I bought a car with a broken 5.3L engine. After working on the engine I noticed it had a really hot cam. I am not confident the previous owner's shop ever got around to tuning before the owner sued them...long story.

I plan to put a ls1 cam in with stock heads, and ls1 intake. My question is will I hurt anything if I start the car not knowing what tune is in the controller? I am not sure which is worse, having the stock tune or having a hot tune to account for the old cam.

Thanks for your help. I am hoping to drive to a shop to get it tuned if needed.

 

You won't hurt anything, just don't beat on it until it gets the stock tune back. Its honestly pretty hard to beat a stock LS1 up without power adders or anything more than bolt ons. I tuned a car a while ago that had been running around for several months with an aftermarket MAF and intake lol. AFR on the top end would hit 16s and 17s and it had no problem. Freak car, I don't know...

 

I agree. Its pretty hard to tear these things up NA. I have seen them run 16s AFR with timing too high and hitting knock retard like crazy. After all that was smoothed out it ran great.. I say dont go WOT and youll be fine..