cobalt help.

[Creep]

alright any of u cobalt guys out there that can help. warranty is almost up and im sick an tired of running around stock. ive been looking at stage kits. one that caught my eye would be CA perfromance's stage 4.... now i was reading through what all it comes with. it says stage 4 retune.... now that could be a number of things. anyone no anything about this? any other suggestions? need to remain rather reliable also, drive the car alot.

[KrazyHouseCustoms]

I haven't heard of CA before but I'm sure the "stage 4" name is just that, a name. For what the kit comes with I'm sure it's just a cookie cutter tune designed for the included upgrades that changes some of the fuel maps and possibly some timing to get a little more power while staying on the safe side.

To get more power out of your mods I would recommend a dyno tune which we would be able to do if you're interested.

[KustomZ03]

I haven't heard of CA before but I'm sure the "stage 4" name is just that, a name. For what the kit comes with I'm sure it's just a cookie cutter tune designed for the included upgrades that changes some of the fuel maps and possibly some timing to get a little more power while staying on the safe side.

To get more power out of your mods I would recommend a dyno tune which we would be able to do if you're interested.

^yep what he said

oh and CA=Cobalt Addiction...they are based in NY I think...the car in the OP's avatar is CA's shop car or at least looks eerily similar.

[vdcoff]

Otto stage 1 kit with a few cooling mods and call it a day.

Over the top performance.com

Ottp*

[Creep]

Otto stage 1 kit with a few cooling mods and call it a day.

Over the top performance.com

Ottp*

is that what ur running nick?

[vdcoff]

is that what ur running nick?

If I had the extra money that's the setup I would run.

2.8inch pulley, 60lb injectors, ngk one or two step colder plugs, an ottp heat excahnger, dual pass endplate, and a tune, would put down close to 300hp prolly

[SvicksTc]

If I had the extra money that's the setup I would run.

2.8inch pulley, 60lb injectors, ngk one or two step colder plugs, an ottp heat excahnger, dual pass endplate, and a tune, would put down close to 300hp prolly

my buddy ran that but with a 2.6 pulley however had a canned tuned which was his only weakness...ZZP heat exchanger, ZZP Stage 4 Kit with 2.6 pulley, Plugs, Injectors, Injen CAI, 50shot Wet, Header, 3'' DP.....

The car hauled ass....22 PSI :)

Stay away from canned tunes they are crap, hell the GM stage 2 tune is one of the better ones though i hear...

HP Tuner is the way to go

[SvicksTc]

Oh and if you want to do that or go stage 4, make sure you do something about fuel deliever those number 4 pistions like to blow, a poor design on GM's part, not something you have to do right away but definitley in the near future...

Ever look at the Hahn Turbo Kit....make real good numbers with that....

Although i hate the forum get on Cobaltss.net.....A lot of tools but you can sort through the B.S and find some useful stuff...

Yes i troll many forums haha

[vdcoff]

my buddy ran that but with a 2.6 pulley however had a canned tuned which was his only weakness...ZZP heat exchanger, ZZP Stage 4 Kit with 2.6 pulley, Plugs, Injectors, Injen CAI, 50shot Wet, Header, 3'' DP.....

The car hauled ass....22 PSI :)

Stay away from canned tunes they are crap, hell the GM stage 2 tune is one of the better ones though i hear...

HP Tuner is the way to go

Yea the ottp kit comes with a tune for their setup, I've been told its good. You could also go to tune time performance in toms river nj where they will dyno tune it for you

Get on cobaltss.net, a lot of good info for our cars on there, check out the vendor section, ottp is one of their vendors

[vdcoff]

Oh and if you want to do that or go stage 4, make sure you do something about fuel deliever those number 4 pistions like to blow, a poor design on GM's part, not something you have to do right away but definitley in the near future...

Ever look at the Hahn Turbo Kit....make real good numbers with that....

Although i hate the forum get on Cobaltss.net.....A lot of tools but you can sort through the B.S and find some useful stuff...

Yes i troll many forums haha

Yea there's a lot of bull**** on that forum lol

[jpalamar]

Buy a wideband and HP Tuners and tune yourself. It isn't as hard as it looks. Steep learning curve, but reading on their forum gave me a general understanding. Plus even though shelling out likt $750 bucks sucks, it pays for itself on the first re-tune.

[SvicksTc]

Buy a wideband and HP Tuners and tune yourself. It isn't as hard as it looks. Steep learning curve, but reading on their forum gave me a general understanding. Plus even though shelling out likt $750 bucks sucks, it pays for itself on the first re-tune.

Learning to tune yourself is a good idea, however the only thing i dont like about the HP tuner is you have to buy credits...But i think when you first buy it, it comes with like enough credits to do like 3-4 tunes...

HP Tuner is def the way to go...

