DavidGXP

iTrader: (14)

Drooling......
If I was more modded and closer I'd pay for your services in a heartbeat! Whats an extra 750.00 after spending even more on parts including having to buy HP tuners software. My tuner only ran my car at WOT for three pulls and didn't do anything for idle or part throttle.
I agree. We get what we pay for!

williamGT

iTrader: (5)

wow, so nice and clean.
BTW I see all GM's and 1 rustang

nmp0098

Rick,

It's a little weird to find several defensive posts about your pricing in my build thread, considering that I have yet to receive the return phone call that I was promised by the polite gentlemen that answers your phones. To better clarify my position, let me throw out a few thoughts to give context to my prior statements:

1) I took Econ 101 a while back. It's a market economy. A business can charge what customers are willing to pay. The best run businesses manage to control supply and set pricing to maximize profit.

2) I only want to use a chassis dynomometer for about an hour or two. I plan to show up with several of my own tunes that are designed to give me a lot of WOT information in a short period of time. I understood when I called that might not be a service that you offered, but the person who knows all of the details was not in.

3) I think part of the fun of hotrodding is doing the work myself. I won't disrespect people that open their wallets and pay a pro, but I do think that they are missing out on a lot of good times and the opportunity to buy some other toy. I'm open to help, but I still want to be involved in every step.

Given all of that information, my previous assertion that you charge too much for what I want to do is perfectly reasonable. And given that I want to do most of the work myself, I would be insane to pay $750 for something that I don't want. My two lines in no way merit a "no one else complains about paying us" post. A much stronger position for you to take would have been "we are the best and worth every penny" right from the start. I think most people, myself included, can respect that. I've defended paying a premium for the best in the past, like when I had my transmission built by TEP even though it was still in good working order. I should also point out that if there is a situation where I would be able to do what I want to do for a reasonable price, say on the less accurate portable dyno or at some weird time of the day, the promised return phone call would have revealed it.

If you find that a post containing your pricing is somehow insulting, and in some way requires that you defend yourself, that is on you. If you think that I didn't give you a fair shake, it's not my fault that I didn't have all of the information. Either way, I'm sure that you're shop will do fine as long as you continue to turn out kick *** cars and performance parts.

Hopefully the is now over...

A couple other thoughts:

Sittingmongoose, from what I was told by the guys at SMC Performance the LS3 injectors are physically a direct replacement for the LS4 injectors. You will obviously need to adjust the injector curves in your ECM for your fueling to be correct, but you won't need to pay for any modifications. And, while I couldn't afford a dyno, I could buy my own wideband and an EGT gage.

TiredGXP, thanks for the idea. It's too bad that HPTuners can't log messages from the EBCM as well, because data from the longitudinal accelerometer could be used too.

TiredGXP

iTrader: (2)

Not to resume the hijack, but:

Yeah, it is unfortunate. I've heard of people logging from aftermarket accelerometers through the mpvi interface. But since acceleration is just change in velocity over change in time, the Airboy spreadsheet calculates acceleration from a data log that records velocity. If you're only logging 3 or 4 PIDs, the logging rate is quite fast, and you get pretty close to instantaneous acceleration calculations.

I prefer to log transmission output shaft speed (RPM) and calculate velocity from tire size since this has a bit more resolution than the velocity PID.

LivernoisMotorsports

iTrader: (1)

I didn't mean to hijack your thread, I was just explaining why we charge what we do. I think your build is interesting and plan to follow the thread to see what the car makes.

I apologize that you didn't get a call back. AT&T has been here all week and the phones have been up and down (mostly down). If you give me an email address we can contact you at, I'd be happy to have someone email you until the T1 lines and phone issue is fixed.

Regards,

Rick LeBlanc
Livernois Motorsports

LivernoisMotorsports

iTrader: (1)

I spoke to the guys in the showroom and they said if you want to make an appointment to tune the car yourself it's $125/hr. They stated that they thought it would take several hours and quoted $300-500.

-Rick

AlabamaGuy

iTrader: (5)

So the moral of this story is that we live in a free market economy. Send your business to the vendor that best suits your need and price. Laissez faire.

nmp0098

Rick, Thanks for response. My post was more acrimonious than I would have liked in retrospect. I should know better than to post when I’m grumpy and haven’t been sleeping enough. Just like you were having phone issues, I’m having first time father-to-be issues. It’s a matter of days and weeks now, and I still have a thousand things to do. I understand exactly where you are coming from, and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have taken any offense at all. I’m in a much better mood now (this BMT I’m eating is helping tremendously).

I’d like to come down and pay $125 an hour to use your dynamometer. That’s about what I thought the rate would be. You’re about a 1/2 hour drive from my house, and I like spending money locally whenever I can. Besides, I’ve wanted to check out your facility for a while now. Obviously, I still have a lot of work to do before I’m ready, and I don’t want to schedule anything until after D-Day (delivery, not doom’s lol). It’s good to know your rates and that there could be as much as a month’s lead time to get on the dyno. I’ll need to get new fuel injectors ordered and on the car, and I want to have my part throttle street tune completely finished before I hit the dyno. I think I’m going with the 42lbs/hr LS3 injectors because I’ve had my fill of wrestling with stainless fuel rails, and moving to 33lbs/hr only buys me just enough room to fuel this thing.


