eboch
Well-known member
Thought this may be of interest to some ...
Bought this kit .... wanting to do the work myself. After some reseach on the web .... I purchased a kit, pod-gauges, and tuning software from A&A Corvette. This kit was noted by others as giving a completely driveable car with loads of HP across the whole RPM range. A&A represented that this kit could deliver 600HP at the crank on a stock C6. They also provided me with some supporting dyno curves of cars they'd done at their shop.
My car is a stock C6 Z51 with the exception of a high ratio rocker kit and Magnaflow cat-back.
Comments;
1/ installation: I have a standard garage setup ... airtools...but otherwise nothing special or crazy .... no lift, etc. This proved to be good enough to do this installation. Instructions were crisp and accurate, lots of great/helpful pictures in the manual. The few minor problems I had were dealt with through support from A&A. All good. Took me about 3 weeks, working on it a few times a week ... maybe a total of 30 or 40 hours. You do have to remove the steering rack, nose cone body panel, etc ... .so beware, it is reasonably major surgery .... but not over-the-top crazy.
One area of concern is that the kit installation does not allow the standard power steering cooler to be used .... A&A recommends that it gets removed. I didn't really like this idea ... .so I cut the stock cooler down so that it would fit and then had it welded up and pressure tested. Its now 2/3 the size of the original .... so not as "good" .... but I feel better that its there (in my mind .... smart-GM-engineers didn't put it there for nothing).
2/ fit and finish: no complaints .... everything went in properly and the supplied fittings, covers, etc result in a crisp professional look. All the fittings and fasteners are professional grade. The kit had every bolt, nut, etc that was needed.
3/ performance: using the supplied base tune the setup lit right up. A ton of power. The car could easily rubber right into 4th gear .... with 325 Nittos on it. on my first drive out, the car died completely ...had to push it home. Turned out that the fuel pump booster causes a demand for a bigger fuse on the fuel system. A&As kit has this fuse .... but the installation manual doesnt say anything about where to use it. In hind site ... it was "obvious" .... since the supplied fuse was in the part of the kit associated with the fuel pump booster. In the scheme of things .... this was pretty minor setback.
4/ Tuning: although the A&A-supplied base tune for the supercharged car was "ok" ....and completely driveable ... A&A did tell me upfront that they back a few parameters out to err on the side of caution. I was also having DTC issues (the VCM fuel-air comp was indicating that it was working too hard to lean the mixture appropriately). So i took the car to a local chassis dyno shop for final tuning. With support from A&A (Andy Green) the car ended up producing ~ 570 HP @ 6000 rpm at the crank (assuming 18% driveline loss .... and correcting for various dyno things). Theres probably a bit more in it ... the tuner suggested maybe another 20 or 30 HP if i was prepared to run 93 or 94 octane all the time .... but I want to run easy-to-find 91 gas ....and I want some decent reliability
All said and done .... I'd say you need to be reasonably competent in the garage. I'd give the kit 3/5 for design, fit and finish and the performance (versus what I was expecting) a 4/5.
eboch
Bought this kit .... wanting to do the work myself. After some reseach on the web .... I purchased a kit, pod-gauges, and tuning software from A&A Corvette. This kit was noted by others as giving a completely driveable car with loads of HP across the whole RPM range. A&A represented that this kit could deliver 600HP at the crank on a stock C6. They also provided me with some supporting dyno curves of cars they'd done at their shop.
My car is a stock C6 Z51 with the exception of a high ratio rocker kit and Magnaflow cat-back.
Comments;
1/ installation: I have a standard garage setup ... airtools...but otherwise nothing special or crazy .... no lift, etc. This proved to be good enough to do this installation. Instructions were crisp and accurate, lots of great/helpful pictures in the manual. The few minor problems I had were dealt with through support from A&A. All good. Took me about 3 weeks, working on it a few times a week ... maybe a total of 30 or 40 hours. You do have to remove the steering rack, nose cone body panel, etc ... .so beware, it is reasonably major surgery .... but not over-the-top crazy.
One area of concern is that the kit installation does not allow the standard power steering cooler to be used .... A&A recommends that it gets removed. I didn't really like this idea ... .so I cut the stock cooler down so that it would fit and then had it welded up and pressure tested. Its now 2/3 the size of the original .... so not as "good" .... but I feel better that its there (in my mind .... smart-GM-engineers didn't put it there for nothing).
2/ fit and finish: no complaints .... everything went in properly and the supplied fittings, covers, etc result in a crisp professional look. All the fittings and fasteners are professional grade. The kit had every bolt, nut, etc that was needed.
3/ performance: using the supplied base tune the setup lit right up. A ton of power. The car could easily rubber right into 4th gear .... with 325 Nittos on it. on my first drive out, the car died completely ...had to push it home. Turned out that the fuel pump booster causes a demand for a bigger fuse on the fuel system. A&As kit has this fuse .... but the installation manual doesnt say anything about where to use it. In hind site ... it was "obvious" .... since the supplied fuse was in the part of the kit associated with the fuel pump booster. In the scheme of things .... this was pretty minor setback.
4/ Tuning: although the A&A-supplied base tune for the supercharged car was "ok" ....and completely driveable ... A&A did tell me upfront that they back a few parameters out to err on the side of caution. I was also having DTC issues (the VCM fuel-air comp was indicating that it was working too hard to lean the mixture appropriately). So i took the car to a local chassis dyno shop for final tuning. With support from A&A (Andy Green) the car ended up producing ~ 570 HP @ 6000 rpm at the crank (assuming 18% driveline loss .... and correcting for various dyno things). Theres probably a bit more in it ... the tuner suggested maybe another 20 or 30 HP if i was prepared to run 93 or 94 octane all the time .... but I want to run easy-to-find 91 gas ....and I want some decent reliability
All said and done .... I'd say you need to be reasonably competent in the garage. I'd give the kit 3/5 for design, fit and finish and the performance (versus what I was expecting) a 4/5.
eboch
