I currently have a stock 98 WS6 Formula. Eventually, I plan on doing your basic full bolt ons, along with a nice thumpy cam. I know that the 98 PCM's didn't consist of the same 3 bar MAP sensor that the 99+ models do. My question is, at what point will it be a good idea to upgrade to a newer PCM? Will the bolt ons and cam in my near future be tuned easily/safely with my current PCM?

Once the motor goes (hopefully years down the road) I am planning for a Turbo setup, I am confident at that point at least I will have to have the newer 99+ PCM.

 

They all have 1 bar MAPs and operating systems. Your 98 PCM will do fine for your plans. They get way more of a bad rap than they deserve.

 

Are you sure on this? I am almost certain the 99+ cars have a 3 bar MAP sensor.

 

nope, no 3 bars from the factory. (there are some OS's out there that do support this option)

I like my 98 pcm, I have full access to it, and I can do realtime tuning.

Ryan

 

how can u do realtime on it?

 

The moates roadrunner.

Ryan

 

If you are going to upgrade to another Gm PCm go with the 01-02 PCM it only has 1 VE table instead of 2 like the earlier PCM's.

 

Or upgrade your 99+ with a compatible 01+ OS and achieve the same thing

 

Well yeah i guess thats what i meant to say, i just worded it wrong.

 

i was wanting to know the same thing about the 98 PCM. i was told that you can't just swap the pcm that the harness isn't the same and will not work with a later model pcm

 

Also have larger MAF range to support the ZO6 85mm MAF.

Keith

 

Thats true. You have to do some pin chasing in the newer PCM to make it work. You can't just plug in the newer one unfortunatley.

 

At what point is it worth it? That's pretty subjective to what your goals are/ will be. Just bolt-ons, naw. Just bolt-ons now with the intention of going F.I. or N20 that you can control via the pcm with a custom OS, Ok when do you want to do it? Now or later?

 

Its not just bolt ons I plan on doing with this motor. I also plan on an intake, a cam, and a possible fuel and spark upgrade as well, maybe some different rocker arms as well, and if I really have money to throw away, perhaps even a swap of the heads for some aftermarket ones. This I am aware can be all tuned fine I am sure on the stock PCM, as it could be tuned well on my 95's PCM.

Now, the forced induction plans I have when the motor goes years down the road is a different matter. Learning on my 95, I know the stock PCM's are difficult to tune with a decent amount of boost. I have heard that the later years of LS1's had much better tuning ability than the 98's. This is my primary concern for this question.

 

I thought the 99's and up had a differant pcm harness then the 98's?

 

What are your tuning plans? Learn yourself or take it to someone? Either way, bottom line the fact still remains that in order to do a full tune on this car you are going to have to get it into OLSD at first in order to account for all of the physical changes to the car. In order to get the car into OLSD you have to have a MAF failure. When the MAF fails on a 97/98 LS1 vehicle you will revert to the lower resolution backup VE table. Even with the advent of the 98 RR I still don't think you can get around that simple fact. Some will say that "it doesn't matter." What you will have to do is "interpolate" the missing resolution of cells. It just so happens that some seriously (to me at least and anybody who wants a smooth car) important transition cells are left out in the backup table which will leave you with some guessing. Yes, you can eventually "get it." Lack of resolution in the VE table is not the only sore spot. The warm up idle air table(s) have less resolution also which leads to a rougher warm up. On and on, simply put GM learned and implemented goodies throughout the 97-02 pcms. Yeah you can run "Doom" on windows 3.11 or you could run it on XP?!? Ok, let the faithful 98 druids come from their trees and crucify my bastard ***.

 

The F body's computer is vastly out of date already.

 

Relative to what? Most major fighter planes have less sophisticated computers than LSx based vehicles. Does that make them any less effective? There is a significat difference of which I only outlined the tip of the iceberg in my previous post but nonetheless, nice driveby comment.

 

Does it on my 2000 as well, I think it was 01 when they got rid of the secondary VE table, that dumbass table, I hate it.

 

I am aware of the VE tables and having to interpolate them. This was an obvious situation from the get go in my 95 since it maxes out the MAF. I know a little about tuning, but not enough where I feel confident in my abilities just yet to do it well. I'll have it tuned by Bryan at PCM's for less.

So basically you are saying, I won't really gain much if anything by changing to a newer 99+ PCM. Right?