[riko540]

Yea the ottp kit comes with a tune for their setup, I've been told its good. You could also go to tune time performance in toms river nj where they will dyno tune it for you

Get on cobaltss.net, a lot of good info for our cars on there, check out the vendor section, ottp is one of their vendors

I hear that Tune Time Performance doesn't do all that well with Ecotecs. OTTP and ZZP are the best 2 vendors on CSS.net imo.

[SvicksTc]

I hear that Tune Time Performance doesn't do all that well with Ecotecs. OTTP and ZZP are the best 2 vendors on CSS.net imo.

IVe heard the same thing

[Creep]

thx guys for the help. dont have to much time to read up on **** cause of work i appriciate it.

[vdcoff]

I hear that Tune Time Performance doesn't do all that well with Ecotecs. OTTP and ZZP are the best 2 vendors on CSS.net imo.

Definitely. Zzp sells a twincharge kit and they install it and tune it for 5000, not bad for the kit, installation, and a tune. Twincharging is a bitch to tune so I've heard and I could imagine it being so because of two power adders.

If one day I get extra money to do engine work, I'm not gonna mess with twincharging, just do a smaller pulley and tune, my car is fast enough as it is being my DD

[riko540]

Definitely. Zzp sells a twincharge kit and they install it and tune it for 5000, not bad for the kit, installation, and a tune. Twincharging is a bitch to tune so I've heard and I could imagine it being so because of two power adders.

If one day I get extra money to do engine work, I'm not gonna mess with twincharging, just do a smaller pulley and tune, my car is fast enough as it is being my DD

Why not go turbo?

[SvicksTc]

Why not go turbo?

Hahn Turbo Kit is mad loot

simple stage upgrade kits are way easier to install and way cheaper and get make good numbers

[jpalamar]

Learning to tune yourself is a good idea, however the only thing i dont like about the HP tuner is you have to buy credits...But i think when you first buy it, it comes with like enough credits to do like 3-4 tunes...

HP Tuner is def the way to go...

Yea, the credit things do suck. Its like 2 credits per car you can dump like 6-8 but then get unlimined tunes for that model and year. It's rape though. $600+ for software and then limit how many times I can use it

[vdcoff]

Why not go turbo?

Because I don't feel like spending that much money to do something that big to a car that is my daily driver.

[SilverStang]

i went with the ottp stage 1 kit that nick was talking about earlier, with a lot of cooling mods. i love it, although the tune was not that good for me, if you do look into it i would recommend a dyno tune

[riko540]

Definitely. Zzp sells a twincharge kit and they install it and tune it for 5000, not bad for the kit, installation, and a tune. Twincharging is a bitch to tune so I've heard and I could imagine it being so because of two power adders.

If one day I get extra money to do engine work, I'm not gonna mess with twincharging, just do a smaller pulley and tune, my car is fast enough as it is being my DD

I'm getting ZZP's turbo kit for the 2.4L with in the next year or so.

[09civicsisedan]

Geta custom HPTune. Tuned one to 263whp/247wtq with minimal mods.

The turbos are even easier to tune.

Logged to check for KR, etc. and maintain the integrity of your engine - $200.

[Dom1013]

Honestly, unless you wanna roll around with a tool box in your car, I wouldn't turbo the ss/sc. Nice numbers but unless you wanna spend the money to rebuild and do it right the first time around don't bother. The zzp twincharge kit is great, only thing about that is traveling there for the install and EVERYTIME you would need an update for your tune.

Once again though, unless you want to spend the money on a rebuild to utilize it to its fullest capability(ie low 11 sec quarter miles / 120+ trap), probably shouldn't bother.

I had a canned tune on my Intense Racing stage 5 setup after my rebuild and a cobalt with a zzp stage 1 ran neck and neck with me. Zzp stage 2 might be best for you. I finally took the dive into Hptuners and lemme tell you, its a helluva difference in my car, the power of that program is just nuts, took me about 6 months and some Greg Banish books to really understand it but that's time well spent and it was all worth it.

You should probably come up with a Hp goal or maybe ride in one of the many modded cobalts running around to see where you would be content. 300+ whp on a supercharged fwd is almost pointless because of the traction but its fun as hell lol.

Personally, I'm gonna grab the twin charge kit and build the redline for the strip but I need to buy another vehicle first.

[riko540]

ZZP started shipping the twin charge kit IIRC so if you stick with their tune I would guess the could ship you an updated ECM too.

