2000 Chevrolet Camaro SS “Revived”

50HP Gain/ 47 Ft. Lbs Torque

50HP Gain/ 47 Ft. Lbs Torque

This 2000 Camaro SS came to us after a Trickflow heads and cam upgrade.  The car was down on power and the owner was looking for us to find the cause.  We did an initial pull on our Superflow Autodyn AWD Dyno only to see 383 RWHP.  By our calculations this is roughly 30 HP low for the upgrades done to this car.  After some initial in-depth diagnosis we found the Flowmaster muffler to be clogged.  We removed the entire exhaust system, installed our custom tune and ran the car with open headers.  The Camaro then picked up a 15 horsepower gain.  While the gain was good it was still not enough.  We then decided to check the spark plugs.  The vehicle had the original plugs in it.  We informed the customer that with his specific application he needed to run a copper core spark plug with a smaller gap.  After installing the plugs we saw an instant 12 HP gain.  Not bad for 16 dollars.  After finding the factors holding back this cars potential we then added a Fast 102 Intake Manifold and a Fast 102mm Throttle Body.  During this installation we decided to inspect the pushrod length.  The pushrod length was fine, but whoever installed the cylinder heads and Harland-Sharp roller rockers neglected to use thread seal tape on the intake rocker arm bolts.  This leads to oil being sucked into the intake which caused this vehicle to burn/use roughly 1 quart of oil a month!  The reason being on CNC machined Trickflow cylinder heads the intake ports are opened up so much more than stock that the rocker arm bolt protrudes into it.  We fixed this problem for the customer and installed the Fast 102 parts onto the vehicle as well as a customer provided Corsa Cat-Back Exhaust.  This combination of engine diagnosis and tuning added a whopping total of 50 HP and 47 Ft. Lbs of torque at the rear wheels.  In conclusion we feel that if the customer replaced his 1 5/8″ SLP Long Tube Headers with 1 7/8″ Kooks Long Tube Headers and Y-Pipe he would gain an additional 15 RWHP.  Needless to say this customer left us extremely happy and loves driving his car now.