During the 2018 summer, a 2010 Camaro came into the shop for an electrical problem that was causing the car to go into limp mode. The owner had previously taken the car to several other shops including the dealership, but no one could figure out what was wrong. After tracing a few wires, I found two oxygen sensor wires melted together and fixed the problem. I replaced the wires and routed the harness further away from the headers to avoid future problems. The owner was pleased and asked me if I could install a camshaft and tune the car. I had lots of stand-alone tuning experience from the Formula SAE team and recently bought HP Tuners, so I told him I would tackle the build.  

— Engine — 

Before this car, I had never built an LS motor by myself. I had helped my roommate cam his LS1 Camaro but that was the extent of my LS knowledge. The engine had 120,000 miles on it so I had assumed the bearings would be fine but I checked them all anyways, and I found one scarred journal. I sent the engine to the machine shop to get the crank polished and to have the cylinders honed for the new piston rings. I also found that a valve had contacted a piston due to a money shift in the past, so I had the heads sent to the machine shop to be checked and have the new springs installed. I used a rebuilder book to get torque values and clearances and built it like any other motor in the shop. I gapped all the rings to .030" because the owner wants to install nitrous in the future. I also plastic-gauged all the bearings to check the clearances. After getting nominal readings on all bearings, I assembled the motor with the new camshaft and fresh heads.  

— Camshaft — 

The owner wanted a rough cam idle and at least a 100 hp gain over stock. I advised a stage 2 LS3 cam kit from Texas Speed. This cam has 229/244 duration at .050 lift and .629/.615 lift with a 112-lobe separation angle. The kit comes with almost everything needed to do the cam swap, I opted to have a 3-bolt timing gear and a new timing set and head bolts from Chevrolet Performance, and a high-pressure oil pump.  

— Tuning — 

Before this car, I had never tuned a GM E38 ECU, and at first, I had some very costly mistakes. I still don't know if I messed up the tuning process, or if it was due to a shorted MAF sensor wire, but I bricked two ECUs before I got the tune right. I paid out of pocket for both and lost over 1000 dollars on the tuning process. Although I failed at tuning the car initially, I stayed with it and the third ECU was the charm. I contacted a tuner on Facebook who helped me with a few of the quarks that came with learning HP tuners.  After driving the car and tuning non-stop for a week, I finished the tune.  

— Overview — 

After a few costly mishaps and a lot of learning for me, the owner now owns this car as a daily driver and has been driving it since May 2019. According to HP tuners calculated torque value, the car makes roughly 600 horsepower at the crank at 7000 rpm.