A general announcement: all are welcome to post whatever (as if I could restrict access to a public forum, lol). Seriously, I’d like to hear compliments and suggestions, but if you just wanted to post that best mod I could make to the car is to replace the idiot behind the wheel, I’ll take that too (Jesse suggested that a couple times, lol).


TiredGXP, I was actually thinking about kicking it up a notch with the accelerometer. Since vehicle speed and the TOSS signals are road wheel referenced and the accelerometer is body referenced, I could get some idea of what the tire slip ratio was. If there was a pitch angle sensor too, it wouldn’t matter whether or not the ground was level. I’m not sure how useful the extra information would be beyond helping me perfect my launch, but it would be fun to piece it all together.


Whew, where did my lunch break go?


“…nine months later the sweet baby’s on the way, kiss’em on the cheek and life’s OK… I don’t feel, no pain, I don’t have, no time, to listen to conflicting points of view, whoa… I step into the great unknown, in a vee eight car I call my own… a ba na na na na na, whoo! ...”

94ss06gxp

iTrader: (5)

i wasnt busting anyones ***** i was just sayin that damn they are gettin paid!! i'd imagine they do awesome work with a line of 34 badass cars having work done to them.

Bryan921SS

I was wondering has Livernois done any work on an LS4 car???

Garou24

With a facility like that... maybe design a LS6 intake manifold and injector kit for the LS4?

GXP25

iTrader: (3)

Brilliant.

94ss06gxp

iTrader: (5)

x2 , i wonder what livernois will say about this idea???

JDMC5

iTrader: (3)

I'm sure they won't have any issues working on the LS4, it's an LS2 turned sideways.

Nate, dude, lets get my wideband on there, I have the whole weekend off.

williamGT

iTrader: (5)

That will be nice if they can do that for us.

LivernoisMotorsports

iTrader: (1)

No problem. We all have a rough day now and then. No offense taken.

Congratulations on being a father-to-be!

Just let us know when you're ready and we can schedule you some time.

Regards,

Rick LeBlanc
Livernois Motorsports

Nacho SS

iTrader: (4)

I totally respect Livernois and I know full and well how good their work/tuning is. I mean no disrespect. However, I put together a 100 shot wet kit for less than their tunes...I guess the $750 figure rung my chimes pretty well. I still think $500 is steep for a tune.

I look at this way...My car is a giant big boy toy. I like to play with it...taking it apart, putting it back together, tuning it, cleaning it. Kinda takes the fun and personality out of it if you're just writing checks to make more power...but then again, to the average C6Z owner, $750 is nothing at the end of the day.

nmp0098

So SMC Performance and UPS combined to pull off a miracle in shipping. I ordered some LS3 injectors from them Friday at 3:30, and they were waiting for me when I got home today. I had done some more tuning and was consistently seeing well over 90% duty cycles, so something had to be done. The car is way too fun not to drive.

I've been really studying and working on my spark tuning, and what a difference. My coolant is running about 10 degrees cooler (I'm basically back to stock temps), and my gas mileage has nearly doubled. Still more to go though. This engine needed a lot more spark in some places, and barely anything at all in others.

I installed the new throttle body adapter, and it's nice to have my brakes in good working order again. I'll get some pics up later if I have time.

Finally, the flex pipe is still tormenting me. The cutout isn't installed yet either. The exhaust shop came back to me scratching their head on what to fix without restricting flow. I'm probably just gonna have it cut out and replaced with straight pipe since I have a 4" flex between the downpipe and the cat. Once that is done, I'll header wrap the aluminized steel that I had the exhaust shop use. Even still, all of my temps are way down because the tune is getting better all of the time.

CenTexSS

iTrader: (2)

Good! I can't wait to see some final numbers on your set up.

nmp0098

I've installed the LS3 injectors. If it wasn't for the different part number on the side I wouldn't have known the difference. For whatever reason, my copy of HP Tuners (2.22) wasn't able to open any of the stock tunes for the G8 GXP or '10 Camaro SS, but it opened a G8 GT tune just fine and they all have the same injectors. I copied over all of the curves, and the engine fired right up same as it had been. My instantaneous fuel numbers looked the same as I was test driving it, so all seems well. Things are much more consistant at WOT. Before it would feel stronger or weaker, seemingly randomly, but now it seems like I'm getting much better control of the fueling.

Here's the two injectors side by side:




And here are some pictures of the new throttle body adapter after being installed.









The heat shielding I put on the bottom of everything is working wonders. All of my spark tuning is really paying off too, because right now the engine just produces enough heat to keep the thermostat open (stock 187* thermostat). I also sealed off the engine side of the CAI intake with some aluminum tape I had laying around just for grins. All told, the highest intake air temp I saw (after the engine was warmed up) was 10 degrees over ambient sitting at a light. The temp dropped right back down once I started moving.

The car goes back to the exhaust shop on Monday, and I'm not leaving the shop until I'm sure there is a plan in place that won't bankrupt me (if I don't watch, the crossover could end up as expensive as the rest of the headers because of labor). I honestly wish I had just skipped them and gone with a downpipe at this point, but I'm committed to them now. At least removing the flex altogether will eliminate that horrible whistle sound (I thought it was the belt slipping at first). I went ahead and flipped the top engine mount to see if locking the engine in place better would help the exhaust from hitting, but no such luck.

Next up is wideband MAF and VE tuning with JDM, some more drivability tuning, and a cutout exhaust vid when the exhaust is finally done.