How much horsepower will be the C7’s new V8 engine be able to produce on the dyno?

Well, Jessi Lang with The J-Turn web show for Motor Trend wanted to find out so she took a 2014 Corvette Stingray to the K&N facility.
With Robert “Pops” Calles, product tech with K&N, behind the wheel, the blue Z51 was taken to the limit on the dyno, literally.

“Dyno testing is one of the most widely accepted forms of performance measure in the auto industry,” Lang points out, “and while dynos are incredibly precise machines, the accuracy of the test depends on the operator’s ability to control a variety of variables. Now today, I’ve got the C7 and I want to know what this thing can really do. So to ensure I get the most accurate test possible, I’m meeting up with my friend Bert Heck from K&N Engineering.”

Basically, Calles and Heck put the car through two pulls to see what kind of numbers the C7 makes, and we think you’ll like what you hear.

“We start off in first gear, second gear, third gear, and this pull was a fourth-gear one,” Heck said. “Once we got the car in fourth gear, we brought the car up to about 2500 RPM. Then what we do is get there, get the car settled, and then go full throttle, then we take it all the way up to max RPM which was 6500 on this pull here.”

On the dyno chart, the Stingray made 402 horsepower the first try, then was allowed to cool down for a second attempt.

“What we do is we’ll reproduce the same thing as what we did on the first pull” to test for consistency, Heck says.
No problem there.

“The second pull was 403 horsepower, so this car is very, very consistent which is really, really cool,” he says. “You can tell that the torque is really flat so that’s also what performance guys want – a nice, flat torque curve. So very impressive.”

Jessi asks if they will do another test to get a top-speed for the Stingray.

As the motor revs up, the numbers climb rapidly to 91, 92, 100, 140, 142, 150, 156, 175, and finally with Jessi hollering “Go, go, go, go,” the ’Vette finally maxes out at…192 mph before quickly falling back to 190.

But it was actually an artificial limit set by the computer on the car, Heck points out.

“You can get in and mess with the computer and get higher miles per hour,” he says, “but off the showroom floor, this car is a 190 mph car.”

Of course, the dyno test didn’t take in account wind drag or other factors, he points out. “This is just a stagnant test, so if this was real world, would it make 190mph?” Heck asks. “Well, that’s where you have to do the real world test.”

We’re sure they could find plenty of people to tackle that chore.

Just in case those original horsepower numbers aren’t enough for you, by the way, Heck shows Jessi a prototype filter being developed just for the C7.

“Since this is kinda the first car we’ve seen,” Heck says, “this is a good opportunity for us to throw it in and see if it fits.”

“So if you could get an extra 10 horsepower out of this,” Jessi asks, “would that be an exciting number?”

“Ten horsepower would be a really good number. We’d be happy with something like that,” he replies.

The test proved to be a great one for the filter and the C7.

“We’ve achieved over 15 horsepower up to 20 horsepower gains,” Heck says after making a run. “Not bad for a prototype filter! It’s a good baseline. We’re pretty happy. It’s leading us in the right direction.”

So for all you C7 fans out there, if the factory numbers don’t satisfy you, be aware that there is even more performance waiting to roar out of the new Stingray engine!

Source:
Motor Trend on YouTube.com

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