Thinking about going with a basic Si A&A supercharger setup on my 2011 GS. Only thing making me hesitate to pull the trigger is concern about heat on a road course. I like to run HPDEs and autox occasionally, and wondered if I keep it at the basic ~550 hp level, will I need to be overly concerned about heat issues?

 

you will more than likely be fighting with temps for sure....I would go with a heads/cam/intake setup

 

I have a local customer with an automatic '12 widebody conversion. He's put 60,000 miles on the car and he tracks it all the time. It's important to tape up any area that air can escape the radiator cavity. That makes a huge difference.

 

'13 GS, A6 trans. Headers, A&A supercharger. I occasionally track car. Oil temps always seemed high even on highway 80 mph, about 210-225F. Water & trans a bit lower generally. On track, oil temp would rise to +275 where I'd rest the car to prevent even higher oil temp. Added oil coolers where fog lamps used to be. Now, oil temps much lower, about 245 max at track. Still stock radiator and water & trans temps never excessive. Just my experience. Good luck.

 

Are you talking about simply using tape to cover these gaps?

 

Warning!!!! This is a long post, but I've been through a lot of situations running hpde with my sc grand sport (starting in 2013). I love my car, but i've been through a lot of time, stress, and cash getting it setup up as a dual purpose high HP street/track car. If you want details from my experiences, read on 😁 My hope is that a person thinking of heading down this path gets a clear insight into what they could possibly go through, and think hard about how they plan to use their car before they start upgrading.

I added an A&a v3si black out kit on my 2013 6 spd gs... Made 600 rwhp at the time. Drove it for 6months on street no issues. Then my buddy with the same car got me hooked on hpde. His car has aggressive cam, intake, longtubes etc. He is at 495 rwhp. He had 0 issues with heat, mine would get hot in oil and coolant temps if I went flat out on throttle. The fact that the a&a kit used the Dewitt s radiator with a built in oil cooler didn't help. I started short shifting and we were running similar times on most tracks. Note also he added only the Johnny o connel sway bar and shocks, I had to go with coil overs since my front end was a bit lowered from extra weight of supercharger. Ran fine like that for 1 to 2 years of doing hpde once per month.

I had a bout of bad luck and a failed lifter took out a lifter bore in my block. Got a forged stroked 416 ci lower compression motor built. Now my temps were just too hot even short shifting. Was hitting 265 to 270 oil after some warm up laps and a few hot laps at most tracks (about 10 min of track time).

Got 2 setrab oil coolers installed, 1 on each side of the front bumper. Added alky control meth for detonation prevention. Added track spec hood vents. 85% distilled water, 15% coolant, water wetter. Car now makes 685 rwhp on low boost. (Built the motor to keep it from failing, not to up the house). I shift at about 5800 rpm.

On tracks with more high speed straights like roebling road, Sebring, pbir, homestead, my oil never gets above 235 to 240or so after 25 minutes. Coolant temp isn't an issue.
On shorter tracks with lots of hard acceleration zones and and short straights, it can get up 5 to 10 deg higher. Also if it's over 90 and humid my coolant can get pretty hot (240) on those shorter tracks, to the point that I cut my session after 10 minutes of running at speed. But when it's that hot during the summer in Florida I'm suffering heat exhaustion, so I pretty much don't run when it's that hot outside.

In summary, after doing the appropriate cooling upgrades, I am now happy with the temps of my car while running 25 minute sessions doing hpde. My car is a fun street car first, and I set up the entire car to survive 4 to 6 hpde events per year (all I have time for now).However, I have spent a fortune doing all of these upgrades. This is not just the cooling uogrades... As you get faster, you spend money upgrading other crap... Brakes, melted bushings, seats and harnesses, stickey tires, and that's just HPDE, Im not even running time trials. Plus I go through tons of gas and methanol. So if I don't bring gas cans, I pretty much run to the gas station after almost every session or 2. This is because I don't want to risk going under half a tank and having the pumps become fuel starved. Since vettes have 1 small tank on each side, I don't want to risk high g coners limiting fuel to the pumps.

My buddy with the n/a grand sport runs usually the same times or even half a sec to 1 sec faster since he is a really good driver. He just has a cam, intake, and exhaust, and about 200 less rwhp. He did the same bushing, brake, and other upgrades, but none of the cooling upgrades... He is even on the stock radiator and stock oil cooler. He runs his car to redline and hits max oil temps of 250 to 260 on hotter days. He only ever does regular maintenance, has never broken anything, and can get several sessions in before needing gas.

If I were to do it over again, and I knew I was going to get addicted to track days, I would have just did the upgrades my friend did and got a second car with a stock supercharger and made that my big HP street car. I use none of the handling benefits of the Vette on the street lol. No mountain roads in Florida. That actually would have been cheaper than dealing with this supercharger.

That being said, my car is now set up great for street and track, and it is a blast to drive. It is the best of both worlds at the moment, but it is really expensive and stressful getting it to that point.

 

Thanks for sharing that! Hard to admit when we mess up but you have worked hard to enjoy your car!

 

No regrets on the upgrades, the car is awesome now (although I wouldn't mind if I hadn't spent the money lol). I just always wished I were able to ask people's experience who had actually pushed the car on track after doing these type of upgrades. So if this post helps someone out,

 

Thank you so much for the input. These are the exact challenges I was considering. I'm shifting my thoughts to a mild head and cam setup, and the challenge is now what heads and what cam to get a decent bump in hp/tq, but not mess too much with how it drives on the street.

 

My friend is running a pretty aggressive LG cam... I forget which one, but it is the most aggressive one they sell that they recommend for street use. It shifted the power curve where he lost a bit of low end torque, but the car makes tons of power through redline. Perfectly driveable on the street, as long as you don't mind the car shaking at idle His only annoyance with that cam is that on the highway the car is not happy below 1900 rpm. It will surge. so he is in 5th a lot on the highway. But, that cam is great for running out the motor on a road course. I'll ask him which cam it was and get back to you