Wicked97
forum member
Not long ago, JPC Racing had looked for a customer to partner up with for some 6R80 torque converter testing and further refinement of the DiabloSport transmission PCM calibration. Larry Fitzsimmons, also known as CasperGT, was nice enough to let us use his car for some testing.
One company we’ve worked with extensively over the past few years is Pro Torque, so we turned to their Street Series torque converter. This unit comes in at an awesome price point of $579 and after talking to Joe Rivera at Pro Torque, some changes were made to optimize it for these modern 5.0L combinations. With no other changes, just removing the stock converter and adding the new Pro Torque unit, CasperGT dropped from the car’s all-time best 60ft performance of 1.82 to 1.67.
Up next, we converted the tuning to the new DiabloSport InTune programmer and spent time on our chassis dyno getting the most rwhp and rwtq. We planned on hitting the track and testing the car with the new tune in it but Mother Nature didn’t allow that to happen. As we watched the rain we figured it was a good time to add a set of JPC Racing long-tube headers, x-pipe, and over-the-axle pipes. Of course the car went back on the dyno after these mods to get the ECU tuned up.
After going over the converter data with Pro Torque from our baseline testing, we decided that we would like to make some more adjustments on the Street Series unit. So we shipped it back to New York for the upgrades. In the meantime, Larry dropped off a 5C Circle D high-stall torque converter to put in the car so we could continue testing our 6R80 transmission calibrations and get back on track. The 5C was chosen because at this point Larry was drag racing more than he was driving the car on the street. The higher stall torque converter, long tubes/exhaust and custom Diablo/JPC tune helped us run 11.15 at 121.8 mph. A little is good and more is better, Larry wanted to know what it would take to run 10s. Our response was to work on the shift points some more, remove some weight, and convert the car to E85.
Our weight removal process included JPC Racing lightweight front/rear bumper supports, a rear seat delete, and removal of the passenger seat. This dropped the race weight by 100lbs, which put us at a final race weight of 3515 with the driver. By dumping the 93 octane in favor of E-85 fuel it brought output to 453rwhp. However, we all know dyno’s vary and that rwhp is just a number for reference, and to be used for future testing/tuning. Another factor on our side was the exceptional air this time of the year at MIR. To give you an idea of how good the weather conditions were; the corrected altitude was -1500 and a 45 degree air temperature. The track was a little slippery because of the chilly weather conditions, but we still managed a 1.45 60 ft and a 10.78@124. Mission complete! Thanks to Larry, we were able to develop the shift points/transmission settings going forward for all of our JPC Racing tunes and we pushed a stock engine, bolt on car into the 10's.
Larry's car has a good combination of parts but it is also something that can be duplicated. His list of mods are as follows:
4.10 gears
AirRaid CAI
JPC Longtube headers
FRPP X-pipe
JPC over axle pipes
Pipes axle back
BMR lower control arms w/ICM's
BMR adj panhard bar
Circle D-5C
JPC front/rear lightweight bumper supports
Rear seat delete
Weld RTS package 295/55/15's
Dynotech one piece driveshaft
We look forward to doing some more testing on Larry's car in the very near future and we have a lot of good stuff to install with a BOSS 302 intake being the next one to test on this combination. We are also going to be doing some gear ratio testing in attempts to run even quicker. Rest assured, we won’t be taking gear out of it!
One company we’ve worked with extensively over the past few years is Pro Torque, so we turned to their Street Series torque converter. This unit comes in at an awesome price point of $579 and after talking to Joe Rivera at Pro Torque, some changes were made to optimize it for these modern 5.0L combinations. With no other changes, just removing the stock converter and adding the new Pro Torque unit, CasperGT dropped from the car’s all-time best 60ft performance of 1.82 to 1.67.
Up next, we converted the tuning to the new DiabloSport InTune programmer and spent time on our chassis dyno getting the most rwhp and rwtq. We planned on hitting the track and testing the car with the new tune in it but Mother Nature didn’t allow that to happen. As we watched the rain we figured it was a good time to add a set of JPC Racing long-tube headers, x-pipe, and over-the-axle pipes. Of course the car went back on the dyno after these mods to get the ECU tuned up.
After going over the converter data with Pro Torque from our baseline testing, we decided that we would like to make some more adjustments on the Street Series unit. So we shipped it back to New York for the upgrades. In the meantime, Larry dropped off a 5C Circle D high-stall torque converter to put in the car so we could continue testing our 6R80 transmission calibrations and get back on track. The 5C was chosen because at this point Larry was drag racing more than he was driving the car on the street. The higher stall torque converter, long tubes/exhaust and custom Diablo/JPC tune helped us run 11.15 at 121.8 mph. A little is good and more is better, Larry wanted to know what it would take to run 10s. Our response was to work on the shift points some more, remove some weight, and convert the car to E85.
Our weight removal process included JPC Racing lightweight front/rear bumper supports, a rear seat delete, and removal of the passenger seat. This dropped the race weight by 100lbs, which put us at a final race weight of 3515 with the driver. By dumping the 93 octane in favor of E-85 fuel it brought output to 453rwhp. However, we all know dyno’s vary and that rwhp is just a number for reference, and to be used for future testing/tuning. Another factor on our side was the exceptional air this time of the year at MIR. To give you an idea of how good the weather conditions were; the corrected altitude was -1500 and a 45 degree air temperature. The track was a little slippery because of the chilly weather conditions, but we still managed a 1.45 60 ft and a 10.78@124. Mission complete! Thanks to Larry, we were able to develop the shift points/transmission settings going forward for all of our JPC Racing tunes and we pushed a stock engine, bolt on car into the 10's.
Larry's car has a good combination of parts but it is also something that can be duplicated. His list of mods are as follows:
4.10 gears
AirRaid CAI
JPC Longtube headers
FRPP X-pipe
JPC over axle pipes
Pipes axle back
BMR lower control arms w/ICM's
BMR adj panhard bar
Circle D-5C
JPC front/rear lightweight bumper supports
Rear seat delete
Weld RTS package 295/55/15's
Dynotech one piece driveshaft
We look forward to doing some more testing on Larry's car in the very near future and we have a lot of good stuff to install with a BOSS 302 intake being the next one to test on this combination. We are also going to be doing some gear ratio testing in attempts to run even quicker. Rest assured, we won’t be taking gear out of it!
