The mid-range Chevy Colorado makes the ZR2 a powerhouse with just a tune

Now that the new Chevy Colorado It was announced, it is clear that Medium truck The part is passing by. The 2023 Chevy Colorado It will soften the glow a bit, before the light returns to full size Chevy Silverado. But the new Colorado has a Silverado to thank for Four-cylinder engineIt was initially developed for the full-size truck and has now been adapted to the mid-size truck.

Proven versatile engine; The new Colorado lineup will be equipped with a single engine in three variants. But the motors’ alleged output has a wide range of power that made us wonder: What’s so special about the output? More importantly, if the engine is the same, what prevents the base Colorado WT from making the same power as the Colorado ZR2?

For reference, the base engine will be standard on the Colorado WT and LT. Chevy calls it a 2.7-liter turbo, and it produces 237 horsepower, 259 pound-feet. of torque. The Colorado Z71 and Trail Boss will get a 2.7-liter Turbo Plus engine that makes 310 horsepower and 390 pound-feet. of torque. The Colorado ZR2 will have a 2.7-liter turbocharged engine, making 310 horsepower and 430 pound-feet. of torque. This is a full size force!

In a mid-size Chevy Colorado, that power should be better. Chevrolet wants a balance between performance and efficiency, so all three engine types feature two-cylinder deactivation. In fact, the engines share features and a lot of the same hardware. The differences in power come from tuning and managing the engine via software.

But it turned out that the engine components are the same only in the 2.7-liter Turbo Plus and Turbo High-Output engines. no The turbo base is 2.7 liters, as explained by Chevy’s assistant chief engineer, Kevin Luchansky.

You might be surprised – as I was – that the engine is not only in the outgoing Chevrolet Silverado, but at the moment Cadillac CT4-V like that.

Chevy’s drivetrain team wanted a higher output from the CT4-V, which produces 325 horsepower and 380 pound-feet of torque. But the goal was for Colorado to produce more energy using regular fuel. The CT4-V produces more horsepower than the Colorado, but the car takes premium gasoline; The truck’s 2.7-liter Turbo Plus engine is satisfied with less expensive combustion, which reduces the cost of ownership.

The team then pushed the 2.7-liter Turbo Plus even further. Although the high-output 2.7-liter makes the same horsepower and the same 7,700 lb-ft of traction, torque has jumped to 430 lb-ft. This traction rating is higher than the 3,500-pound base engine, and the large bump comes from a third fan, which produces “better airflow through the charge air cooler.” Overall, this was the best performance the team could throw away while meeting the durability criteria.

As the engineer explained, not everyone performance needs A high specification engine. So they removed the parts and improved the others for the Colorado’s low curb weight. They removed the piston cooling jets, because the 2.7-liter turbo engine has a much lower power density. And they improved the catalytic converter to reduce the weight of the lower rims.

This means that the base Colorado engine will not handle the power density of the Colorado ZR2 engine. So, it’s not just about tuning or increasing the power through software on the WT to get the performance of the ZR2. But because the two higher-end engines share hardware, a Z71 or Trail Boss can make the ZR2 power through a slide/tune, and Chevy will sell owners an “accessory calibration” to move the 2.7-liter Turbo Plus to a 2.7-liter high-output. Like the new Colorado itself, the price of the upgraded engine’s calibration is still unknown.