Just bought a 2015 z51 a8 and want to add some more power. My question is, if I go the supercharger route, will I have to get a catch can and also run meth? Is there danger or damage that can come from just running the supercharger without those things?

Is there anyone out there running just a SC with no other mods and no issues (overheating, etc)

Also, what brand of superchargers are best these days? I read some old posts back and forth and people complaining about design of ecs intercooler and having to mess with the abs brakes. Anything to that? Now that the c7 has been out aa little whole now and people have played with them more, is there a consensus on best supercharger? What supercharger would you go with?

My first foray into superchargers and I am a total newb.

Thanks so much.

 

I have an A&A supercharger kit on my 2014 C7 Z51 with the Ti head unit at 9psi boost. I have absolutely no overheating, even in 110 degrees Las Vegas summer heat. I am not sure about your mounting questions regarding ABS or the intercooler, as it was all installed by A&A themselves.

I do recommend a catch can as well as an ALKY methanol system. Without the meth you will be limited on how much boost you can run by only relying on fuel. You can maybe get by if you have 93 octane available; I wouldnt risk it on 91.

All that being said, I would probably recommend the ECS kit over the A&A. The ECS standard kit comes with a larger head unit compared to A&A and they seem to make more power and more boost when coupled with meth and long tube headers.

 

You can't go wrong with either the A&A or ECS choice.. We have an ECS 1500 on our 2014 but we opted for the whole "sh-bang." We are currently running about 10 pounds of boost with American Racing Long Tube Headers, Late Model Racecraft revised catch can and a single nozzle ECS alky meth control. That netted us about 670 rwhp. We were happy but we found ourselves wanting more.. so, in a less than two weeks, we are turning our car over to a local company to do a FULLY forged engine / cam / heads / stall / more meth / higher boost / lower compression / Wisco forged pistons setup.. We are keeping our fingers crossed for about 825-850 rwhp.

It all depends on your wants / needs. We WANT a reliable high HP C7. It will cost us a good chunk of change but hopefully it will satisfy our NEED for speed.. LOL!

 

Tell us what your HP goals are and we can tell you how to safely achieve them..

 

You guys have some sweet setups! It's hard to say what I'd need hp wise. I will be using it as my daily driver and want to still be able to have it drive normal, except at WOT of course.

I'm in Utah and with the higher elevations here my car is running just under a 5 second 0-60. It's still a fun car, but I want to get the numbers closer to advertised at sea level in the mid 3's.

I stopped by jdp motorsports which is local here and they were very helpful and recommended if I do the SC that I'd need a catch can and to run meth, I just want to see if there's a way to do just a SC and not have to do the other things for added cost on top and wanted to get a few opinions of people that might be running a setup like that with no ill side effects.

If I SC and keep boost lower, maybe down the line I can decide to add those other things depending on seat of the pants feel/need/times?

 

We've only got 91 octane here

 

Sounds like JDP is giving you some good advice as they are local and should know what's best for operating in your high elevation area. If it were me AND they have a great reputation, I would just go with what they recommend and have them do the install. Having a good local guy to take it to if issues arise, is worth it's weight in gold.

 

The A&A and ECS systems are the most popular set-up we offer. We always suggest the Alky Control kit with a good catch-can/breather system (FSP) on the LT1's when boosted.

The beauty of these systems is the car will drive like stock until you get after it and want the power. They are very reliable and low maintenance. The last ECS system we did made 662 WHP and 567 WTQ with ARH LT's, Alky kit and a breather/catch-can.



I am working on the quote now and I will send it over shortly. Please feel free to call, email or PM me anytime with questions.




Kind regards,

Jordan Priestley
888.308.6007

 

the advice you were given is sound. First lets look at a few things - if you put ANY forced induction on the car, you should be running a breather tank. This is because the -majority- of C7's out there deal with oil injestion issues due to the PCV system design. Forced induction only agitates that issue even further so a breather tank is required to correct this. Next is the octane issue. With you only having 91 octane, you are already limited with what you can do. If you refuse to use meth, you will most likely need to get the A&A kit, and run the 4.0" pulley to lower the boost. It ships the way you need it (with the V3 Si head unit) so its ready to go for you. This will allow it to run in a safer temp range. Again though, this is not what JDP recommended, and I agree with them. Remember, do it right, or do it twice. You want faster, and reliable? Meth, installed properly and setup for it to have safeties built in, is what you need. Meth provides cooling for the motor, and increases the octane high enough to make sure you do not have detonation in the combustion chamber. Without meth, running boost on 91, you are definitely taking a risk..

