I know it kills me to go to the track with some of my Vette buddies knowing I can't overcome the physics of the power/weight and tire size of the C6 Z06, but at the end of the day I just can't bring myself to drive a Corvette on the street.

 

Whether you like GM or not, there is no denying that the Corvette in either GrandaSport or Z06 trim is one of the best buys in the high performance car world.

 

Entertaining as always

 

Actually I've had no problems with the Grand Sport in the Boss. I ran 4 seconds faster than the club's own GS school car at MPH driven by their track manager so he has plenty of laps at the track The GS is nice, but the Boss is faster. The extra hp and lower weight of the Z06 is a differenty story.

 

I think you guys are being a little hard on Cole. Everybody entitled to there opinion.

That said, I going to have to agree with Kendall, that the Ford engineers left no reliable & emission legal power on the table in the factory tune. If you think about it. When the Road Runner team was tasked with making a more powerful 5.0 than the coyote, if they could have made more power with just a tune, would they really go thought the trouble / expense of porting and polishing the heads for 10 hp?

If your don't need to worry about emissions you can make some power by freeing up the exhaust with long tube headers and removing the cats. Like Drew wants to do.

Drew, couldn't you use O2 sensor simulators?
http://www.cimotorsports.net/motor-s...simulator.html

 

I actually think they COULD of just made more power with a tune if they wanted too. But that was NOT the mission. The mission was to not only make more power, but make it "special" and in doing so, they made more power, maybe it's only 32 hp more at peak, but the Road Runner makes a lot more power through a larger rev range and since it revs 500 rpms more, that gives it a big advantage too.

I'm also pretty darn sure they could of made more than 444 hp with the engine too, once they ported the heads and made forged internals and raised the revs.
But I'm pretty sure they had instructions to make it the BEST track car Ford has ever built, but also not to make it run equal to or better than the GT500 in a straight line.

I'm sure Ford brass didn't want to fully jeopardize the 2011 and 2012 sales of the GT500.
So their instructions were to make the Boss BETTER than the GT500 on the track but not outrun it in a straight line, and of course make it BETTER than the 5.0 in both track and straight line, but not just making it a "tuned" 5.0 engine, again it had to be something "special" that people with 5.0's couldn't just run out and have done to their cars with a $700 tuner and some aftermarket parts.

I get the distinct feeling that now for 2013 they bumped the 5.0 up to 420 hp and the GT500 to 650 hp that for 2014 the Boss 302 may get a power increase of 10-15 hp as it's swan song before the new 2015 car hits the streets.
I also think there is a good change the Boss 302 will be discontinued after the 2014 model year. If demand changes, they would bring it back for the 2016 or 2017 model year.

 

Was it ever stated by anyone in authority that the Boss was going to be produced in 2014?

 

not that I heard....thought it was a two year production run..

 

Most people i've talked to (mustang owners, Ford dealerships) tend to feel it'll end at '13 for another long break. I'm inclined to agree with them, but no, nothing has been confirmed that i'm aware of.

I think it makes sense. The Mach 1 came back for just two years ('03 and '04) and then the platform/body styles changed in '05 and they were dropped. The Boss seems to be on track (pun) for the same treatment: '12 and '13 Bosses, big platform change in '14 where they're dropped.

 

Thanks for sticking up for me LOL. When I posted that, I kinda expected that reaction and "light years beyond" was a bit of an over statement. I am just used to car communities with much more information and where some of these manufactures/tuners I see in the Mustang community would get crucified for some of the claims they make with out lots of independent data to support it. Basically, I am used to dealing with a community where I could post data logs/AF ratios from my tune and get advice from a bunch of knowledgeable people about the safety and performance of a tune. This really kept the BS to a minimum and they would run off any "pro tuner" that wasn't worth a ****. It is like the whole number 8 cylinder thing on 5.0s, I have done a couple of hours of research on it and have not been able to find that many documented case of it. There are some, but a lot of it seems to be just hearsay. That stuff would not fly on what I am used to. Granted, the information may be out there and I just have not found it yet.

