I 've often wondered what difference changing the timing on these engines would make. They have a 58 tooth cam sprocket. So if you do the math, moving the chain 1 tooth, would be around a 6 degree difference. The purpose of the VVT has to more with emissions than it has to do with performance. They have zero overlap at idle, because there's no EGR. So, if one were to retard the exhaust an extra 6 degrees, giving us some overlap at idle, allowing some timing advance without pre detonating. Would it give us some more mid range, because of the timing events happening earlier. The end result would be a total of 31 degrees retard, which may be too much. On another note, some of the 2002 and 2003 engines had there cam phasers limited at 20 degrees. I don't know if it was done mechanically or electronically, so I don't see the extra 6 degrees harming them at all.
Anyhow, the only way to know for sure is to put a degree wheel on the engine and figure out when things happen. If course someone smarter than me would need to do the programming since the cam sensor and crank sensor would be out of sync.
