near future.
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