They did the same thing with the Isuzu tranny in the earlier J-cars. Back in 98, a company was developing a lot of bolt-ons for the 2.4 twincams. While testing the parts, all three test mules had their tranny start to whine and the company stopped development.

I personally went through two trannies in my 96 Sunfire GT. The first one was abused and failed at 88,000kms. The second one was babied and went till 125000kms. The third one was beefed up internally by a guy who put a turbo on the 2.4 and blew it up after two weeks.

The M86 is rated for 170lbs-ft. So as long as you don't go over that, the tranny will last the life of the car. I'm sure GM underrates that 170lbs-ft though. But from experience, not by much.

 

wow, i would not do forced induction until you do some research. First of all the compression ratio is not good for stage 2 level boosts. second, i dont think your rods could handle it. Technically, you make more power with more compression. Even with boost. Considering the stage 2 ss/sc are making, what 250+hp at the crank? You have .4 litres and alot of compression on them. Stage two puts out like 16 psi doesnt it??? That would be insane to do on stock internals on the 2.4.You'd be making too much power for your internals and tranny to handle.

 

Well how do explain what the Solstices are running upwards of 16psi on the identical block as us and putting close to 290 whp down on stock 2.4 block without modifications. We have forged rods and oil squirters for the pistons as well the tranny should be fine sans abuse.??

 

The internals can handle it.

As far as not handling 16 PSI (I'm assuming you're talking about the M62 pushing 16 PSI), if you have the support of HP Tuners, you can change the ignition timing and run it fine.

 

alright, go ahead and run 16 psi into your stock block and see how long it lasts. Im not trying to tell you its gonna blow up in your face automatically, but if you dont have a VERY good tune, it will, and if you do have a good enough tune, it is not going to last a very long time without problems.

 

Fact of the matter is that you're making assumptions and stating your opinion, not fact.

Forced Induction on any vehicle, even stock cars that come with it, shorten the life span of the car. The 2.0 guys won't have the same performance 5 years from now...might not even have a running properly motor in some peoples cases.

Also, 16 PSI from an M62 supercharger isn't that radical...even for a SLIGHTLY higher compressioned motor. If you seriously think that you'll have some type of detonation issue, this is why you should wait and get HP Tuners device. Change the ignition timing and monitor the knock sensor so you CAN tune correctly.

 

Hahn's now at 19 psi and 340 whp. Stock internals. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Uh.... no.

 

That's your opinion.

 

No, its not. YOUR claim that forced induction shortens the lifespan of the motor is whats opinion.

Poor maintenance, abusive driving, and people who modify without any clue what they're doing is what shortens the lifespan of a forced induction engine. Leave an LSJ stock and change the oil at the scheduled interval, and peform any other scheduled maintenance on time, and it will last as long as any other motor.

Forced inducted or not has nothing to do with longevity, until you exceed the manufacturers specs for max torque and/or rpm. There are plenty of 200K mile 1.8T's, 2.7T's, etc out there to prove it. Meanwhile, there are plenty of N/A motors that don't last as long before wearing out.

You can have an LSJ with a 2.7" pulley outlast a perfectly stock LSJ if the pullied one spends less time above 4K rpm than the stock one, or if the stock one doesn't keep up on maintenance. If forced induction shortened the lifespan of the motor in any significant faction, you wouldn't see GM bringing out S/C and turbo ecotecs.

 

I think Adam's right. People who DON'T KNOW the answer shouldn't volunteer guesses on this subject. Just let us finish our 2.4 turbo SS and then post all your short lived negativity there.

As a small point of reference, how long do people want to keep these cars anyways...sure life span may be shortened by boosting the motors...but I do take care of my car change oil and don't abuse them which has always been fine for at least 100K. I have turbo'd hondas that have been abused with 200K and they ran fine as long as they were tuned correctly ...

The HP Tuner software opens up a whole new world for boosted ECOs.

