Judge387

Hey guys,
I'm looking for a little input or advice on my setup.

I have a 07 base, header back exhaust, A&A s trim s/c kit (intercooled) currently running 8psi, boost a pump ,72lb injectors. A few other little things here and there, It's an A6 car. Currently put down 580hp 518tq on a dynojet
I'm looking to bump it up a bit.
It currently has a 3.8" s/c pulley Iooking at installing a 3.4" pulley
Aem meth kit and fail safe
Planning on running straight meth.
Should I remove the restrictor plate on the s/c?
Hoping to be around 650whp on a mustang dyno
What do you think? My goal realistic?Should I do Anything different? Or add anything to my list.
I'm really not sure about running straight meth. I've done a bunch of reading and it just seems the people who make the switch to straight meth make more power and talk highly about it but I've noticed they are all high boost cars. So I don't know if it's the right call for my build, I'm thinking it'll be around 10 or 11 psi....
I'm not ready to do a cam right now. I'm just waiting for the trans to go then I'll do the trans, converter and cam all in one shot.
I know alkycontrol is king on among the corvette world, I just have had good luck with aem stuff in the past that is why I'm leaning toward aem

Patriot Six

Do you even have a restrictor plate on the A&A blower? If so, just remove the plate and no need for a smaller pulley. Since you're looking to go down from a 3.8, you likely have no restrictor plate. I would run 100% meth and run as small a pulley as your tuner is comfortable with. 650 is easily doable.

russ472

pulling the restrictor out, along with pulley change and 100% meth. should be a pretty noticeable increase.

irok

I have near same setup.there is no restricter in A&A kit.100% meth and 3.8 pulley making 10.69 lb/boost.650rwhp & 600rwt

Judge387

Ok,cool I really thought there was a restrictor plate in there... I guess I'm wrong. Anyway I do appreciate the feedback so far. It's reassuring I feel like I'm making the right choices. The forums can get pretty overwhelming searching for the answers that your looking for.
Irok thanks for letting me know where your car is at. It's pretty impressive the power your car is putting down with the 3.8" pulley.
I think I am still going to pulley down just for peace of mind that I won't fall short.

irok

I now of 1 other car like ours with 3.4 pulley that made 1rwhp and 20rwt more than I.car was making 12.5lb/boost

Judge387

Well, I ordered everything and worked like a mad man to get everything installed.
Aem methanol injection kit,
Aem methanol failsafe kit with flow gauge
Wideband o2
Fuel psi gauge
And boost gauge
I did end up going with the 3.4" pulley, Since my last post I found the shop I'm going to use and talked with the tuner and he recommended the smaller pulley
The install of everything was pretty straight forward I did make it more complicated than it needed to be because I wanted the meth kit completely hidden. I'm very happy with the way everything fit and how the install turned out. I'm going tomorrow to have the car tuned. I'll let you know how it goes.

viper8u2

How did things go? on the fence about meth myself

Unreal

AEM kit is meh, return it if possible and do the alky control kit.

ECS kits use restrictors for more torque, A&A and PC do not.

Judge387

Well it started off good. I was getting tuned on a mustang dyno and the car put down 600whp and 600ft lbs before 4500rpms... no meth because after 4500 rpms the car was pulling timing down to 10 deg. the tuner was doing some short pulls looking at what was causing the ecm to pull timing. (I was in the dyno room the entire time) he would do a pull or 2 and let the car cool for a while then repeat. After he figured out what was pulling timing he did a easy pull to make sure timing wasn't being pulled. The car did what he wanted so he shut it down to let it cool. When he fired it back up about 15 min later the engine was knocking. It sounded and acted 100% fine in all other pulls even the last pull 15 min before. The tuner showed me all the monitors of the previous couple of pulls and showed me he saw no concerns. But now all of a sudden the engine had a clear knock. We assumed that a lifter broke. After I got the car home and tore down I found that #5 cylinder had ring land fail.
I know what causes ring land failure, but I'm really not sure how it happened in this case. The previous pull was a really soft pull. The tuner was purposely running the car rich when working on the timing issue. It really didn't seem like he was "pushing" it. I know this tuner is respected in my area. (I don't want to say the name, this probly isn't the Publicity he wants) i do plan on bringing the car back to him when I have it back up and running but Unfortunately the car is going to be down until at least next summer.
I need to get the block repaired the cylinder did get some minor scoring. I figure since the engine has to come out I'll take this as a time to build it.
My plan is have the block repaired, forged pistons and rods,cam kit, head and rod studs, trans and fuel pump upgrade.
I am open to advice or suggestions. I would like to keep this as budjet friendly as possible but don't want it to blow up again lol

