We street tuned her with a full tank of 93. I set the peak timing at 22 degrees because I still tow with it sometimes and it is often loaded with my junk. Ill try another tank of 93 and see if it improves, its averaging 12.1mpg so far on 87 though

 

I live in St Louis and I don't see much E85, I'd love to try it out though. Regarding the timing I'll revise the tune at some point and see if there is anything left in it

 

Agree. I run e85 all day every day and have for the last 18 months in my current truck since it is e85 compatible

I don't know why you would want to increase duration and overlap, lose driveability, likely lower dcr and make it mushy when you can get the power without sacrifice. Unless you just mean out of curiosity. In that case I have no idea lol. But it would be at an expense that I wouldn't be willing to pay (power/fun wise) vs going higher lift.

Your rig man you know it better than I do. But on my 2004 5.3 I saw a consistent minimum gain of 2 mpg and as high as near 4. I say it weird like that because taking the same route daily I would see some days an increase on the avg mpg (using the dash in the truck) of 2 mpg, but there were some days I saw as high as 4. I never checked it by filling the tank and doing the math because I did that when I first got the truck and the meter on the dash was super close to my math so I just trusted it. If I remember right I was getting around 60-80 extra miles to the tank but I never wrote it down and it was 7 years ago that I was all in that.

 

Youd be chasing your tail at that point and addjng duration would never match it. Youd remove the longer powerband and added tq. In short it wouldnt happen. Why settle or chase with lower lift when you dont have to?

 

It may end up matching the power but it would feel like soggy toast around 4k and under in comparison

I realize you said to make more up top so you may not care about down low. If that's your thing that's your thing but I think that would suck and be a terrible setup.

Now ask yourself what would it do with the added duration etc AND higher lift..

Gotta ask, why so hung up on using LS6 springs? Just seems foolish, no disrespect.

 

I have had so many issues personally with ls6 blue and yellows ill never use nor recommend them again.
Foolish would be the right term there.
Spending more money on a second cam to bandaid what it doesnt have is wasting money and time.

 

I'm sorry you have had so much trouble with OEM parts. I've always uses as many OEM parts on my cars as possible on my 4th gen camaros to try and maintain some degree of OEM reliability. One of my cars has over 200k on it and the other has over 100k I deliver pizza with them on the weekends. They are as reliable as stock year round in St Louis weather.

I got my LS1 Z28 in the 11's with the BTR stage III truck cam, I'm aware there are others that have gone much faster with the GM hotcam. it has a summit 8714 in it now. Best et's with the BTR was 11.87 and it definitely feels faster with the new summit 8714. I'll make another quarter mile attempt to validate the gain when the weather gets better here. I'm meticulous but I'm on a shoestring budget so if you want to buy me another cam and springs I'll install it and tune it and share my results. How many tenths do you think I'll see with a .600 lift cam at a similar duration? More than one tenth?

 

Oem reliability? Im not sure about that. They are ok in stock vehicles, kind of. Its not just me that has had issues and my one truck is all stock with ls6 springs but they got switched out.
I have personally seend no less than 10 trucks a year 4.8 5.3 and 6.0 with broken stock springs on stock trucks. No less than 40 with dod failures. Camaros etc even more.
Stock valves in ls7 heads fail often.
There are many many isntances for stock parts failures in stock applications, add in more power and they definitely dont hold up. Your basis is very unfounded there. Especially on a modified vehicle. Thats definitely why the service depts are such big money bringers to dealers.

 

Oem Ls6 springs as used in Corvette C5 Z06 and others like the original CTS-V were of a higher grade. Hundreds of thousands sold per year with GM Warranty attached when used in their engines. If they broke due to their own fault, people wouldn’t use them. The fact is the run size required means they are produced under far more controlled and stringent conditions than anything aftermarket. Lots of cars out there with over 100k miles beating on the springs within 050 coil bind of their harsh little lives without issue. Most of these engines modded by now.

 

Agreed. I put a USED set of LS6 springs in and ran them to a 7k rpm rev limiter every single day multiple times a day and they went 70k miles before it was totaled by the guy I sold it to. Would have went longer.

 

People use chineee head studs ALOT that break sometimes on install, so maybe the assumption if they break people wouldn't use them is a bad one.

Ive personally seen too many issues for them to be a coincidence. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but the same can be said of lifters too. When entire batches have to be recalled by gm from dealers and ive been on that end before, normally no one outside gm and the dealer knows. So that definitely skews any lay statistics.

 

Consider percentages, not just the numbers you see.

How many didn't break?

I agree we all have our different experiences and opinions due to that. But it's like my tool guy that comes by, he services the local Chevy dealer, when I bought my 2014 truck he said "man I wouldn't have bought one of those" I said why? He said cause they're all in the dealership getting worked on for a heater core issue, this was a couple of years ago, and he has a 2004 Silverado. So I asked, what do you think was all in the dealership in 2005? Moral of the story is we can't hate on a shop full of chevy's if that's all we work on. (I don't work at GM I'm just making a reference)

I'm a tech, I work on all makes and models and the most popular vehicle I have worked on in 20 years is GM and Ford. In Texas we have a LOT of trucks. In 20+ years I haven't seen a single GM break a valve spring or a DOD lifter go bad. And I work on DOD trucks A LOT.

