dan0617

I am considering buying a Procharger P600B kit, intercooler and all, used, for a winter project. Want to run about 8 psi. A friend of mine who has a supercharged Cobra told me that if I went with a Vortech S trim and run only 8 psi that I would get the same result without an intercooler. He said the Vortech would be so much more efficient at 8psi on my engine that it would have as low if not lower air intake temps without an intercooler as the P600 would with an intercooler. Is that true?

tequilaboy

This should lead to an interesting discussion.

Take a look at what a Vortech test report had to say about the P1SC.

http://www.superchargersonline.com/i...1sc_report.pdf

And for balance what Procharger has to say about a P600B to S-trim comparison on a 5.0

http://www.procharger.com/h2hdt.html

dan0617

Thanks for the links! Who can you believe? I try to find guys with real world results that don't have anything to sell. My friend has a Vortech S-trim on his Cobra and ran it at 12 psi non intercooled for a few years before installing a Snow water-meth system. That doesn't mean his air intake temperatures weren't dangerously high though, I don't know where they were. I am looking for about 8psi at the intake and don't know if I should pick up a used Procharger kit with intercooler or if I should buy a Vortech bracket and piece together a system without intercooler. I can't imagine that the S-trim would have less air intake temperatures than the P600B intercooled. Only thing that might help the vortech is that it would only need to put out 8 psi, whereas the P600B would need to put out 11 psi to push throught the intercooler and still have 8psi at the intake. I hope this thread does end up with some good info to steer me in the right direction.

tequilaboy

I think intercooling and water/methanol injection become attractive once you can't make more power by increasing boost and retarding timing to control detonation.

It seems that you can make more power with the additional boost and retarded timing until you get to the point of rough running. To get beyond this point, internal coolants or inter/aftercooling is required. I'm not sure where this limit is. Maybe 12-16 degrees advance as a guess. Charge temperature will dictate this limit.

With my Powerdyne billet impeller pullied for 41,000 rpm at 6,000 rpm: I'm making 10-11 lbs of boost at 6,000 rpm.

The air temp at the blower discharge is about 260 F at this boost level/rpm. I'm running 26 degrees advance.

I often wonder if I would benefit from intercooling or water/methanol injection. So far my conclusion is no, or not enough benefit for the cost/complexity and added risk.

I don't want to spin the blower any faster due to bearing considerations, so measures that would normally permit more boost would not have much impact since I can't take advantage of additional boost anyway.

With air-to-air intercooling, I would lose 3-4 psi of boost, so its a toss up if I could make that power back with more spark advance. With water/meth injection, I could run more spark, but the slower burn times require more spark. Both methods really require an increase in boost to offer any significant gains.

Air-to-water intercooling seems more attractive due to the potential for reduced pressure drop in a boost limited set-up.

With a S-trim or P600B or P1SC etc, you can always spin the blower faster up to 50,000 rpm or so to make the additional boost to compensate for losses

With my Powerdyne I don't really have this option.

At modest boost levels, I like the simplicty of a hot-boost/rich fuel/retarded spark combination.

I think you need to compare 8 psi intercooled to 11-12 psi non-intercooled to find your answer. I'd guess its about a wash.

dan0617

That is where I stand right now. My long term goal is to run a supercharger at low boost (8 to 10 psi at the intake) on a 10:1 SCR engine and run a small shot of nitrous occasionally. I'm on the stock bottom end right now with reworked 113 heads and CC503 cam and HSR intake with a 175 shot. 10:1 SCR, 12.5 air fuel ratio at WOT, 29 degrees overall timing at WOT while spraying, 36 degrees N/A. Could get away with a hair more while spraying, I think, but don't want to risk it. Big shot on stock 98,000 mile bottom end! I'll likely supercharge and cut back to a 40 or 50 shot. I'm sure rings will eventually let go and I'll go to a forged 383 with same setup but the stock bottom is still going strong. I was planning on a P600B with intercooler as that setup can be had at a good price used on occasion. I liked the intercooler idea. Nitrous shot will cool the charge alot more but I won't be running that very often. I was surprised when my friend told me he ran his Vortech without intercooler at 12 psi on a 281 CI engine without problems. He did say more or less what you said....keep the timing back and the mix rich, pulley for more boost if you want more power. I bet you are right, it is more or less a wash running 8 psi at the intake intercooled with a little more timing or 11 psi at the intake hot with retarded timing and a little extra rich. Not sure which way I'll go yet. I rev to 6200 rpms. I think pulleying a P600B to get 8 or 9 psi at the intake through the intercooler it comes with will be about all I can get from a P600B. I don't think I'll ever do the water/meth as I'm doing the nitrous instead and I really don't want to do both and I already have a Zex kit installed with all the accessories.

