Starting a C6 Corvette Z06 build - Tuning Question

Hi!

I am in the process of collecting parts to start the build of my 2007 Corvette Z06 with a LS7 engine. The car is completely stock right now and has only 20k km on it. I plan on doing the typical cold air intake, ported and rebuilt heads, throttle body, cam, heads and exhaust.

My question is related to the MAF. Would it make sense to install my new cold air intake first and scale the MAF before any other mods? If I did this could I consider the MAF essentially good-to-go if all the other mods will be downstream of the MAF? I do understand that adding a cam can effect the MAF calibration. Or, should I just doing all the mods and once and then deal with tuning?

Thanks!!

You will definitely want to retune when you fit an aftermarket cam, same for the heads.

Basically, your engine doesn't know what you are doing to it. It will compensate for changes in parts, but it won't take advantage of your aftermarket parts unless you tell it to. That is why we tune.

So while you could tune just with your intake, exhaust and then fit a bunch of other parts, it would, at best, render fitting them kind of pointless/useless and, at worst, leave you with a car that runs like crap, potentially causing unnecessary damage over time.

With that in mind, if you only want the tuning to be done once and are paying for it, do it all as a 'one-and-done'.

If you are tuning the car yourself though, it would be a great learning experience for you to tune as you fit different parts to gain experience. You won't necessarily gain as much difference from the first tune with others until you get to your cam (and where you gain depends on the profile remembering it's not just about peak HP but usable HP), but it will be great practice.

I'm sure you're all over it, but this is a great watch anyway when it comes to camshaft selection and tuning: https://www.hpacademy.com/blog/5-things-youre-doing-wrong-camshaft-selection-and-tuning-techtalk/

Further to the course material, there are also a number of webinars around rescaling your MAF and camshaft specs, degreeing and the valvetrain side of things too: https://www.hpacademy.com/previous-webinars/

Thank you for the reply!

I am certainly going to try and tune this car myself. My concern is if I throw all the parts on at once, I maybe lost tuning it. If I do just the intake initially my first tune will be limited to only the MAF. Once I get my MAF dialed in, I assume it will be easier tuning for the addition of the other parts such as heads and cam as the MAF will already be dialed in.

Am I correct in this line of thinking?