Talk about being fustrated. 2000 Camaro SS with only about 42,000 miles on the ticker. recently had Patriot Performance S2 heads, T-rex cam, Ported Fast 90 / 90, plus a few other odds and ends installed. Already had pretty much all the bolt on's plus true dual exhaust. Prior to these mods, I was running a MTI T1 cam with stock heads. Never dynoed it but it made decent power and ran low 12's with a crappy 60' and half *** tuning.

So all these mods went in a few weeks ago while I was on vacation. I had Jeremy Formato come down to the shop and tune it. Long story short, he was kind of rushed because he was going on vaca the next day and they were having issues with the car. He tuned it good enough to idle and drive but they only got 370 hp to rear wheels. Found out it was a bad spark plug wire causing the issues (after he was already on vaca) so figured I'd bring it back at a later date and get things worked out. Because of scheduling conflicts, and a lack of patience on my part, I took it to a different shop today that happened to have Mike Norris there doing tuning.

Well, Mike got it running a lot better in the lower RPM's, but we gained NO HP!!! A/F ratio is good and he even made it pig rich and then lean and there was little to no change in HP. We were sitting between 360 - 370 to the rear wheels. How is that even possible with what I have?

The car is a M6 and I have a 9" with 4.30 gears, so I know I'll lose some HP with that, but not that much. Driving, the car has no *****. Stomping it in first the tires won't even break loose, and I'm running normal street tires.

Mike mentioned the cam may not have been degreed properly when it was installed. Does that sound like a likely culprit? I'm gonna have a compression test done and see what that yields.

Just really fustrated. I've spent around $5000 in the past month or so and now my car is slower, figures.

 

there could be dozens of things wrong. its just time to start going thru it little by little. i would say its just a poorly matched combo but even still it should net more then that.

 

It's not listed in your signature, but does your car have catalytic converters? The T-Rex cam absolutely does not tolerate any back pressure. I've seen the removal of cats make a 60 rwhp increase on a T-Rex before. If this is not the case, then a compression test might show if the intake centerline is off or if you have some kind of other problem. Your tuners should also do a balance test with their laptop that drops cylinders to see if you have a dead hole. You could have a fuel or spark problem that wouldn't show up with a compression or leakdown test.

 

like said above it could be the cam not matching the heads . might want to try a smaller cam if everything else checks out .

 

am i the only one thats noticing everytime someone complains about a combo that loses power over a previous and inferior combo that theres always the same heads mentioned?

 

that sucks! good luck, listen to Pat G..

 

nothing wrong with Patriot heads...

im running them and a little Comp 224/.581/112lsa cam putting down 443/402...

i see no problem or inferior product with that...

now you could say that the 9" and 4.30's gears are killing his numbers which is the truth and i'd agree with you on that. nothing else you posted holds truth. every product has hit and miss parts made. "inferior" (in your words) or top shelf ****...

OP are you still running stock injectors? you could have maxed out the duty cycle. only thing(s) i can think of are maybe to big of a cam for the setup, PTV clearance, or the cam is degreed wrong...

 

do exactly what pat said, go through it and check all the little things that could lead to losing one cylinder....when i had my ls6 heads and cam swap i only made 350rwhp...then i changed spark plug wire and bam 405