Fixing the Corvette Z06’s ECU Power Loss: Follow the Proper Break-In Procedure

After some C7 Corvette Z06 owners complained of power loss after spirited driving in the 650 horsepower super car on highways and at the track, the general consensus (and backed by an official statement by GM) was that ECU’s conservative tuning was to blame. But now there appears to be a fix for the situation and it’s an easy one at that: Follow the proper break-in procedures.

We saw this a year ago when some of the tuning shops who were among the first to receive their Corvette Stingrays took them straight to the track or the dyno with just a few scant miles on the odometer. The new C7’s warn drivers with a special yellow band around the tachometer that shows until the engine hits 500 miles and then the regular tach with the redline at 6500 rpms is shown.

It appears that were are now seeing a repeat with the 2015 Corvette Z06. But this time, the ECU is set up to cut power to the engine to help save it from any long term damage.

Rocko Parker from Chevrolet Performance was at the PRI racing show in Indianapolis and spoke to a CorvetteForum contributor about the ECU situation. He said that after 500 miles of proper engine break-in, the the ECU will allow for more performance and should no longer cut power.

You can’t really blame the new owners of the Corvette Z06 who want to see if the supercharged C7 is as capable as Chevrolet has been promoting over the last year, but those engine break-in procedures are there to keep that new LT4 humming long after the 500 miles have come and gone.

We assume that the break-in procedure for the 2015 Corvette Z06 closely follows that of the Corvette Stingray. In the owner’s manual, GM issued recommendations for the first 200, 500 and 1500 miles. Under 500 miles, GM recommends not exceeding 4,000 rpms and avoiding full throttle starts.

So now that the ECU power loss issue in the new Corvette Z06 may be solved, we’re wondering just how accurate some of those dyno pulls we’ve seen and if there may be even more power lurking under the hood of a properly-broken-in Z06.

Source:
corvetteforum.com

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