Unworthy of a response..You have offered nothing meaningful to this debate..

 

yes unfortunately

i don't get you guys... you are scared of blowing your motor with a turbo kit.. yet you spend more money as Sentry does to get the same hp as a turbo kit... so to me that doesn't make sense... you guys realize its not the turbo kit thats blowing motors? its the weak rods and or bad tunes...

modifying your SC kit to put out high power will also increase your chance for motor failure

I have never been to sebring.. and i could care less... It doesn't matter what your Stillen Stage 4 does.. you can't compare performance of a car with driver skill... obviously a more skilled driver will beat a faster car..

and put your car up verses an equal skilled driver in the same whp TT and you will get eaten for lunch.. whats your point?

thats very nice to hear

thats also very nice to hear

 

"i don't get you guys... you are scared of blowing your motor with a turbo kit.. yet you spend more money as Sentry does to get the same hp as a turbo kit... so to me that doesn't make sense... you guys realize its not the turbo kit thats blowing motors? its the weak rods and or bad tunes."..

If you dont see a cause and effect with t and tt and blown motors you are not looking in the right places..

 

if you don't know how many people have blow motors with vortech blowers... you need to put your glasses on

 

Its useless to have a debate with someone whom doesnt live in our reality. By the way do you know how to read a dyno chart. Do you realize that peak power means nothing. It's just a number. Also as far as the rods, It is becoming more widely accepted and alberto will chime in im sure, that the large surge of torque from the turbo's is causing the rod failure. I personally feel that's why more TN/ST kits are blowin motors(not knocking the kit i like it). Simply because of that rush of torque from that big turbo. I know plenty about turbo's my man been in the Z32 scene for years. Now why in gods name would i want to spend 6-7thousand more on a car to get an additional 60or so HP for the purpose of goin around the track. Now I am not saying turbos dont make good track cars but it didnt make sense for ME. I would rather take the extra 6-7K and spend it on suspension mods, tires, trailer, etc, etc I dont care what anyone says, anything over 400 is pushing the stock block on a turbo. Not saying that it wont take it but when you are beating on your car all day around the track that 60 hp really doesnt mean jack. Now take VRT car with a fully built motor, oil cooler, tt, they are making massive power. Thats where you notice the difference. You can take any car that you want and if both cars have all the same mods and one car has 50-70 more HP it will not eat the lower HP car for lunch by any stretch. We may be talking split seconds with the right drivers. You just dont understand that the stillen is a roots blower that moves air directly in to the manifold technically making the car react just like an NA bigger displacement motor. Now it looks like **** on the dyno but I dont care about a piece of paper I care about having fun on the track and i already had a turbo car. Oh and by the way why do you keep bringing up sentry that's one person, there are hundreds out there that have superchargers including stillen and you base all your conclusions on one guy. Whats that have to do with anything?

 

why do you guys keep talking to me about ST Kits? i already said i didn't have one

 

Doug doesnt seem to ever let up, this thread is now useless. While I enjoy turbo's more, Id never rag on a S/C Z, especially after driving a Stillen S/C G down the 1/4. It was FUN, different strokes for different folks. All I do want to see is Sentry prove his S/C's ability to launch great and pull harder past 5000rpm's, and the only way to prove it is post up #'s....

 

yea on to bigger and better things for me..

 

I am all for a good argument with some hardcore facts.

I am just not buying the reasons alot of people say they went with an SC..

whats also funny is the Cali people buying an SC for CARB Cert. then go ahead and upgrade the fuel system and boom.. no more valid CARB Cert.

 

it's a long answer with some backstory...

i've posted some of this in other threads but it came down to my situation. I previously had lots of NA mods because at the time (about 21 months ago) ST's were not out and the APS TT kit was just coming out, but other than that there was the PE TT kit which was expensive and rare, then the greddy TT that was popping motors. The stillen just wouldn't do what I wanted, the ATI didn't have a timing solution and was popping motors. The vortech intrigued me but it was still a lot of money to dump all at once, though not as much as a TT setup. I didn't want JUST hp, I wanted some handling things too.

so I spent a bunch of money and had these put on pretty much all at once

jwt cams
crawford headers, plenum, and HF cats
nismo exhaust
3.9 final drive
ECU flash

and other things like sway bars, SS brake lines nismo LSD, radiator, tilton clutch, 350EVO throttlebody, UR pulley etc etc

later on I took things a step further and got the SSV manifold (cause I broke a bolt on my lower plenum and got in on the group buy) greddy emanage ultimate, JIC Y pipe, and more handling mods, coilovers, wide tires, etc.