As far as tuning these cars, I suspect there is some power to be had in tuning for 93 octane because Ford probably took into account the possibility of someone putting 87 octane fuel in the car and or bad/off spec gas. There is also probably some safe power to be made in raising the rev limit considering some of the 5.0s are running Boss revs on the stock valve-train with the Boss manifold with no real consequence yet, but I won't be someone who experiments with that unless it becomes well established as being safe and after my car is out of warranty. Since the car seems to do fine with long tubes, I will probably do that eventually as well as a light weight driveshaft and call it good until the pioneers figure out what is safe on our cars.

 

Now that we have the lightyears comment behind us we can have a rational discussion about this lol. The way it was explained to me, Ford does leverage the built in knock sensors to adjust timing for higher octane fuel (up to 100 octane I was told) but the gains are nominal and not worth the $4-$5/gal difference. I suspect that is because they are fairly conservative in the timing advance. Black key will retard timing to compensate for 87, but not TK which requires a minimum 91 octane. Your other comments regarding rev limiter increase are accurate, but the one dyno chart that was shared on this forum showed decreasing power beyond 7500 so it didn't appear it warranted the increased risk of a failure.

 

I put some 100 octane in my car at Laguna Seca when I was there. My lap times increased by 0 seconds.

 

wtf happened in here

 

I have this same question.

Initially, there was some push-back because one person said the Mustang tuning community was unadvanced compared to those of other makes. Some people got bent out of shape, because he was talking about maybe the most modified vehicle in automotive history. Crazy, right? There might have even been an accusation of drug use. But, his comments made more sense, once we realized he really meant "Mustang ECU reprogramming community." Since we aren't sure there is any such thing, nobody got their feelers hurt and we moved on.

But now it seems like we are asking if there is ANY horsepower to be had from a tune, even though we know the answer.

Maybe we are just frustrated because TracKey isn't here, yet.

Jimmy

 

I think the bigger question is whether or not aftermarket tunes that make big power are safe enough to run on the track on a regular basis.

Also, not sure what rock you been hiding under but Trackey came out last November.

 

Oh, BIG power. Is there one of those, yet? I haven't seen one, but I guess "big" is in the eye of the beholder. There is only one scientific method and tunes are available now to test. [shrugs] All this speculation makes us look bad to the Subaru guys.

Oh hey, the Boss 302R upgraded its con-rods. That's weird. Wonder why they did that?

As for TracKey and my rock, imagine everything I say being said with a wink and a smile.

Jimmy

 

OK, back on the subject,:

Can we have the Trackey and add Steedas Idle tune?

At this point Im not sure if its any more agressive as the Trackey Idle, but I am still interested if It can be done..

 

I went and got my first smog certificate on Friday. I'm 40 and have always lived in CA. They finally started smogging diesels. Mine is 13 years old with almost 300,000 miles on it. It has a mild program on the four position chip that I put it on before going in.

What I'd like to see, and likely many many other CA guys would like to see, is eventually a Red key program that's from mild to wild and the stock program key will be to pass smog. I like to say we're living in the future, and here's one area where that's true. You can have your performance tune and your stock tune. If you don't bring the Red key down to smog your car, the avg shop is going to have no way to know you're rockin' 500 hp with a sick idle. Right?

OK back on topic...

 

Have the aftermarket tuners made ANY progress in being able to modify the Track Key tune?

 

Tuners are making adjustments to the ECM maps to compensate for changes in the intake or exhaust tract modifications.

Now whether the ECM needs to be changed can be determined by how much of a change was made to the intake or exhaust tracts. If its a small or large change but the ECM can compensate for it then no tuning is required.

It gets even more complicated when you start looking at Closed or Open loop A/F Adjustments. There is the 14.7 stiometric , cant spell that word to save my life, or max power 12.8 A/F ratios that are base map set in the ECM that have to be looked at. These are tied into the Throttle Position mapping to determine which the driver wants. Then you have to understand that how much is changed is determined by fuel octane. If you have a tune that works for all fuel octanes you are leaving a little timing on the table due to the fact that the ECM will not be optimised for one fuel alone but be a compromise for all fuels.