Displacement On Demand
Part III: Tuning Golen's 383 LT1 For 435 Horses
by Scott Parker - Photography by the Author

The final installment of our 383 LT1 story has your faithful narrator traveling to Golen's 12,000 squarefoot facility in Hudson, New Hampshire, to cover tuning and dyno testing. The reward for braving the New England winter for a couple of days was a head-full of good tunes courtesy of a local rock station and a light-hearted yet down to business atmosphere among Golen's five skilled workers.
     The predominantly Boston-accented crew was quite fond of cracking jokes, which kept the mood light. In between tossing around indigenous New England phrases like "wicked haaad core", these fellas earned their paychecks, which is no doubt a large contribution to the success of Golen Engine Service.
     As mentioned in Part I and II, the Golen crew put a lot of hard work into this 383 and it was getting time to find out if it paid off. The first step was installing a brand new Optispark for use on the dyno, and then the wiring harness was mounted up and connected to the PCM. Once the headers and fuel system were all bolted up on the dyno, we were ready to go.  This all sounds so simple, but I assure you that is not the case when dealing with a whole bunch of wires and a questionably designed distributor.
     Crack technician Dan Eddins had the bugs worked out in no time, though, and after the PCM was flashed with a new program the LT1 was ready to rumble. The programs are written on C.A.T.S. (Computer Automotive Tuning Systems) software by PCMforless tuner Bryan Herter, who works just outside Philadelphia and sends them via email to Chad. Isn't technology wonderful? Next he has his own in-house tuner and dyno operator Matt Abdou, make any necessary changes to the program. However, the programs are so dialed in from Bryan's six years of experience that little tweaking is required to obtain proper air/fuel ratios and spark advance. After the engine is dynoed it is ready to be shipped off to the waiting arms of customer Val Becker, who salivates at the thought of over 400 horsepower in his reborn 1993 Camaro.

After tapping the distributor gently to get it in place, the 7/16s bolts are tightened.

Here is one of two vent lines (the second protrudes from the baseplate to the right) which lead from the distributor to the intake, helping to remove moisture and the buildup of ozone from the passing of electrical current. This helps prevent corrosion and increases the life of the distributor.

To reduce intake air restriction, the mass air flow meter is descreened by unclipping the ring and pulling out the screen with needle nose pliers.

Lastly, the valve covers are placed on top of the gaskets and the 3/8-inch bolts are tightened as Dan has already bolted up the ignition coil and the dyno water pump.

Whenever you are doing anything with the electrical system, such as modifying the wiring harness, it always helps to have schematics from a book such as this Haynes Repair Manual.

Late nights at the shop sometimes cause delusions, as Golen's crew actually thought they could create a real dog with a welding torch and some spare parts.  They soon got bored with it, though, when it failed to respond to any of their commands. The dog is, of course, anatomically correct (And wicked haaad!Ed).

The first step in tuning with C.A.T.S. is erasing the PCM's original program and uploading a new program, which is called flashing (insert indecent exposure joke here). The new program was written by tuner Bryan Herter based on the new cam and engine specs, then sent to Golen via email.  Once Golen's in-house tuner Matt Abdou flashes the PCM, he has a complete readout of the new map and can make adjustments to anything from the injector flow rate to enabling or disabling any of the sensors. They decide to leave the program alone for now, and to first make some soft pulls to break in the engine before baselining it.

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