I was fairly happy with the car. I was sure it could ALMOST compete with a C5 vette or at least be pretty damn close and probably handle slightly better

My crossroads was deciding what I want the car to do. I was seeing lots of guys with TT's and 450+ doing low to mid 12's. Some of the big power guys were doing high 11's with 525+whp on drag radials even. I don't deny there takes some skill to launch a 525+whp car, but even with sticky racing tires from the people posting up times AT THAT TIME weren't super impressive. They had very impressive power on the highway though.

This was when the new Z06 was being announced to officially be released and with 505 crank hp (we know it's more like 530hp because they seem to dyno around 430whp stock) the Z06 can do the 1/4 mile in 11.7 sec give or take - some articles posted 11.3, others posted 12.2, but high 11's was pretty much the average. And that's on normal street tires. Word was that if the Z06 had freaking drag radials it'd hit 10's which I think has been done at this point. It was interesting that an average joe could get in a Z06 and hit a 12.2 and then get in a 550whp Z and turn out the same time with 120 more whp, and usually about equal trap speed

Anyway it started getting me thinking about balance. I decided that IMO the Z isn't inclined to be the best at drag racing as easily as other cars. And that actually it isn't destined to easily be the best at anything. It's such a well rounded car. The cars that came to mind when I thought of a well balanced car were the Z06, various porsches and the Ferrari F430 which were comparable to each other yet have very extremely different approaches to their designs.

I like lots of different types of driving, but have always gotten the most thrill from road course or auto-x. Drag racing is cool too, but to me it's more of a benchmark cause otherwise it's mostly about how well you can launch since driving a road course down the straightaway is pretty much the same thrill once you're moving. So I have to admit I'm not the greatest drag racer even though someone like Alberto might pretend to hold me to be as good as him - I'm just not



Anyway I was thinking of going TT, ST or SC. I decided having HUGE power just wasn't in the cards for my car. To me that would require the engine or transmission being in the rear or using nothing but drag radials in the rear and I guess normal tires up front - would have aweful understeer and sketchy stability in the rear

Since half the reason to go TT was for the HUGE power potential and the other half was the earlier spool up and more power in the top end - AKA flatter torque curve, I started looking at the ST's because they were roughly 2/3 the price for 85-90% the performance. For 500whp or less the ST would suit me just fine. That and I really didn't want to dig myself into the expensive TT route

The thing I wasn't thrilled about with the ST's though was the spikey torque in the midrange. The torque goes from normal, to a huge spike, then drops off pretty fast. Now this was 10 months ago - the TN kit was barely out and only a handful of people had one and had dynos for it. At the time not very many were really pushing the ST setup much beyond 420whp, but I was sure more was possible as time went on. Still though, People with vortechs were already pushing 460-480whp with 375+ torque which seemed to be respectable

What turned me off a lot about the ST's was I'd have to ditch a lot of my stuff to make the setup work. My nismo exhaust would probably have to be modified and my crawford cats would have to go. I heard a TN car with test pipe and single Ti exhaust in person and it was freaking loud which I'm not wanting to attract THAT much attention from cops. But as stupid as it sounds, I kinda would miss having a dual exhaust. The crawford headers I had would probalby have to go too. At least at the time everyone was saying not go use headers cause it'll cause more lag and no much power increase. We know now that there is a pretty ok power increase with headers but there is more lag.

Then there's my 3.9 final drive. Everyone was having major traction issues with ST's unless they were using drag radials or feathered the clutch and gas pedal enough that they couldn't go WOT at 4000 rpms unless it was in 4th gear. To me that seemed like wasted power that wasn't really being used to the full extent and I didn't want to use drag radials. I still wanted the car to handle better than average, not similar or slightly worse. So the 3.9 final drive would probably have to go and make way for a 3.3 or even stock 3.5.

I just didn't really feel like selling half of the mods I already had done to my car at a loss so I could get something that'd work well with the ST setup. And really the only benefit I was seeing with the ST before too long was the midrange torque.

I live in AZ where it's just plain hot in the summer and since turbos get really hot, I wasn't excited about dealing with extreme heat on an aftermarket turboed car.

As it turned out, the 3.9 final drive theoretically would be perfectly suited for the vortech or ATI kit - err or HKS too, but I wasn't interested in that kit because of the small intercooler and high price. The 3.9 would give you gear torque and put you 300-600 rpms higher in the powerband at the same mph where the SC natually makes more boost. The vortech tuner kit was only $3600 and I already had engine management. It'd work great with the crawford headers, cats, and nismo exhaust - wouldn't have to change a damn thing except my tilton clutch and UR pulley. I was a really big fan of the vortech's aggressive BOV and jet engine sound and it'd toughen up my exhaust sound without having to use some resonated test pipes to get my volume back. And it wouldn't be chocked by a single exhaust tube right at the exhaust manifolds and the throttle would instantly react to me vs a .2 second delay that the ST would need to spool up the air pressure

The fact that it was CARB legal etc was a nice afterthought, but I don't live in CA. It gave me the possibility of still passing AZ emissions though with my HF cats and not having to remove the test pipes for testing. In a couple Z article shoot outs the vortech was only a couple tenths behind the turbo Z's in the 1/4 mile or in one case actually faster with slightly faster trap speeds even. It could be blamed on the already professional drivers driving those cars, but I had to think if they couldn't launch a turbo Z easily, who's to say I'd have an easier time with it cause I'm not Alberto.