Ant

 

I think one thing you should really do is contact Doug @ ECS (or Andy @ A&A) and ask them what he would suggest. I feel like getting the most out of the supercharger system and pushing it is not really your main concern, you just really want more hp than what you have now and keep it somewhat cost efficient? I honestly think you would be fine with installing just the SC kit (either AA or ECS, or even Procharger) and just using the canned tune that they send with it (not 100% sure AA sends a canned tune but I think they do). Those tunes are done conservatively to take into account 91 octane and maybe even higher elevations (again, speak to doug or somebody at A&A). If you go ECS you will def have to stick with the larger restrictor plate to keep the boost down (or the V3Si unit from A&A with the 4" pulley as FYREANT stated). Granted you will definitely not get the full potential of the SC by going this route, but you will get a substantial increase in reliable horsepower. Meth is not a necessity, but it is definitely recommended for safety. It would be required though if you wanted to push up the boost or advance timing more than what the canned tune offers to get those higher HP #'s. With just a stock kit, the higher elevation, and 91 octane...I'd say you're only looking at around 550 (+/-) whp. Now if you added meth (and headers), you could turn the boost on up and maybe get to the mid 600 hp levels. Now the catch can is a good idea for our C7's whether you are boosting or not, IMO. I currently run a RX catch can plus RX clean side separator, but when I get my SC installed I will probably also install the FSP set up that JDP recommends. Again...I would call ECS (which is my own preference of SC setup), or Andy at A&A, or somebody at Procharger, and ask them if they think the stock kit with the supplied canned tune will be ok for you in your specific location.

 

ProCharger is the only one that supplies a canned tune with a DiabloTuner. I have heard the others "offer" a basic tune to get you to a real tuner, but that would require you to have HP tuners since they do not use Diablo..

 

Oh...gotcha. Yeah I asked that question on a different thread and was obviously given an incorrect answer! I knew the procharger came with a canned tune but I asked if the ECS did and somebody stated that it did...mis informed. Thank you!

 

I'm running an ECS kit at 7psi with ARH Longtubes making 586qhp/572ft-lbs. No meth, no breather.

I had the car tuned on 91 and ran that initially and had zero issues. I have switched to 94, but the car ran great on 91. I'm 2,300 ft above sea level.

So with the restrictor plate in, it will be fine IMO. If you want to run any more boost though you'd need meth and a breather would probably be good too. My next step next summer is to add meth and a breather and shoot for 700whp-ish.

 

This weekend I am going to be installing a ecs kit and alky, when I take it to get tuned I'm having them install headers w/out cats. I have no plans for a catchcan/breather. The z51 already has a breather setup from factory so I plan to see how that does before I add.

Keep in mind you are getting information from people that may or may not have a z51 package.

 

The Z51 has a breather set up from the factory? I have a Z51 and mine didn't come with a breather from the factory. At least not that I know of.

 

I have a wet sump in mine for clarification. I run an A&A kit at 8PSI, and 100% meth single nozzle with ARH headers. Also have a LMR breather.

 

Z51 has a dry sump, I'm not sure if that changes things much though? Again, very inexperienced in this realm and I don't even know the difference/benefit between a wet and dry sump. I was reading on another forum that perhaps a reason people are getting oil coming out is due to over fill?

http://www.corvette7.com/forums/showthread.php?t=364560

Post #5

Could this fix some problems that previously made people believe there a was necessity for the catch can on SC engines or is that unrelated?

Thanks for all the replies. Corvette owners are a good bunch. Met one at jds that had come down from Montana to have work done and talked with him for probably 45 minutes about our cars.

I'm trying to fit in with the nice guy corvette owner image and let a merging c7 in front of me in traffic the other day

 

No...the overfill was a problem that definitely made the car ingest oil back through the drysump system, however, the car can still burp small amounts of oil back through the intake without the clean side separator, even with the correct amount of oil in the tank.

Here's a pretty good explanation of wet sump vs dry sump.
http://www.moroso.com/eb/web/docs/WetSVSDry.pdf

All Direct Injection cars can benefit from a catch can set up. Basically what a PCV system does is re-route oil vapors back through the engine rather than out into the air which would cause more pollution. All cars, direct injection and port injection, get oil ingestion back into the system through the PCV system. Only it doesn't hurt port injection engines as much because the fuel is delivered above the valves, in which the detergents in the fuel clean the tops of the valves as it passes over them. However, in DI engines (which all LT1's are, both wet and dry sump), the fuel is sprayed in BELOW the valves, which is more of an efficient delivery for the engine however it doesn't allow for cleaning of the tops of the valves. A catch can is designed to catch those vapors and separate the oil back out of it so that it doesn't end up on top of your valves. And the clean side separator keeps the oil on the upper end from being "burped" back into the intake manifold. Granted the levels of oil ingestion may not be that high, and it may take many many miles before you start to see any "coking" of the valves, but it WILL happen. And you most likely won't really notice it as it will happen over time and slowly decrease the performance and longevity of your vehicle. Which of course, with the addition of forced induction, this all just compounds and increases. All manufacturers producing DI engine vehicles are battling this problem. And almost all of them would probably recommend (off the books) the use of a catch can (or breather system), but won't use them production wise because it is another part that will need routine maintenance and another part that would have to be EPA compliant.

Also, some people will argue the breather over catch can debate all day (one being a closed system and the other venting excess pressure into the atmosphere). Some argue the catch can can't handle the excess pressure properly while others will argue that a breather will not maintain proper crankcase pressure. This is why I'm looking at the FSP set up. To me it seems to be the best of both worlds. At least in all of my studies on this matter, that is what I have determined!

 

Very good to know! Thank you for your help.

 

Don't forget the Edelbrock E-Force unit. Mine makes 560 RWHP without headers and the tune from Edelbrock. I do have a Borla non-catted X Pipe and it gets really loud. I am very happy with the performance. No overheating issues at all. Highway mileage remained the same. Fun factor went up. Drive train warranty backed by Edelbrock for a total of 3yr 36k miles was one of the reasons I chose the E-Force plus it looks great under the hood.