[SikneSS]

the twincharge kit IS NOT GREAT! look on cobaltss.net, all of their "twincharged customer cars" are nowhere to be found. they come on there, open this huge "hey look at me! i'm going zzp twincharged" thread, it goes on for about 20+ pages and it's full of nothing but b.s. and then once it finally dies.... the owner dissapears and never returns. so other than the actually zzp shop cars, you never hear of any twincharged Cobalt SS/SC giving updates about their cars. most likely because they freaking blew up! tuning for a twincharge setup is absolutely retarded and hard to do, somehow ZZP has figured it out, but i WILL NOT trust it. straight turbo swapping a SS/SC is actually a very safe & easy way to get the power we all desire out of these little cars. dumping the roots style blower & restrictive intake manifold allows the engine to breathe easier, but it's all in the tune. a very good friend of mine up in NY turbo swapped his SS/SC, on a bone stock motor he put down over 400whp. but if you want to stay with the supercharger... go to www.ottperformance.com they are great people to work with, they know their stuff and they have kits that have options for everything you'll ever need, like cooling mods, bigger injectors, belts, plugs, tunes, etc. they have newly come out with a stage 3 kit that includes the Harrop 1320 TVS blower, i have friends that have this blower on their car. it's an absolute monster! with a good setup, stock pulley and good tune (no meth injection) 300whp is achievable. pulley down, retune & add meth.... 350whp can be done.

[riko540]

Actually the twincharge kit isn't bad. There are only 2 that I know of (besides the ZZP shop cars) the one still has it and its running fine. The other guy screwed it up when he tried to re tune it himself and then blamed ZZP for his screw up. They offered to fix it for free but he turned it down for some reason.

[4cylpro]

yea have fun trying to find a boost leak. im not putting it down or anything its just so much more work then u need!

[camopaint0707]

I would trust ZZP a lot more than cobalt addiction. ZZP actually works on and tunes their own products on cobalts. Cobalt addiction does not.

[4cylpro]

cobalt addiction doesnt even send a tracking number for their stuff

[camopaint0707]

Plus they take really long to ship, and considering their name is cobalt addiction, they have no presence in any cobalt forum as a vendor

[Rodimus_Prime]

Cobalt Addiction is nothing more than a reseller of ZZP stuff, the pulleys they have are decent, ZZP tunes are questionable. OTTP is prob the best combo pack out there as far as getting the belt, pulley, injectors and a "canned" tune. You can of course piece the parts together yourself and install them on your own for less. I'd strongly reccomend the OTTP big heat exchanger, helps lessen the power loss during summer or warmer weather in general these cars have. Also another must have is the OTTP rotated tranny mounts, they eliminate the annoying wheel hop thats caused by the poor suspension geometry in these cars. Intakes are pretty much all the same.

[shadowfaxss]

As Rodimus mentioned I would not use Cobalt Addiction. They have too many issues. I considered going turbo with the Hahn Level 5 kit at one time but decided to keep my goal at 300 hp. I purchased the GMPP Stage 3 kit (www.crateenginedepot.com) and installed an OTTP front mount H/E for the reason Rodimus mentioned. Of course to achieve the hp rating requires a 50 shot of dry nitrous but the PCM is tuned by GM to run this. There are many options out there.

[06SS/SC ALL DAY]

i have a zzp stage 2, i beat intense stage 3's, i even ran a redline with a 2.5 pulley and i crawled away very slowly and from a dig i owned him... get zzp you will be satisfied. oh and zzp guarentee's their pcm tune is undetectable by the dealer... so if u want my opinion. get a zzp stage 3, comes with a heat exchanger which is a HUGE plus annnnd you will be happy. and get the N2MB dual feature box if you really wanna have fun

[RedCavyRS99]

I've seen on too many cars where ZZP tunes have caused serious issues and failures.

I am against "canned tunes" because there is no such thing as a "one size fits all" tune.

Get HPTuners , a wideband and have one of the many guys we have around to help walk you through it. By far you will get the best bang for the buck and if you ever wanted to change things in the future you have that ability instead of mailing out PCM's for reflashing.

Just my .02

[06SS/SC ALL DAY]

zzp tunes are configured for street, my boy has hpt and if anything he can flash you my tune that he optimized and he said zzp hit it right on the nail because not much was needed to be changed except a tad more fuel top end. so do what u will zzp tunes are guarentee there tunes are also undetectable by dealer or your money back/ replacement pcm for free. i have zero motor problems with my tune since day 1, people who went with ottp or intense turned to suck ass. or like redcavy said buy hpt for 600 bills or whatever and tune it urself. it all depends on how long ur keeping ur car, wat ur future plans are etc... if your just trying to stage a particular stage get a canned tune and modify it for 50 bucks, or if u wanna build, get tvs and go have fun, buy hpt

[jpalamar]

I call BS on a dealer not being able to detect a tune. Thats just the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Thus reguardless of the tune, it won't matter with that amount of mods that would be on the car anyway. So it is just a dumb ass advertisment in the first place.

[09civicsisedan]

It's called Marketing! :)

Some fall for it, some don't!