Played around With a New Trailblazer SS

[RedMerc04]

Hey guys,

Just about an hour ago I came across a New Trailblazer SS. I live on a 4 lane highway with a 35 mph speed limit. I pulled out of my driveway and a brand new black one comes thundering up behind me, we get to a stoplight and i see him give my 04 DTR a good look. We each had a car infront of us so we played around a bit exchanging exhaust notes until the next light. Again at the next light we were both behind one car but the highway opened up a bit and we were able break free of the cars in front of us. The speed limit had now moved up to 55 and there was absolutely nobody else around. We were door to door at 50 MPH so i quickly glanced down pleased to notice that i had hit normal operating temperature, I clicked the overdrive off and was ready, He was hitting it and then falling back so when he came door to door again, I glanced over and saw him make a hand gesture so I punched it, I have 4.10s so at 50 It grabbed second started pulling him; by the time i hit the 2-3 shift at 80 i was 2 cars ahead so i let off about a second later at 85 mph to slow down for the next upcoming light. At that light he got into the left hand turn only lane and never even looked at me! The look on his face was priceless!

[Donny Carlson]

Hey guys,

Just about an hour ago I came across a New Trailblazer SS. I live on a 4 lane highway with a 35 mph speed limit. I pulled out of my driveway and a brand new black one comes thundering up behind me, we get to a stoplight and i see him give my 04 DTR a good look. We each had a car infront of us so we played around a bit exchanging exhaust notes until the next light. Again at the next light we were both behind one car but the highway opened up a bit and we were able break free of the cars in front of us. The speed limit had now moved up to 55 and there was absolutely nobody else around. We were door to door at 50 MPH so i quickly glanced down pleased to notice that i had hit normal operating temperature, I clicked the overdrive off and was ready, He was hitting it and then falling back so when he came door to door again, I glanced over and saw him make a hand gesture so I punched it, I have 4.10s so at 50 It grabbed second started pulling him; by the time i hit the 2-3 shift at 80 i was 2 cars ahead so i let off about a second later at 85 mph to slow down for the next upcoming light. At that light he got into the left hand turn only lane and never even looked at me! The look on his face was priceless!

Trailblazer SS's also have 4:10 rear ends, however they weigh about 4500/4700 lbs, depending on whether it's AWD or 2WD. For some reason, their EEC's torque control make them slower 0-60 and qtr mile.

0-60 is 6.3 (though Chevy says less than 6)
1/4 is 14.35 at 96 mph.

The exact same engine in the SSR (3.73 rear end) gets 0-60 in 5.5 seconds (automatic) 1/4 mile time is 13.83 at 103 mph

Hard to tell in a street race like you describe that the SS owner committed to to the task, but you both were fairly evenly matched, imo.

[DEFYANT]

I saw one of them in the So. St pkwy in NY last week. It seemed faster that than that.

Neat.... for a Chebby

[jstevens]

That is amazing. The ss trailblazer comes with 400hp ls2 corvette engine.

[Bluerauder]

Trailblazer SS's also have 4:10 rear ends, however they weigh about 4500/4700 lbs, depending on whether it's AWD or 2WD. For some reason, their EEC's torque control make them slower 0-60 and qtr mile.

Hard to tell in a street race like you describe that the SS owner committed to to the task, but you both were fairly evenly matched, imo.
My nephew has a GMC Yukon Denali and he said the same thing. I believe he told me that the AWD needs to spin up to over 3,000-3,500 RPM on a quick start. Must be a protection feature for the AWD or something.

On the way home from a family gathering on Wednesday night, I pulled up next to his white Denali at a traffic light. Despite the roads being a little wet, I nailed it when the light changed. He got on it too but I already had half a car length on him. I only went to about 3/4 throttle since the next light was pretty close and I was afraid of breaking loose on the rear. So, it was a rather short run; but he was hanging at my rear fender. :rolleyes:

The next day when I ran into him again, I said "You know that I wasn't trying, right?" He replied "Me neither". Then I said "The wife was with me -- she doesn't approve". He said -- "Me too; she told me to go for it !!! " We both just cracked up. :rofl:

[Blackened300a]

I had a 03 Chevy Avalanche and it came with "Torque Managment and Abuse Prevention" as the manual called it.
From 0-15 MPH the truck felt like it was bogging then it would launch hard once you would get moving. I had the hypertech power programmer in it and it cut the TM back by 30% which allowed me to spin tires but not get the full launch of the engine. The diablo predator had a tune that would eliminate the TM but many of guys on the Avalanche Messageboard who did it, had major transmission problems, blown transfer cases and a few had blown rears.
Motovating 6000lbs of truck has to be done with ease.

[DEFYANT]

Thats BS!

Build the other componants of the drive train to handle the power!

Man, that would piss me off!

[TripleTransAm]

Thats BS!

Build the other componants of the drive train to handle the power!

Man, that would piss me off!

They ALL do it, including the Marauder I'm sure. Even the quick LS1/automatic combo of the 4th gen F-cars had a torque management function (hard to imagine a 13.00 second car actually being artificially 'restrained').

It's all about the costs. Instead of engineering something to deal with a scenario that would occur 0.0001% of the total driving time (a hard launch, a hard upshift) would result in a component way over-engineered for the other 99.9999% of the driving time. So they artificially 'smother' the engine... usually moments before the PCM begins to order an upshift, lasting until moments after the upshift when it has been statistically determined that driveline shock won't be occurring.

Frustrating, yes, but on the other hand we get 300+ horsepower cars with regular passenger car full warranties instead of how things were handled 30 years ago.

[Marauder2005]

It must have been the AWD model, I thought I read some place that

the SS ran high 13s? (400HP RWD model)

[QWK SVT]

It must have been the AWD model, I thought I read some place that

the SS ran high 13s? (400HP RWD model)

It's possible - this AWD SS squeezed into the 13's:
http://www.trailblazerss.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=385

A RWD version should, theoretically, be slightly quicker.