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Geronimo: 1959 Chevy Apache

1959 Chevy Apache long bed Fleetside with some modern stuff inside. Built for long trips
Your going to run the vortec plastic cover?
For now yes, because it helps cover the ugly stock intake manifold underneath it.

Later down the road I will swap to a Holley single plane intake and use the Delmo Speed throttle body adapter so that I can put a vintage round air cleaner on it.

I started pricing things out.

Option 1: Factory intake, fuel rails, new wiring harness, reflashed PCM - about $700-750
Option 2: Factory intake, fuel rails, Holley Terminator X Max - $1500
Option 3: Holley intake, holley fuel rails, Delmo speed TB adapter, new wiring harness, reflashed PCM - $1700
Option 4: Holley intake, holley fuel rails, Delmo speed TB adapter, Holley Terminator X Max - $3200

Option 4 is stupid expensive right now so that is out of the question. The factory intake and fuels rails can be changed out later down the road fairly easily. Once I install a wiring harness, I want to be done with it and not have to redo it all. So right now I am leaning towards Option 2. Then after a year or so of driving the truck and working out the bugs, I'll upgrade to Option 4
 
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For now yes, because it helps cover the ugly stock intake manifold underneath it.

Later down the road I will swap to a Holley single plane intake and use the Delmo Speed throttle body adapter so that I can put a vintage round air cleaner on it.

I started pricing things out.

Option 1: Factory intake, fuel rails, new wiring harness, reflashed PCM - about $700-750
Option 2: Factory intake, fuel rails, Holley Terminator X Max - $1500
Option 3: Holley intake, holley fuel rails, Delmo speed TB adapter, new wiring harness, reflashed PCM - $1700
Option 4: Holley intake, holley fuel rails, Delmo speed TB adapter, Holley Terminator X Max - $3200

Option 4 is stupid expensive right now so that is out of the question. The factory intake and fuels rails can be changed out later down the road fairly easily. Once I install a wiring harness, I want to be done with it and not have to redo it all. So right now I am leaning towards Option 2. Then after a year or so of driving the truck and working out the bugs, I'll upgrade to Option 4


So I'm assuming you are tuning it for SD?
 
From what I gather once you get the Holley intake you'll be content and not want further mods correct? If so do it once and don't do it twice that is unless you can't swing the extra $900-1k for the Holley intake and throttle body.
 
If you’re gonna go all the way to option 2, why not go a tad bit further to option 3 and be done.
Just kinda thinking long term. If I do a cam swap later on, won't the factory PCM need to be re-tuned? With Terminator X, I could try and do that myself

So I'm assuming you are tuning it for SD?
Speed Density? Sorry, I am still very new to this. I believe that's what it would be tuned for.

From what I gather once you get the Holley intake you'll be content and not want further mods correct? If so do it once and don't do it twice that is unless you can't swing the extra $900-1k for the Holley intake and throttle body.
It would be nice to not have to drop that extra $1,000 right now. An intake swap is easy to do later on so that's why I was thinking of waiting a little on that.

I started pricing out the rest of the stuff I will need to get this driving down the road and I'm looking at over $3500 still to go. That's counting Terminator X Max, radiator with fan and shroud, steering column, steering wheel, hood hinges, driveshaft, rear wheel tubs, shifter, tail light housings. Not factored in are exhaust system, fuel pump, fuel lines and fittings, body wiring harness, and alternator rebuild
 
Other option would be to just get an hp tuner setup and tune the new cam ukursef


That’s what I did. It’s not a lot different than tuning with Holley. If all you need is vats and torque management turned off , lt1 swap does that for 70 bucks. Hp tuners will run you 400 for mpvi2 and 2 credits to flash the ecm. There are tons of guides on YouTube on how to disable vats and torque management. Same thing for deleting the maf and running speed denisity. For a driver I don’t see why you wouldn’t keep the maf.
 
That’s what I did. It’s not a lot different than tuning with Holley. If all you need is vats and torque management turned off , lt1 swap does that for 70 bucks. Hp tuners will run you 400 for mpvi2 and 2 credits to flash the ecm. There are tons of guides on YouTube on how to disable vats and torque management. Same thing for deleting the maf and running speed denisity. For a driver I don’t see why you wouldn’t keep the maf.
Thanks for the lt1swap recommendation. I did not know about them. Most other places I have seen charge $200 to remove vats and torque management. So I will use them if I decide to go this route. Which you guys are starting to make me lean more towards that way.

If I decide to not go the Holley Terminator X Max option, I was going to use a guy on facebook that goes by the name "Matty Harness" It's all new wiring and connectors. He was charging $550 for a DBW harness. He has good reviews. Hmmm decisions, decisions.

At least I have a bunch of other things to work on before I have to mess with the harness
 
Thanks for the lt1swap recommendation. I did not know about them. Most other places I have seen charge $200 to remove vats and torque management. So I will use them if I decide to go this route. Which you guys are starting to make me lean more towards that way.

If I decide to not go the Holley Terminator X Max option, I was going to use a guy on facebook that goes by the name "Matty Harness" It's all new wiring and connectors. He was charging $550 for a DBW harness. He has good reviews. Hmmm decisions, decisions.

At least I have a bunch of other things to work on before I have to mess with the harness


200 seems a bit pricey as it is 100 for credits to flash, and probably 15 for a bench flashing setup, then 5 min of time to remove vats, and torque management. Hmmm maybe I should start doing that..lol
 
200 seems a bit pricey as it is 100 for credits to flash, and probably 15 for a bench flashing setup, then 5 min of time to remove vats, and torque management. Hmmm maybe I should start doing that..lol

Do you have to pay 100 credits to flash every time you flash your own ECU in the rig? Say you buy HPtuners, and you want to change something real quick a week later, do you have to pay again? And how much is it per vehicle, or ECU once you have the software package bought and installed on your laptop?

