Before, you needed an aftermarket management system. Now, you can increase performance in just a few hours.
HP Tuners has announced a major development for the C8 Corvette Stingray and for luxury marque Cadillac's CT4-V and CT5-V Blackwing variants, namely that it can now offer diagnostic and tuning support for these vehicles via the OBDII port. Why does this matter?
In an age where cybersecurity threats are only increasing in frequency, General Motors' Global B engine control module (ECM) has been developed to ward off hacks, but that also means that tuning the OEM module is nearly impossible. The ECM is so secure that even Hennessey said it might need GM's help to tune the C8 Corvette.
But with this new development from HP Tuners, a whole world of possibilities is about to open up.
The E99 ECM found in the 2020-2023 Corvette Stingray is the same one used in the Cadillac CT4-V Blackwing and also its sibling, the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing, and this can now be accessed to inspect and edit boost, camshaft timing, air/fuel ratio, injector timing, and other parameters.
“Our company spent the last 24 months developing various methods of spoofing various electronic sensors in order to trick the ECM into commanding increased boost and performance,” said Scott Cook, lead tuner at Tapout Tuning, a Cadillac V-Series specialist. “However, once we had access to the E99 Global B ECM via HP Tuners' service, we made more tuning progress in five hours than we had in the previous two years.”
Someone who knows the challenges of tuning a C8 firsthand is Emelia Hartford, whose C8 Stingray was the world's quickest thanks to a twin-turbo setup. However, that car had to run a piggyback management system. And when Hartford mocked up the world's first twin-turbo Z06, the ECM was never tuned, and the car was quickly reverted to stock, all because the OEM ECM was too tricky to manipulate. Now that HP Tuners has found an in, we suspect there will be many more supercharged and turbocharged C8 Stingrays to come. The Z06 also runs on Global B architecture, so perhaps this will soon be accessible too.
In the meantime, the T93 TCM (transmission control module) for E99-equipped vehicles with a 10-speed is now also supported, albeit limited for the time being. In the future, HP Tuners expects to be able to offer custom tuning support for all Global B controllers, including the E90, E01, and E66 ECms, as well as other T93 TCM modules not yet supported.
Keyword: HP Tuners Find Way To Jailbreak C8 Chevy Corvette And Cadillac Blackwing