Consider the field you're in, it makes the picture look much more bleak on your end. I'm not saying there aren't problems, but I'm saying the percentage of failures vs total engines running these components isn't that high.

But on the performance end, I agree, the LS6 valve spring shouldn't be mixed with an aftermarket cam, that's not what it was designed for, and can't blame the spring for the misuse.

 

This is gold, save for the last paragraph lol nice work writing that though man. IMO If the cam was designed for Ls6 springs it's fine to use them, like on my ls1 with only the summit 8714 and LS6 springs changed out everything else is original stock and the car is way more powerful than stock and yet it is just a dependable as stock if needed so we can have our 100k mile cake and we can eat it too when we use the truck cam and ls6 springs even in our weekend warrior because most of us are never going to lose a race that could have been won with a little more cam lift anyways.

 

With the right aftermarket cam they are likely fine, but I do wonder if ramp rates are considered and if the springs are worked a little harder or not than when used with the LS6/LS3 cam. We also usually turn our rev limiters higher with a cam that works the spring a little harder too so my preference, even with a 550 lift cam made for the LS6 spring would to be to step up the spring just 1 step to a single 600 lift basic beehive. But, that's not to say the LS6 won't do it's thing with that cam, it's just a personal preference thing. All that being said, if I were in your situation I would likely run them without much concern. If I had a few extra bucks I would go for a little stronger spring. Valve control is uber important.

 

Im not just in the performance field and thats also input from 2 local garages that work on all sorts of vehicles. And one out of state. So thats 4 reference points.

There are only so many companies that make springs same as lifters. So when someone goes to talk about how much higher quality they sre vs x brand maybe they need to know where each is made. Sometimes they are made at the same place.

 

I built a 5.3 for my 03 Tahoe, daily driver, 60 miles a day for work M-F. I used the TSP 2LL truck, I average 17 mpg, bested out at 18.5 w/ 342s. Gobs of torque, tows decent, tuned for 87 with some lope, 30000 miles and it's still a blast to drive. I used WS6 for most of my build parts and can attest to their quality. If I had it to do over I would go 6.0. Truck has 235000 miles.

 

For what it's worth nobody is snubbing tech@ws6store, his knowledge or the quality of parts they carry and recommend

We are just discussing different experiences.

 

I understand the numbers. But when I see a tq conv upgrade recommend or that people have had to upgrade it. I am staying away. Not even getting a L6 TB tq conv. for $100. This is budget. Xmas coming and I have a family and there's a bday 10 days before xmas. Shame on me for choosing xmas gifts vs a tq converter. I still haven't even gotten the time yet. But it seems like after seeing everyone bicker about what I want and everyone here is a Chief. Clear as day, I don't want to swap out converter. Why would GM put ls2 heads on 5.3s from the factory? Not like I'm adding 317s. Then I could understand this female bickering. Why is there always an individual to turn things into a pissing match? I have better crap to do then troll. Don't others? Giving an opinion is way different vs starting a pissing match and not even with the OP... I love being challenged. I get a real kick out of it. Especially from someone who I wouldn't ever have the chance to bump into even at an airport! Should I take that in as a rhetorical threat? Lol.

 

There is nothing wrong with using them as long as the lobes aren't aggressive. Keeping around stock 02-04 ls6 cam specs will have not issues. I have a ls6 top end on my 98 bird with 80k miles and rev limiter set to 6800rmps. If anything, I'm more worried about my bottom end with 181k miles on it and being all original 98 ls1 bottom end as I am worried about $80 valve springs that I know are a great performer. Yes some ppl have had issues breaking one after 100k. But never came across one myself. And 1 thing I have learned over the years... People are LIARS! I never trust what they say with their lengthy stories. I have had customer's break my repairs and expect me to warranty it and say they didn't touch it but were under the hood or took the wheel off etc. Show me pictures, dyno sheets, videos etc. Any good tech know that... We want facts and proof.

 

In my experience I would consider a Trailblazer 4.2 converter and STOCK cam before I considered a performance cam and stock stall. Also if budget is your thing a STOCK LQ4/LQ9 cam is the same cam as a later LS1 and gives a 5.3 another 30 hp without sacrificing any torque.

I assembled a 5.3 with gen4 4.8L flat tops, gen4 rods, stock 862s, a LQ4 cam and NNBS intake. I twisted it together at pick & pull. Took about 4 hours. Walked out with it for $250. The way pick and pull prices things you could walk out with a piston and rod or a whole engine, price adjusted for each. I picked what I wanted and since it was an engine paid the price for a long block with a intake and injectors and loaded it up. I got it to my shop, tore it back down, cleaned everything, put rings & bearings in it. I put it into a 2003 Tahoe with the 4.2 converter. After tuning the thing ran GREAT. More power everywhere than the worn out old 5.3 that started knocking. Tahoe already had shorty headers, a 2008+ airaid MIT and electric fan upgrade.