reflashing cavalier 2.2 OHV

i've got a 1996 cavalier with a OHV 2.2. and a 5 speed j cavalier basically i want to get to or as close to quad four power and torque numbers as possible... the catch... it needs to retain the stock injectors, intake, i am gonna see if a manifold from a s10 will clear everything, no port work can really be done. it needs to be done by advanceing the timing, high octane no lead race gas so i can run as much timing as possible, richining the A/F mixture.

it is in my buddys dirt track car, it is OBD II, it is in the rules all cars must be stock when it comes to the drive train, but alot of guys in his class are cheating, mainly with head work and raising compression ratios, but most are to stupid to take in to account the tuning required. plus the rules state nothing about a reflash of the vehicles computer. he had a custom pipe bent at a local shop, i believe 2 1/4 as opposed to 1 7/8, then we cut the old flange off the original pipe, welded it to the new pipe. it has no cat, is wide open to the rear with a 3 inch long "muffleling device" (basically a 3 in portion of a glasspack) i also would like to RAISE the revlimiter about 800-1000 RPM, i cant eliminate it though, cause the cars have to have them, and there really not supposed to be tampered with. again, one of those "gray areas"
also, any stock GM injectors that fit in the 2.2's manifold, possibly off say a 3.1, 3.3, or 3.8.? also whats a fuel pump that puts out higher pressure then a stock cavaliers that goes in with little to no modification of the tank.

ANY help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated, i mean anything, this is kind of a new breed for me but i want to go into it with both hands.

believe me ANY help will be appreciated

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Originally Posted by 68390AMX

ANY help and suggestions would be greatly appreciated, i mean anything, this is kind of a new breed for me but i want to go into it with both hands.

believe me ANY help will be appreciated

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96 is not supported. You would need to change to an 97 pcm. To top it off, you are not going to gain that much HP/TQ on a stock 2.2 OHV with Sidefeed injectors without other mods. You may gain 5hp with the tuning. Good luck!

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Originally Posted by imphat0260

96 is not supported. You would need to change to an 97 pcm. To top it off, you are not going to gain that much HP/TQ on a stock 2.2 OHV with Sidefeed injectors without other mods. You may gain 5hp with the tuning. Good luck!

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X2 on what he said.

Dude i have the same problem. 96 cav 2.2 ohv 5 speed race car. we dont want that much more power we just want a few more rpm before the computer steps in. Bouncing it off the rev limter before the corner is like hitting a brick wall and kills lap times...

I have a97 , it used to have an auto, now a5 speed.
raced it for 2 years, now its time to up it a little.
Building it with a new cam and valves and springs and pistons.
Would like to strip every extra wire and code from the damn thing including pass lock 2
I need to up the rev limiter about 400 or soand tune it. Is this a good place to start?

"Building it with a new cam and valves and springs and pistons."


Where did you find cams for this car? I'm currently in the process of torturing myself with a '97 Cavalier 2.2 auto and can not find cams anywhere and it would help! Also, at what point do I literally run out of injector? If I stay N/A with just cams and mabey minor porting would I still have to up-convert-grade? It's costly and I would like to stretch the stock ones as far as they will go.

Howard cams, copied a profile from a sbc 170 shipped.
Also have an ebay header.
Now do I need: hptuner,pro, wide band?
Going to try trifecta @250 I'm willing to take the chance.

"Now do I need: hptuner,pro, wide band? "

Yeah VCM Suite Pro can do what you need. That's basicly all I've done so far with mine. Changed idle & fans for 160 stat, shift points & properties, high octane spark map. I believe you will only be able to wide band tune this car in PE mode, closed loop because of the way it was designed. I'm over it, would be handy to have a green/red LED idiot light to let me know when I'm not using my commanded AFR because of a bad sensor or something keeping me OL without me knowing it.

Ok this is what I've been looking for! If I buy hp tuners could I copy s file from you, apply and would that be a good start? Feel kinda dumb but what is pe?
would love to be doing this with about three other people and sharing results.

I'm not a professional tuner & haven't tuned with wideband yet, but I'll post my tune here later and have no problem sharing with you. Your best bet would be to look at my tables and use those values as reference points. They shouldn't fry your car but will cost alot of gas mileage, and if you're going to use them I reccomend manually entering them or using copy/paste with rightclick to transfer those values to your tune that you can save, work on and then later write to your PCM. Safer and more educational than just writing my tune on your PCM! If you click on the calibration details icon you can get a brief summation of what I was trying to achieve. Make sure you name, save, and backup your original tune. Lots of good ideas in forum regarding this. I believe PE mode is used by my fuel system to recognize conditions when extra fuel would be needed. Unfortunately on my car it's the only table that allows me to command any specific AFR.