Unreal

Unless someone is really good with gen V stuff, it is easy for it to show rich, and actually be extremely lean and pop a piston.

My bad, thought this was a c7 at first. Was in wrong section.

Sounds like a tuning mishap, or just bad luck.

CI GS

I'm not so sure about supercharged applications, but the top nitrous guys are pretty much all agreed now that overly rich A/F mixtures are the number one cause of ring-land failures. Whilst a overly lean mixture will typical torch a hole through a piston, it appears that a very rich mixture causes excess fuel to build up in the upper piston groove. There's lots of debate about what exactly causes ring land failure in nitrous motors, but it seems one leading theory is that fuel igniting behind the ring and/or fuel-wash causes the ring to stick and hang in the bore momentarily on the power stroke, which causes the ring-land to be ripped off the piston as it is traveling down the bore.
It took me years and tons of nitrous use and a few wrecked motors, to figure out that pig rich is not safe, as was the conventional approach back in the 90s.
So, IF that applies to S/C motors (which seems likely) - then if your A/F mixture is very rich, and you're trying to extract additional power by adding timing, that could be the cause of ring-land failure, in my view.

russ472

you said in the post he did not use meth during the pulls. you also said it was pulling timing. what was the cause and how did he go about making it not pull timing. Did he turn down the knock sensitivity?

Judge387

CI gs
Your theory does make sense on how an overly rich mixture can cause some issues. That would kind of suck if that was the cause.... I knew he had it rich I just figured he was just being safe while he worked the kinks out. My thought was maybe an injector was failing and that cyl ran lean. But your idea does make sense.

And the issue why the car was pulling timing was the MAF sensor was maxing out. The tuner switched to speed density on the upper end of the rpm range. Once he switched to that the car stopped pulling timing. (That was monitored on the test hit) The next time we started the car it was knocking.
The only reason we didn't start using the meth was because we didn't get there yet. He wanted to have a good solid tune first then modify it a bit for the meth.

CI GS

Upgrading the pistons and rods is a good idea as well as some top shelf rings. Make sure that your builder knows it's for a supercharged application, so that he can open the ring gaps a little bit. Insufficient ring gap is still probably the number one killer of rings and ring lands. I think you should be fine with the stock crank at that level.
I also honestly wouldn't mess with rebuilding the trans if it's not slipping or unless it has like 100K miles on it or something. I would just change the ATF, install one of the wide inlet filters from PATC, and put a good 2800-3000 stall converter in it with a good trans cooler. I think that these transmissions can take a lot if you keep the temps under control and they are tuned properly. If your trans is not slipping, but has some "shift-flare", Sonnax offers a "Zip kit" with a number of valve body upgrades that improves the function of the earlier A6 transmissions. I'm about to install one of those in my '08 Denali, along with a new style (2012-up) GM front pump. Certainly, if you're not going for more than 650whp, you should be fine using the stock A6. But make sure that your tuner knows what he's doing with the TCM tune. All lot of folks are really good at tuning the engines in these cars, not so many on the trans. I would save that money on a new built trans and use it to buy the converter and change the engine and trans mounts to the Hinsons and change the couplers and bearings in the torque tube.
Trust me, properly tuned, a stalled A6 car at ~650whp is going to be plenty quick.