 

n00b question here but this has been bugging me so I have to ask it. Like keeping me up at night bugging me. If we're just now getting HP Tuners support, how were Vector and Westers and anyone else tuning the 2.4L before this?

 

The Hahn Soltice is making 400+ BHP with there turbo with the car on pump gas.

However they are also saying that they don't know how long it will last with the stock internals.

 

hp tuners isnt really focused on 4 bangers really, like 80% of thier biz is GM v8s
its not really a matter of lacking the technical mumbo-jumbo, its just a matter of telling them they have a market with ecotec 2.4's and getting R&D time... thats why it took so long... bussnis man with a covette, blue collar middle management with camero, young kid with a cobalt... what market would you rather target?

That said, if you had enough resources you too can sit down with your tawiianese team of software consultants and construct your own tuning software and mass market it. which is close to what the other companies had done.

so, everyone go buy hp tuners so they will continue to make updates and R&D any VVT controls hidden in the pcm!

 

Maybe I should have phrased that a bit better. I have a firm grasp of economics and target marketing etc. I meant, specifically, is there some trade software out there that these shops were using that allowed them limited access to custom tune the 2.4L ECM? Obviously there must have been. Now that HPT is out, everyone is saying we can finally unlock the potential of the motor and do anything we want, BOOOST BOOST yadda yadda yadda, but obviously there was some power there before because a few shops were selling tunes.

Before the summer is over and I hit the track in the fall I would like to find a local shop that can do a custom dyno tune on my car. I cannot pull and mail my ECM to Westers or Vector and be without my car for any length of time. I am wondering if I need to find a shop that uses HP Tuners, or if there is other trade software out there (that hopefully some local shops are likely to have) that will do the trick (because obviously people were tuning before HPT supported us). That's kind of what got me wondering about Westers and Vector and HPT and all that. Or were they using proprietary software or what?

Sorry I wasn't more clear the first time.

 

in a long round-about way i was trying to say they use proprietary software, but we'll never know for sure.

 

weren't they using something for the LS2 to make changes? if I remember correctly the 2.4L shares an ECM with another GM vehicle (I'm thinking an LS2 ECM based off what I've seen on the Solstice forums) and it had already been cracked long before.

i really don't think anything new will come with the HP Tuners software other than you will have more people tuning their own car.

 

its not the type of pcm , its the programing in the pcm

the cavaliers and sunfires for what ever reaason GM had 1 of the more complicated coding in , and yet the camaros and some others were simple

 

You should be REALLY careful who you count on for advice, and that's all i'm going to say on the matter.

 

You have nothing else better to do, huh?

 

I never asked anyone for advice. I've been building cars for the better part of 20 years, so I really never have to ask for advice. If you have something personal with NJHK, i'd take it up offline.

 

well i can explain it this way. First of all a turbo is VERY different from a roots style blower. The blower will make boost faster than the turbo in the lower rpm's which puts more stress on the engine. You guys think that putting almost 20psi of boost into a stock N/A block is a good idea for a daily driver then go ahead and do it seriously. Once again i am not saying it is going to knock no matter what, but you will most likely get some serious knocking somewhere down the road and it will greatly decrease the life of your engine.

 

I've really never understood why people say roots blowers (mainly on 4 cyl's) make more power down low.

I'd say when a turbo reaches full boost at like 2500rpm that that's pretty stressful on the engine.

 

ok so I don't wanna come off like a *******...But, what does this mean to us with our N/A engins???Someone please PM me with the answer if you get the chance...

 

You can tune an n/a engine the same way you can tune a f/i engine. You wont get the same kind of gains, but you will still see gains.

 

Because a roots style blower starts making boost instantly, and i am not sure about the blower from the 2.0 (my mistake i should have checked before i said that) but many blowers will make close to its peak torque in the low rpm's. You can also cruise under boost in a turbo car, most roots style blowers make boost very low in the rpm's so you will be boosting whenever you drive which causes more ware.