I just might buy hptuners then. We are circle track racing so fuel mileage is not really a concern.
1 need a safe tune
2 need to eliminate rev limiter
3 then I will worry about tuning and playing with files.

Do I need the pro version? Or can I data log with something else and adjust from there?
Need to order soon. Thanks for the help.
Ps can I eliminate the dash and key then?

You should go with the Pro. That way you can log wideband o2 (or almost anything else 0-5v) through the inputs in the future, when you seriously tune. Not just on this car, but others in the future as well. Not sure w/ dash issue. Certain things may not work properly without the dash in the car but, one this old should still write to the PCM no problem.(still follow all the rules!) If you're going toggle or pushbutton for the key, again our cars are so old I've never seen a chip in any of those keys so I think you should be O.K. You will need to retain a KEY ON-Engine OFF key position for and during PCM writing/flashing.

Thanks for the advice doc. I really don't want to spend another 100 to 350 for something I don't need, or some thing i might need. The way I see it,i need hptuner pro @650, wide band@ 350
I had hoped for 499 and done. But I'm going to buy hptuners pro hoping that us all I need for now.i will share every thing I get to try to make sense of it all.

Yes, to be able to wideband tune you would need both VCM Suite Pro and a wideband -o2 sensor+module kit. The basic Suite for $499 would still allow you to customize your rev limiters right now & change anything else you want, but later on if you wanted to wideband tune your car or others you would have to upgrade to Pro and find a wideband kit. You could also just buy Pro for now, use it now to change what you can and then buy your wideband kit later after you learn alot more, actually know how and are ready for that phase. A 97 Cavalier is fairly simple to initially learn this stuff on and may be the ideal beginner car. Not many tables, so it's easy to slowly grasp all the stuff you can change, and no MAF sensor to worry about.

Hey Doc thanks again for the advice!
going over the file and comparing the stock file with yours there are some big differences,
if you could point me in the direction as to what and why there are differences.
such as main spark stock is about 5 degrees retarded from your tune.

So its like this: got a 11:1 motor, big cam,big valves, turning 7000 rpm.
I need to change _____________
then________
then________
then_______
but make sure you do __________ first.
and you can leave __________alone for now because you are running race fuel.
Im not so sure I like all of the advance you have there with the compression I will have.
I might try changing it as we go but i need a safe baseline.
again thanks for the file, it gives me a a place to look at what changes to make and why.

I can use that much timing with an automatic and 93 octane gas. The extra octane of your race gas may allow you to get away with it as well. Or you could just take out 2 or 3 degrees to be safe. Did you check out my Calibration Details? It's right next to Save File in the toolbar at the top and will offer some insight as to why I did some of the things I did. You need to change your Fuel Cutoff & Fuel Resume, Spark Limiters & Spark Ramp Out, Full Throttle Shift Speed & Full Throttle Shift RPM, just to get your engine to still produce power at the RPM levels you will be seeing. You should think about turning off Abuse Mode and zeroing out anything involving Torque Reduction under both Engine tables and Transmission tables. You might also want to adjust ECT Startup Closed Loop Enable to minimize any delay untill you enter PE mode commanded AFR. The rest is up to you as far as what AFR you should use, what top speed limit to use, and what your target idle should be. The first thing you should do with one of these cars is pull the ABS fuse so you can actually stop and ground out the E-brake lever sensor to eliminate ETS. If you have'nt installed a 160 thermostat yet I would do that. Then you could adjust fan settings & idle to match up. As far as your valves and cam go you can fine-tune your VE tables with your wide band to fully take advantage of those changes.

Thanks again doc!
this is our third year with car.it was an auto so we clipped the abs and e brake long ago.
we also just left the shift indicator (the one for the starter solenoid) unplugged the one that told it it was in neutral. I think I have enough to get started. Would like to remove the whole dash. Eliminate EGR SECONDARY O2. The speedo hasn't worked since we put the 5 speed in the car. But the old girl is fast! Had fast time 4 weeks in a row and finished 2nd overall fir the season, my son is 15

Just make sure you adjust limiters for park & neutral then, not just drive & reverse seeing as those sensors have been removed. Some sensors/input are needed for the car to enter closed loop and allow you to control AFR. Other wise it will just try to command open loop 11/1 AFR. (Happened to me when an injector started going) It gets deeper and weirder too in OL but not a topic for here, or one I fully understand yet. I don't know if those exact sensors will cause you any problems or not (doubt it) just some info. I left my EGR & related settings alone as I have a street vehicle with no unusual mods that would allow ME PERSONALLY to gain much from it or require modifing those settings to make my engine run properly or longer, but you may do what you like. I still have my cats, so I left my DTC's (for the o2 sensors) alone. But you have an off road racing vehicle and actually can do whatever you like there too. If you do any EGR mods, DEFINATELY get 160 thermostat. Had trouble finding one. Autozone can special order it, oddly enough only place I could find it. Had trouble replacing it. Found an elbow marked THERMOSTAT only to wipe all the soot off to reveal THERMOSTAT LOCATED AT WATER PUMP! (Passanger Side) Always glad to help out someone dedicated to racing especially when you have a car as limited by it's CPU as this one. I'm plauged with owning cars like that and also have a 92 Crown Victoria that even with the police spec CPU settings, is very "restrained".

