Albinosquatch

Fair point, I have been reading here on the forum that once you go over 600 whp you are going to want to do pistons.

Can anyone recommend a good tuner in North Carolina?

Ghostnotes

Not to hijack but i will be doing the install myself and not too worried about any fab work needed and i Like the idea of a dedicated balancer. I have a pretty radical cam. I keep hearing numbers like 600+whp with most base head units and im guessing that's stock. With a big cam and 2" headers how much of a difference will it make The cam is 239/242, .645"/.635", 113 LSA.

Also if i want to go with the next size up with A&A will i necessarily need meth. My internals are Billet but i only want to go to about 600 at first then 800 later so i figured i would go with the next size up with either but start in the basement.

raylo

I don't have one of these and have a stock LT1 so I'll defer to others for definitive answers... but if you have billet internals you are probably good to go pretty high, like 800-1000.... assuming you have the fuel pumps and injectors to support. IIRC the ECS base unit can go pretty high (has a restricter plate for base 600 HP installs) and Procharger and A&A offer more capable upgrade head units for not much $, so it would be smart to get that in the beginning. Might need meth at some point but you'd have to ask the folks that have done this like FyreAnt when meth is absolutely necessary.

Oh, A&A comes with a good balancer... Procharger is about $500 upgrade for that. Not sure about ECS.

Ghostnotes

Yeah the billet was before i decided to go forced, it was going to be an N/A monster. It's callies ultra billet crank/rods and diamond pistons. It can go way higher than 1000 but i actually built it for very high sustained revs.Everything has been cryoed as well. Did this to my G8 (which i still regret selling) and ran it to 8500 all day. My only bottleneck for that speed now are the rockers. They don't make safe rockers yet or at least last time I checked.I use T&D on all my LS stuff but they said they have no plans on producing any for these.....at the moment.

Nitro-C5

Where do you live in NC? Send me a PM I can give you a really good recommendation (don't want to conflict with forum rules). I have done several high HP builds over the years and my installer is doing a ECS Blower and Meth Kit for me next week on my new Grand Sport

2 seats

chefcg1

Albinosquatch

Figured I would provide an update, if anyone is still following this thread.

I decided to go with procharger based off of the ease of installation and being able to turn my car back to stock (hopefully I will never need to do this )

I went with the horizontal intercooler option, upgraded to an ATI balancer, and a P1X head unit.

Got my car dyno'd last week and put out 599 rwhp:

raylo

Very nice! Which tune, ProCharger supplied or custom? Any issues during install?

Albinosquatch

So went with the custom tune. I am in NC so I reached out to one of the guys in this thread for a recommendation and would suggest them as well

As far as install goes, I had my friend help with the install (read as he did the install) and we ran into 3 "issues"

First was assembling the balancer correctly because the directions suck so bad for the proper way to put the balancer together with an additional serpentine pulley (i ended up making another post about this)

Second issue we ran into was the tensioner instructions and their vagueness, but this is something we figured out quickly in comparison the balancer issue

Third was fitting the stage 2 air inlet onto the throttle body, we had to take a dremel to it to sand it down to fit it on there.

We could of avoided these issues if we did the build during the week when businesses were open instead of on the weekend. My friend actually took video of the entire install as well as calling out discrepancies/vagueness of the installation instructions. So once he finishes editing I will post a link to the videos.

Hope this was helpful and I didn't blabber too much

2 seats

Albinosquatch

Actually no meth. Talked with the tuner as I was concerned with fueling issues, but after the street tune and dyno my tuner found that there were no fueling issues so I haven't gone the meth route yet.

The p1x is running 10 lbs of boost, but i talked with procharger about this as well as my tuner and neither were concerned with the level of boost. If i decide to go for more hp then i definitely need to do headers and meth for fueling and the ability to "exhale"

kc stingray

welcome to the p1x club, best mod ever!

raylo

600 RWHP, whew... Your fueling is good but the boost and power level power make for high combustion pressures and temps. Stock pistons are the weak link. But I with bone stock car am jealous.

Albinosquatch

Yeah I talked with my tuner about that, so if I were to do anything else I would be doing headers, meth and valve springs.

From what I have read on this forum it seems that once you try to go above 650-700 is when the pistons seem to fail

Nuclearranger

Here is my self-installed procharger. No METH 593RWHP after custom tune.

This is the before and after from the included procharger tune and my custom tune.

smajicek

OP, if you live in California A&A is CARB compliant, the others are not.