fastsuv

I took my 1LT with the 2.4L engine and 5-speed tranny to the local speed shop to get it on the dyno. I wanted a baseline hp and torque number to compare future upgrades to.

The guy who runs the shop has many years of experience and has built many race cars, drag cars, and high-powered street cars. He was surprised at the numbers on my car. Rear wheel horsepower peaked at 153.6hp. Torque peaked at 148.9 lb-ft. Using the standard numbers for parasitic drivetrain losses that he usually uses (18% with a manual tranny), this equated to 187hp and 181lb-ft of torque at the flywheel. These numbers are substantially higher than the advertised 172hp and 162lb-ft of torque. A second dyno run produced numbers within 1hp and 1lb-ft of the original run. He attributes the high numbers to a combination of a "good" engine (at the better end of production variations) and low parasitic losses.

The torque peaked at about 4800 RPM. I was somewhat surprised how flat the torque curve was. Horsepower peaked at 6000 RPM, but that was as high as he wanted to go in RPM. The horsepower was still climbing at 6000 RPM.

These numbers were a welcome surprise, as it would have been disappointing to have them go the other way (unexpectedly low numbers).

He has built a few turbo Ecotec engines and he says the Ecotec is a very stout engine that responds well to turbos without major engine mods (with reasonable boost levels).

Now I'm ready to put on the CGS air intake and plan for future mods (forced induction) .

Steve

txsman2930

Has this guy installed any turbos on either the 2.2 or 2.4 Ecotecs yet?

SoCalHHR

"Rear wheel horsepower peaked at 153.6hp. Torque peaked at 148.9 lb-ft. "

I find this really surprising since the HHR is a front wheel drive vehicle!
(maybe I should have had them dyno mine at the back end!)

All kidding aside, this agrees completely with what we have found.
Here are some numbers from our last runs in comparison:

Your Stock Vehicle: 153.6hp.---------148.9 lb-ft.Tq
Our modded * HHR: 159.08hp-------167.07
Adding CGS Intake: 167.17hp-------175.09

*(with IMCO T-924 Turbo Muffler and Mobil 1 Synthetic Oil)

As you see, we showed an increase of about 6hp over stock with the Turbo muffler and Mobil 1. Torque however, is substantially stronger with the addition of the T-924 Turbo Muffler - it pulls much stronger.

Once you add the CGS Intake System to your HHR - get ready to hang on!
That little Ecotec opens up and really wants to run. In fact. we have been doing some tweaking with different filters and have now found one that helps it pull even stronger (we may be adding it to our site as an accessory soon.)

All in all, the Ecotec is a little powerhouse waiting to be unleashed. I think over the next 2 years you will start to see more products to take advantage of its horsepower/torque potential.

Welcome to the mod club!

1BadPig

My wife's SAAB has the turbocharged 2.0L Ecotec. It is advertised at 175 hp, but it feels significantly faster than the 177 hp of the NA 2.4L.

ludicristSS

Our auto 2lt base runs were 149 at 6000 and 141 at 5250 or so I can tell you we picked up a substantial increase from our tune, but due to a recent surgery I haven't be able to back it up, as soon as I can drive I will be putting it up . That car has picked up 3mpg on the DIC for the last 1000 mi of mixed driving .


Thanks
Matt
www.tunetimeperformance.com

Snoopy

I hope whatever the nature of the surgery...it was successful and worth the recouperation period. And, I hope you're back to "norm".

If so, can you provide dyno results for the "super tune" on the HHR?

I may be interested, if I can give up the use of my car for whatever period you need the ECU.

UncivilRacer

There are alot of other factors to involve in the equasion. Size of vehicle, weight, and turbo. A turbo will obviously be able to build up speed alot faster than a n/a vehicle. Just like my soltstice. The turbo versions build up twice as fast, but that was before I added my aftermarket equipment!

JoeR

One quick note here...

The dyno numbers everyone's posting here are raw (uncorrected) numbers. Unless you are using SAE corrected numbers, any comparison is a moot point. Note that the SAE corrections (the capability is built into most modern dynos) take into account for temperature, altitude and humidity, factors that can make considerable difference.

If the shop with the dyno saves your data, they should also have the corrected data. That is good for later tuning. Say you made your base runs on a cold winter day... then made some mods and put it back on the dyno during a hot summer day.... the raw numbers would definitely show a loss, making you think "What have I done? I should see a gain!".

For example, say Deb did a run in Mile High Denver and posted the raw numbers... they'd look sick due to the lower air density at that altitude.

IOW, if everyone posted SAE corrected numbers, you'd be on the same playing field and comparisons would be much more valid.

SoCalHHR

All 10 of our dyno runs made during the intake comparisons wer done within one hour early in the morning. We swapped parts as fast as possible to ensure runs would be close. Examining the data afterwards, we found the temperature and humidity changes to be negligible. Since all our intakes were tested on the same car (same baseline), they are relative to each other on that vehicle and provide as accurate a test as you can get in the real world.

Hope it helps,

JoeR

Mike, my point was that different people comparing numbers from all around the country does not make a valid comparison due to the variables.

In mentioning Deb in Denver, there figures would show about a 20% HP loss due to altitude alone. The real world numbers for temp correction would yield roughly 1% gain or loss per 10 deg. (F) change in temperature (SAE standard is 77% F), and that applies to intake temp, not ambient, for accuracy on any engine according to the formulas of SAE J1349, which is what most dynos use.

You're comparisons on your car in that time frame are OK, except for the fact that the "real world" does not include driving around with your hood up. Your test got busted by some intelligent people because there was no real world conditions in that test to reflect the actual effect of intake air temp under normal driving conditions. I have considerable hard data what that effect is and will post that in the near future.