6.0 liter chevy

[A/Fuel]

Say you had a 6.0 liter Chevy engine. What would you do to get a little more torque out of it? Its in a kinda heavy vehicle, a 2500 4x4 extended cab.
I'm a little currious as to what you guys would try first, intake, exhaust.....or what?

[kyhunter89]

gears, Port and polished throttle body, a real tune, turbo.

[Deaf Bob]

On my 77 Chev flatbed, I did headers, cherry bombs, performer intake, Holley 600cfm carb, and an RV2 cam from Wolverine/Blue Racer. I got 12 mpg at the worst, loaded..16 empty.. Is peppy, if I drag some 460's stoplite to stoplite, can stay ahead of them.. I was 3 lights over the crew cab 460 till the last one.. They had a better jump.. They were yelling Fords rule, Chevys suck.. I told them I had a 350.. They had to pop the hood!
The cam was recomended by the local engine builder who says the guys running the big motorhomes loved that cam..build lots of torque and everything will fall in place..

[tardis454]

[Barry Donovan]

no torque.
I'd be searching for an error before ghetto turbo hacks.
plenty of engine.

[Aircooled]

Say you had a 6.0 liter Chevy engine. What would you do to get a little more torque out of it? Its in a kinda heavy vehicle, a 2500 4x4 extended cab.
I'm a little currious as to what you guys would try first, intake, exhaust.....or what?

I assume you are taking 99+ Vortech? What are your emissions constraints?
Having test driven a few 2500's I was surprised by how "reluctant" the 6.0/4L80E was compared to my LS1/T56 Firebird.
Cold air intake, maybe headers, definitely free up exhaust after manifolds.
But next step would be Torque based cam, mild converter and tune. The factory cam has virtually no overlap and the 4L80E has a tall first gear.

[A/Fuel]

It has 3.73 gears and it feels like it has a little torque, I just want to see if I can improve on it.
I do still have to deal with emmisions so that was a good point I keep forgetting about.
I have been looking at getting rid of the wacky air cleaner set up and getting a less restristive set up.
Plus some kind of cat back exhaust too. Any recommendations?

[kyhunter89]

3.73s are high/stock. Think about 4.30/4.56 if you dont stay on the highway. Nelson performance for a mailorder tune or blackbear comes to you, or find someone local with hptuners. Headers and cai can be found cheap on ebay. I wasnt kidding about p&p the throttle body, and the bump stop mod. What year is the truck?

[A/Fuel]

I do a lot of highway driving so I'd like to keep the 3.73s for now. Its a 2000.
I want to do some towing with it and I have taken it off road a few times. I need to get a better set of tires and I was thinking it might be nice to have a little more low end power.
I'll look into a tuner, what should I be looking for in one of those.
I could take a pic and email/ text it so someone but that's the limit of my knowledge, lol

[dieselhead]

I don't know what year you have but on my '99 6.0 liter/4l80e, 3.73's and iron heads I made these changes and it really helped the performance and mpg:

1) 160 degree thermostat
2) Cold air intake with scoop that went down behind the bumper. I DO NOT recommend Volant, it looked cool but didn't fit. All their tech dept. said was "it should fit". It took a lot of modification to get in installed.
3) Headers. I DO NOT recommend Borla. I thought they were the best but all the welded joints started leaking after a few years.
4) Real dual exhaust. I used a stainless Gibson set up where both pipes came out on the same side.
5) Programmer. I used a Hypertech. You can set the shift points, shift firmness, top speed, speedometer, type of gasoline and many more things.
6) My throttle body had a EGR pipe right behind the throttle butterfly. If you cut it off flush with the side where in comes in it's supposed to worth 15 hp. I should have blocked the EGR too. I had to clean the carbon off of the throttle butterfly pretty often (throttle started sticking).
) I used Amsoil in everything but I don't know if it helped the performance.

I did all the modifications at the same time and it was like a different truck as for as performance. It still seemed a little slow at takeoff because of the high first gear but really wasn't. I raced a few friends that thought they had fast 5.3 liter Chevy trucks but by the time my truck shifted to 2nd gear I was always at least 2 lengths ahead and pulling away rapidly. I drove this truck until 2005 and sold it to my son-in-law. It's still running great.

[SpiderGearsMan]

how would headers build torque ?
4.56 gears , but that is tampering with emissions
don't use overdrive
the 8.1 being killed in favor of the complex and expensive duramax didn't help
an 8.1 with an allison is the hot setup

[kyhunter89]

Dont waste money on a hypertech. Get a real tune. Your actually feeling the TM "torque Management" on bottom end making it feel weak. A tuner will remove it. Dealing with emissions you'll probably wont to find a header and y pipe with fake cats like the obx kit. Check out ls1truck.com

[SpiderGearsMan]

they show a 6.2 with 476 ft lbs for only 8 grand

http://store.chevroletperformance.com/store/SelectProd.do?prodId=8202&redir=true&manufacturer=GM&category=Crate%20Engines&name=LS376/480%20Hot%20Cam&model=%3C!--19244549--%3E

[A/Fuel]

I was looking at the nelson performance site and they had something about the torque management.
Yeah, I sure would like to turn that off.
Spidey, I would love an engine like that, but I cant spend that right now.

[anotheridiot]

I have a 6.0 in the 03 3500 van. I would definitely start with exhaust since you dont have much to spend. Dont know what year yours is, but it came off with two converters than dump both into one muffler. Shouldnt deal with emissions much since both cats had o2 sensors. I dont know why people are so into dumping the EGR valves when they just save you some fuel when you are off the throttle.