With the mass air flow (MAF) sensor, GM did what Registry members have been doing for years–remove the air flow straightener or "screen". What took them so long to figure that one out? LS6 is not GM’s only application of that MAF. Any use of it with an intake duct that curves just before the MAF (typical of trucks), needs the straightener for the MAF to sense accurately and conventional wisdom was to leave it on Corvettes. In part, the essence of what Juriga and his engineers call "the ruthless pursuit of power" is whipping conventional wisdom.
With the Corvette’s relatively straight passage between the air filter box and the MAF, the straightener isn’t needed. Juriga told us it wasn’t until the MY02 development that his people questioned the MAF configuration in a Corvette-specific perspective. " "The low-hanging fruit is gone as far as changes that make more power," he continued, "so you gotta start going higher. We get to one target and say, ‘Ok. now we’re set.’ Next year, we’ll have another target, so we question what we did before." There were no changes to either the LS6’s intake manifold or its cylinder heads. John Juriga: "The intake manifold was already pretty darn good. We designed it to handle additional flow rates because composite intakes are very expensive to retool and develop. The same was true with the heads. The intake and exhaust ports flow sufficient quantities of air." |