I wish I would have started a wiki a something. Luckily I found the thermostat b4 we tried to race it. The easy it works originally is the return water from the heater actually hearts it up and causes it to open. I never heard of any problems with removing egr, but ok. But it sure wouldn't hurt lower the temp a little. Wish I had a dyno as it is hard to log for trims when you can drive it at the track.
Bought Greg bannish book. I was thinking that driveability isn't really an issue as we are wot or off the gas.

If by drivability you mean the generally accepted desription of cruising and off throttle habits then yeah, you won't care. But you slam the throttle shut going into a corner and hit the (power) brakes massively sucking vacum and your engine stalls, thats drivability also. The kind you and I definately care about. This was happening to me with the car bone stock, so you may see these issues your the cam and airflow mods. My car was un-drivable to the degree that I was trying to push it so I tuned it's drivability and no longer have stalling issues.

Yes your right. I bought pro, new laptop. I'm reading till my eyes bleed. Bought Greg Banish's book. Have taken a scan, data log with the old motor. Might not be back here for a little while. I read your tune notes, looks very safe to me for what I'm about to do, I will back off the timing a little across the board. Not sure what effect it will have on the car not having a speed sensor but so far so good. I have a lot to learn. Idle and stall may be a problem with the cam so I have been studying that area the most right now.
Looking back I have to wonder why someone would pay $300+ for cam and not tune it.
I will be back and share what I have done. Thanks again so much for your valuable information and help in making the right choices.

Hey Doc, can I bother you for your config file for the scanner?
Does this have a maf sensor? didn't think so.
I think I'm making sense of some of this now. I need to figure out ve first. need to do that first because of new cam. then play with fuel trim data from scans, then adj.advance.
I think i got the copy adv table from high to low octane and things like that.
I clicked a bunch of pids in the main table took it for a ride around the block but the histograms have to all be assigned? made one but it made no sense.
is it because i am running the beta that there are on histograms defined?
TIA!!!!!!!!

I am using the Default Imperial Custom Cofig. It should already be in your scanner. If it's not and the only thing you have is Default Imperial Config, and if that's not working for you I will edit and post my own personal config. here for you later. As for the histograms, they are not available to our specific vehicles. I think it's due to the way our (very old) PCM's work. I haven't gotten into anything that I would want to set up a histogram for yet. I've just been recording scan logs and reviewing that data in order to make adjustments. Oh yeah, I drove this car for YEARS, looked under the hood hundreds of times and just last year noticed there was no MAF system! It seems alot of other prople learn and are surprised by this once they buy HP Tuners, not just us. That's what I ment about this car being a good beginner tuning car. Less tables so you can grasp the basics quicker, and no MAF sensor that you would have to fail as we are already in speed density mode by nature.

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Originally Posted by Dr. Nopps

As for the histograms, they are not available to our specific vehicles. I think it's due to the way our (very old) PCM's work. I haven't gotten into anything that I would want to set up a histogram for yet. I've just been recording scan logs and reviewing that data in order to make adjustments. Oh yeah, I drove this car for YEARS, looked under the hood hundreds of times and just last year noticed there was no MAF system! It seems alot of other prople learn and are surprised by this once they buy HP Tuners, not just us. That's what I ment about this car being a good beginner tuning car. Less tables so you can grasp the basics quicker, and no MAF sensor that you would have to fail as we are already in speed density mode by nature.

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:doh: Seriously..... The Histograms work fine, you just have to set them up. And if it took you years to figure out that a Jbody did not have a MAF, maybe you should not be giving out advice..... BTW, there a very few select OS that are based on Speed density with this PCM.... The rest are Alpha N (TPS based).....

Easy now. I really appreciate all the help I can get! The doc was kind enough to point me in. the right direction.and also the only one to do so. now if you would be do kind as to help me out with the configs. That would be a positive thing. If not, I have found some reading material on the subject.
I realize that this is not an overly complicated system not its it very popular. With the gearing, track configuration, I need more rpm, that means to get power up there you need a different cam, witch means you need to tune it for that, right? Just looking for guidance end thanks for your help.