lcvette

I know of several Prochargers who have had the called out bearing failure described in that test report, luckily you can run to your local bearing supply house and replace it in a few minutes yourself OR send it to Procharger and pay them to do it.. difference of a few hundred dollars.

I have never been a fan of the stright blade design of the P1SC unit and would like some information comparing the T-trim and the D1SC...

Chris

dan0617

I have heard that vortech units are much more reliable than procharger units. Not sure if that is true or not either. So, with the P600 bearing failure you can replace the bearing without removing the head unit from the vehicle?

lcvette

no, blower has to come off, but if you have it on the bench it is a pretty simple contraption truth be known and replacing the bearing that fails yourself is pretty straight forward and easy and the bearing can be had from most local bearing supply houses or ordered online and cost is around 6 bucks. alot cheaper then sending it off the ATI at every failure!

Chris

makn u shiver

IT is pretty easy to rebuild a procharger ,the hardest part it pressing off and on the impeller with out damaging it.the proper bearings for a procharger are super precision high speed angular contact thrust bearings with a apec 7 rating ,the bearings only come in matched sets and on the impeller shaft uses 3 bearings and they cost over $200 a set ,ati uses nhbb ,and gmn bearings on the high speed impeller shaft and regular $10 each 6206 koyo bearings (2) on the pulley shaft .the only bearings i found that have a 60k+ rpm rating are the nhbb,gmn bearings and barden bearings,the barden bearings are actually the best of the three with a abec 9 rating and a higher speed rating and you can get them in hybrid ceramic ,steel races and ceramic *****.the cheaper bearings you can get off ebay for like $5 have a max speed rating of 8000 rpms and would blow apart in no time if put in a procharger.also the bearing failures that procharger had a while back was supposedly caused by using the wrong batch of wave washers that preload the bearings and because they are 15*angular contact bearings if you don't got enough preload the ball will slide instead of roll in the races ,that destroyes these super precision bearings very fast .To replace the bearings in a procharger will cost you between $400-$450 ,not cheap but its the right way to do it .
btw chris what are you working on now ? you do some very nice work .

dan0617

Wow, thanks for the info! I think I'll save this thread in case I go with a procharger. BTW, still haven't got to the track with the HSR yet but I am very happy with the way it runs on the street. I now have installed an LC1 wideband and dialed the fuel pressure in so the AFR is perfect at WOT. Still getting the tune tweaked in for part throttle driveability although it is running closer and closer to perfect. Also, now that I know the AFR is good and I have a timing retard box to control timing, I'm running a 175 shot. Don't know what the 1/4 will be yet. I do know that I do my datalog runs on a slight uphill grade and I ran 0 to 105 mph in 10.5 seconds by the counter on the datalogger (Tunerpro RT). This is the same piece of deserted road that we cone off and I lay waste to my friends supercharged Cobra. He is way too traction limited while I dead hook as long as I heat the tires.

anesthes

I used to run an S-Trim. I cam damn near close to maxing out a 2-bar map sensor on a 355, it made plenty of boost. (iron head, 9:1 compression, 24* advance)

I did end up exploding the engine from detonation. I was trapping 120mph in the 1/4. I wanted to trap 125.. I kept throwing advance and fuel at it..
It was going faster until one cold night in october. I made more boost than any time that night.

The rings ripped the top of the pistons off in the #3 and #4 cylinders. It still ran, but not as good. I drove it 25 miles back home. Yanked the engine out, ripped the heads off. said "holy!!"

Anyhow. S-trim makes tons of power, and tons of noise.


-- Joe