Power band concern

[servohead]

Hey guys,
I'm new to naturally aspirated motors. For years I've driven turbocharged cars, volvo's specifically and I'm used to the turbo lag and the consequent power bands due to that. Now that I've switched to american V-8 power I feel a little weird about the power band. Looking at the performance specs I understand that the 350 ft/lbs and 350 hp come in at a really high rpm (400rpm or so). Should the car actually feel a little doggish until you reach that high of an RPM? I've never really thought about the dyno curve and its translation on the actual road. What can I do to bring in some more torque at lower RPM? Thanks for listening guys!

 

[Edmond]

No, the car shouldn't feel doggish at the lower RPM's. It should pull hard through all the gears.

Do you have the auto or the 6 speed? The 6 speed pulls especially hard. It's also possible that you're not feeling the pull because the C5 is such a refined car.

As for power adders, I would just start with the basic bolt on mods like: K&N air filter (the twin K&N setup seems to be quite popular), a catback exhaust (the stock C5 sound is kinda wimpy, IMO) and possibly headers if you want to spend the money.

A lot of C5 owners pick up Z06 titanium exhaust systems and those will give you more power while saving weight.

You could get some power from those mods but for major gains, you'll have to do the intake, heads and cam.

 

[servohead]

I suppose that saying that the car is doggish at lower rpms may be exaggerating, but what I'm feeling is just a huge difference in power development across the rpm range. Where the hp curve looks rather linear on most dyno tests, my car feels more parabola-like. I'm going to put the GM scan tool on the car again and check for codes and parameter statuses just to see. Maybe I'm just getting used to the car.

 

[ErnieN85]

The earlier ls1 had a different power curve than the later, (can't remember when it changed) however when the new programing was implimented it fattened the lower end.

You might want to see about getting an updated program (later flash)

 

[servohead]

Yeah I was thinking about a PCM upgrade, but the bastards at GM said they'd have to charge me an hour of labor to download it- which added up to about 105 bucks (I know that downloads like that only take about 15 minutes max! from my experience with volvos). This was too much to spend on a whim (I wasn't sure at that point how much the upgrade would do.) So maybe I'll look into that again. I read the codes out of the instrument cluster and no PCM codes were stored. I also went for a nice country drive this afternoon for about an hour and I'm really getting a handle on this car now. It really hauls when I shift properly and at the right points.

 

[ErnieN85]

You might want to shop around for a shop which does this work (other than a dealer) in our town there is a shop which wil do it for $75 and he is good too!