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Originally Posted by o2l8

Easy now. I really appreciate all the help I can get! The doc was kind enough to point me in. the right direction.and also the only one to do so. now if you would be do kind as to help me out with the configs. That would be a positive thing. If not, I have found some reading material on the subject.
I realize that this is not an overly complicated system not its it very popular. With the gearing, track configuration, I need more rpm, that means to get power up there you need a different cam, witch means you need to tune it for that, right? Just looking for guidance end thanks for your help.

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Send me your email. I will send you a generic Config file for the Jbody platform when I get home tonight. Its setup for an AEM WB.

Thanks again! My mind is tired,,,, but I am starting to make sense of it all.
IMPHAT PM sent. thanks, looking forward to reviewing it over coffee in the morning.

"Easy now. I really appreciate all the help I can get! The doc was kind enough to point me in. the right direction.and also the only one to do so."


Wow thanks for sticking up for me man. I actually can't believe how rude some people are in this forum. I've tried as hard as I could to the best of my very limited ability for about 3-5 hours over the course of the past 4 weeks just trying to help you figure out what product you actually needed, getting you firmiliar with how I used it, and even helping you get fluent with it, only to have some Senior tuner basicly tell me to go F-Off as soon as I make 1 mistake! Well rest assured everyone, the people at the Guinness Book of World Records have been notified and my name will be omited from all future editions. In my own defence, I even tried to cover myself by letting you know I'm not yet a professional tuner right up front. When nobody else was helping and the senior tuners were too busy to reply for 4 weeks leaving all the heavy lifting here up to me, a junior tuner with 6 months modern windows based computer experience....exactly what the heck did they think would happen? Eventually I would make a mistake. Considering all this I don't think I did too bad. God forbid we help someone out when they start a post with something like, "I'm new to this". Or, "Could somebody please at least point me in the right direction?". I helped you ONLY because I could pretty much tell: 1.) You weren't using HPT to do some really knuckleheaded stuff. 2.) You, thankfully are someone who understands responses to your questions where others sometimes don't get it and just ask their question again. 3.) Even though I'm new, you stated you needed help ASAP. I sure hope that if I take Greg's class it's not full of disrespectfull people like this as I still have a ton of "beginner" questions and am still humanly prone to making mistakes. Also to clarify, I wasn't researching my car for years or anything. I was actually just driving it around with no concern for how exactly it consumed fuel & air ( As GM intended). I had just never cared therefore never looked. Every other car I had owned had a MAF sensor, and because I never actually paid close attention to my inlet tubing on this one it was simply a surprise once this information actually became relevant for me to even concern myself with. Again to clarify, the actual concept itself was fully grasped by me in about .2 sec. not over the course of several years. I found the suggestion of this a little insulting. And when refering to "our cars" I strictly ment my car and o2l8's which I believe are/were the exact same, and I was under the impression that when in closed loop PE Mode they are running in speed density. Sorry for any confusion.:confused:

I can see how that might happen. If you just subscribe to new posts, it may have appeared you were appeared the cart was in front of the horse giving advice without knowing there was no map sensor. As good of a tool these forums are it is really hard to express emotions or the intent of a post. If the three of us were sitting at a table i would bet all of us roils feel different about what was said. That is the first time I even heard of alfa n . Do I still tune it like in speed density mode? I think so. as far as I can tell the histograms will make it easy to spot problems by making calculations and flagging errors on the fly.

I'm pretty sure that's how you tune it. Agian my disclamer of not having yet been there yet, but it would seem our only option. Also in Closed Loop. And worse yet, the only table I've seen allowing to command AFR is in PE Mode. I have no access to Alpha N tables on my car if that's what it's using as a reference for Open Loop fueling. And every single make of scanner I hook up to my car would show that if in Open Loop as rich as it would go would be 11/1 commanded AFR not what I was commanding, even in PE Mode! Meaning agian, I THINK.....any changes made to your (MAP based) VE Table or AFR won't help much unless you're at least in Closed Loop and probably have to be in PE mode also. (Oh yeah, couldn't quite put my finger on it at first but I think you ment to type "- without knowing there was no MAF sensor." For the love of god please let that be what you ment.) lol

Now our injector duty cycles are maxed out.
Is there something besides the top feed conversion I can do?
I don't want it to look like it is altered, although it is legal in our class.

if the duty cycle is maxed out and you need more fuel unfortunately you need bigger injectors.
80% duty cycle is the normal max to prevent overheating the injectors coils.

if you dont need much more fuel and have a aftermarket fuel regulator you could raise the fuel pressure a little bit as a band-aid fix, but again if your hittin over 80% ur going to want those larger injectors.

there is a injector spreadsheet in excel format that helps with converting for injectors if you do upgrade. im pretty sure imphat helped with it he may know where its at.