- Feb 18, 2008
- 1,108
- 2
- 81
In late May early June, I picked up a 2004 Chevy Silverado Z71 regular cab short bed with the 5.3L V8. The truck has tons of power, but has always felt limited off the line and soft when downshifting to pass.
After researching it seems that torque management was the cause of my problem. Basically the ECU retards timing and won't give the motor 100% WOT with drive by wire throttle bodies when you floor it off the line or WOT downshifts.
Link with info on torque management
With EFILive there are a lot of tuners out there that can modify your ECU to give you more power and adjust the torque management. I found a tuner, Justin at Blackbearperformance.com, that you can do a datalog tune. To me it's the closest thing to dyno tuning.
Basically he sent me EFILive's FlashScan datalog got me to drive around cruising, stop and go, idleing, and a few WOT pulls. I then sent him the log file and he looked at the data to see how my truck was running. I then send him my ECU and modifies it based what he saw in the logs.
He is also chaning my Tow/Haul button to a different more agressive set of tables for the transmission when I really need firmer quicker shifts.
Anyways I thought it was pretty neat, b/c from everything I've read is a custom tune is much better than those handheld tuners. Most people even pick up 1-2mpg if they can keep their foot out of it.
After researching it seems that torque management was the cause of my problem. Basically the ECU retards timing and won't give the motor 100% WOT with drive by wire throttle bodies when you floor it off the line or WOT downshifts.
Link with info on torque management
With EFILive there are a lot of tuners out there that can modify your ECU to give you more power and adjust the torque management. I found a tuner, Justin at Blackbearperformance.com, that you can do a datalog tune. To me it's the closest thing to dyno tuning.
Basically he sent me EFILive's FlashScan datalog got me to drive around cruising, stop and go, idleing, and a few WOT pulls. I then sent him the log file and he looked at the data to see how my truck was running. I then send him my ECU and modifies it based what he saw in the logs.
He is also chaning my Tow/Haul button to a different more agressive set of tables for the transmission when I really need firmer quicker shifts.
Anyways I thought it was pretty neat, b/c from everything I've read is a custom tune is much better than those handheld tuners. Most people even pick up 1-2mpg if they can keep their foot out of it.