Why didn't you stay with EFI live? Didn't you use them on your Dmax? Just learning questions is all, seems like a good place to have them since he is contemplating what to do with the EFI control.
 
Does that LT1 swaps include enabling PE?

Not sure, im sure he has plenty of "canned" tunes. I wouldn't change PE to much, just turn it on a little lower.

Do you have to pay 100 credits to flash every time you flash your own ECU in the rig? Say you buy HPtuners, and you want to change something real quick a week later, do you have to pay again? And how much is it per vehicle, or ECU once you have the software package bought and installed on your laptop?

Why didn't you stay with EFI live? Didn't you use them on your Dmax? Just learning questions is all, seems like a good place to have them since he is contemplating what to do with the EFI control.

Its 99 for two credits. Or you can spend 400 for unlimited model/year. 2 Credits is enough to do one ecm for life unless you want to do a custom OS which will require 1 or 2 more credits. I had EFI live with my old dmax, but ran the flashscan over. Efi live said I had to buy another flashscan, and I never really messed with tuning because I bought the tunes from Kory Willis. After a lot of back and forth I decided my new truck makes enough power and I love how quiet it is. If I were to delete it I would just get a "kit" with canned tune. For now it will stay stock until the warranty runs out, maybe even longer. Hp tuners does support the 11-16 LML, and 17-20 L5p trucks so I could tune with HP if I wanted to. The big deciding factor for me was the amount of youtube videos, forums, and groups that support HP tuners. Any issue or thing you want to do has been done and documented by someone. For me I knew I was going to do atleast 2 ls swaps, so HP tuners was the logical and best bang for the buck choice. To turn off torque management and vats, and downstream 02's, is 3 dropdown menus and 5 minutes of time. Logging lambda with a wideband is super easy no matter what program you use. I prefer the digital signal(serial) rather than an analog input that is converted from digital to analog, then back to digital by either EFI or hptuners(pro). By using the serial input from the wideband you can save yet another 200 bucks by not needing the PRO features. You can also pin the analog output of the wideband into the stock PCM and map that PID. It makes the wideband a little less portable that way.

I hope that answers the questions.
 
That answers questions, I am trying to learn what HPTuners can do for reference in case I ever put long tubes or something on my stock L86. I have always used aftermarket EFI because you can put it on almost any engine in anything, the engine is usually not in the stock vehicle, and I never use the stock cam unless its my driver. But if its a stock vehicle with the stock ECU already integrated into the vehicle it makes more sense to retune the factory computer.

But on toys I usually end up doing something else it's just so easy with the aftermarket EFI. Plus I can take the aftermarket EFI and slap it on any engine I would ever build in the future if I wanted to, big block, LS, twin turbo, dry nitrous, distributor or DIS, doesn't matter. Just have to hook it up right.
 
The aftermarket efi is nice for that reason. You still can do that with the factory pcm, just requires a laptop rather than a hand held unit. The gen 5 stuff is super rad and is very powerful. The torque modeling is crazy and shows how far technology and engineering has come in such a short time. Another option that has t been mentioned is mega squirt.
 
The aftermarket efi is nice for that reason. You still can do that with the factory pcm, just requires a laptop rather than a hand held unit. The gen 5 stuff is super rad and is very powerful. The torque modeling is crazy and shows how far technology and engineering has come in such a short time. Another option that has t been mentioned is mega squirt.

That's the benefit of the Holley Systems over some others. When it comes down to it, if you can't get it right with the handheld, you can plug in a laptop and tune or program a nearly unlimited number of parameters, including numerous inputs/outputs, PWM, switching, datalogging, etc.

The factory PCM is more limited, but also less cost.

For total simplicity with functionality and low cost the Edelbrock Pro-Flo 4 Systems are hard to beat with the sequential multiport injection included at the relatively low cost.
 
So say I went with a Holley or Edelbrock intake with their fuel rails, factory injectors, Delmo Speed throttle body adapter, factory DBW throttle body, new harness from Matthew LS Harness on Facebook, and factory PCM with VATs removed and torque management removed by LT1swaps. Do you think this would drive and run well? Or would I need to still get it dyno tuned because of the intake?
 
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I think the only way to know that for sure would be if someone has already tried it. My guess is, if it still has the stock cam it will probably start and run OK, maybe even satisfactory, but not to its full potential as the 4 barrel style intakes have shorter intake runners that change the efficiency curves of the engine, and therefore the fuel requirements.

Once you change the cam, it would most certainly need a tune. A cam and long tubes would really wake it up.
 
You would for sure need a tune of the VE tables as that is what speed density needs/ calculates airflow off of. By changing the intake, you change the air flow characteristics. It doesn't mean it has to be done on a dyno, but lots of logging through normal driving, but a wideband O2 will be needed to tune properly. It would have to be a load dyno to get the VE curves dialed in, and it still wont be that great. Speed density tuning from scratch takes 40+ hours, unless you have something simlar to start with. If you are using a Gen3 ECM the VE / SD tuning is somewhat simple.

I personally dont like SD for a driver due to temp change etc.
 
First pic is GEN3 VE, second pic is one of the tables on E38 VE. You can see how a Gen3 is much easier to tune due to less data/cells to populate. Note that Gen4 and Gen5 have flex fuel sensor and multiple octane VE tables, and blends the two tables together based on alcohol content.

Also note Gen 4&5 are Lambda based and not AFR like gen 3

GEN3 VE.PNG

E38 VE.PNG
 
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