Basically it was a perfect extension of my NA Z and gives me a nice predictable flat toque curve - though peak or midrange torque isn't as big as a turbo, my other mods compensate a little for that to a degree. But let it be known, I didn't build up my car to be a drag racing car or I would have honestly picked a different car from the start and said screw the Z. I like the Z for what it is and tried to improve on every aspect of the car in such a way to keep it well rounded, but still capable. If I could pick a couple cars that my Z drives similar to I'd say probably a porsche or ferrari as opposed to a viper or ford GT

I'll do what I can, I'm wanting my car finished probably more than anyone else. Still dealing with a mysterious fuel pressure dropping issue - think it's the wiring to the pump at this point since I've changed every other part already trying to troubleshoot it. But I DON'T think my car will launch as well as a turbo with drag radials. My goal is 12-12.3 sec @ 115-116mph shifting into 5th gear on my current tires at this location @ 1117 ft above sea level

that is true and kinda funny, but I guess the only reason then is cops won't give you a ticket and require you to visit those testing places prematurely. As long as you pull into an emissions place, present your CARB sticker on your vortech and don't have any CEL's or pass their sniffer test, then all is well even with a different fuel system and injectors

 

The sad thing is, doug is right. He just has:

a) no tact
b) doesn't beat around the bush

I'll read the storybook responses later as I'm in a rush. Many buy supercharged setups with misconceptions that are perpetuated by posts such as these, and quickly wish they had gone the turbo route. They do have their place, but that is somewhere very few people actually put them to use.

 

some might laugh and I might take heat for saying this, but I'm not convinced the current crop of built engines are truely the best that can possibly be done to the VQ

I think the engine building will only get better and am keeping an especially close eye on Cosworth since they're being commissioned by Nissan to do some serious work to the VQ35 and actually redesigning certain things - not just beefing up the current design or boring away metal

I can afford a built engine right now and go to a T-trim blower and figure out a belt solution yada yada yada, but I'm not convinced I won't have headlift issues or that Vortech won't come out with a better belt design than me

I'm not convinced beefing up the internals is the only issue at hand with the VQ35 handling high boost consistently. I'm waiting for the market to mature some and more parts and experience to come out. When I build my engine, you can bet I'm going to build it up right with proven parts.

So I might as well throw everything else that HAS been proven to work well that can improve engine safety that I'll continue to use down the road. I'd like my engine to last as long as possible until some better engine solutions come out but I'm not afraid to push the power on it. Either way I'm not going to be one of the guys who has to pull the engine every year because of head lift or whatever

 

guys dont even waist your time with doug,he is like a rock when it comes to his opinions.he flames every body about what they have unless its what he has,so just dont waist your time.you all probably know he has apstt and he is a poster boy for that kit.

 

i suppose if I bought another Z and put an APS TT on it, Doug would be my friend? JK

I think the APS TT is a great really nice kit and haven't talked to anyone who ever wish they went with something else who had one. People with SC's have switched to turbos though none of them ever pushed their setup very far - usually around 370-400 whp on a vortech or ATI which isn't very extreme then they ended up with 500+whp so of course anything less than HUGE power is going to feel slow to them

 

1) its waste
2) who have i flamed? i meerly asked questions

 

1) only have tact for the ladies ... and jeremy of course..
2) damn skippy

 

I have a whole other debate on why i don't like the APS TT Kit.. but i will save that for another thread

 

yeah every kit has its flaws

there's some things I also don't like about the APS kit too - some of which maybe are the same things you don't like, but overall it's probably the TT kit I'd choose over all the others

the kits I was debating between were the TN, APS TT, and vortech when I was thinking of which FI to go. God knows things would have been a lot simpler for me if I just spent the money up front on the APS TT instead of later trying to troubleshoot my bastardized vortech setup

 

my problems with the APS TT Kits arn't flaws... i just don't think its worthy of the Platinum Status people have given it

 

real quick, what are your complaints about it?

mine aren't a huge deal but they're:

-how they generally don't seem friendly beyond what APS wants you to run them at
-not being able to tune the unichip yourself
-IMO it's kinda a shame there isn't much to look at in the engine bay cause it's all hidden away - though might have it's uses being hidden
-the unichip only has so many capabilities
- the fuel system is a bit half assed, but still better than nothing