Built Vortec VQ owners, what's your compression
 

I have been searching through dozens and dozens of threads and it seems that there are so many different setups as compared to the turbo setups . I see stock compression, high compression, low compression motor setups with different blowers, multiple pulley setups, etc...

What I am looking to do is build another Z, this time ~500whp with a Vortech supercharger. Going to build the motor again, however i'm trying to see if going low compression makes the same sense as it does with turbos. Considering the linear buildup of boost in supercharger and the the static and dynamic compression ratios, the power would appear to work out to about the same with differences in being in the timing and boost levels among many other things.

Sooo I'm wondering what most of you guys are running for compression, which blower/ pulley setup your running and your approximate hp.

If you plan on leaving it as a supercharged car, I would go with stock or higher compression.

Personally I would not go above stock compression unless I could afford race gas all the time. Especially with FI. Maybe if you ran pure water injection you could pull it off on pump gas.
Either way, I don't think the hp differences are really worth the difference in gas costs/risks.
If I was doing my "dream build" I'd have billet everything and 12.0-1 comp ratio, kelford stage 3's and a dry sump (and two big huge turbos). But that's one of those builds with a disposable lotto income.

We sell a wiseco R/T speced 9.7:1 comprssion piston. We speced these out speccifially for guys running vortechs and smaller turbo setups. PM me if you are interested we have these on the shelf ready to ship

why build a 500whp vortech setup? the powerband looks the exact same as a typical gt35 single turbo setup. without the belt slip, parasitic loss, and constant bpv venting.

i wouldnt go less than 9.7:1. 10:1 or even 11:1 would be preferable as 500 isnt that much and should be well within 93 octane knock resistance

If I had it my way Rich, I would do another turbo car. This project is for my brother and he wants to do a supercharged setup. I gave him the Pro-charger or Vortech and he chose Vortech because of the great success of so many on the forums.

His build will not be as in depth as mine, but i'm not going to let him cut any corners either. Looks like we will end up somewhere in the 10:1 compression range.

Vince, can you pm me a price shipped to 12533 please?

8.8 but I wish I had went a like higher like 9/ 9.7

with meth and call it a day
10.3.1 with meth!

Lol, meth is the one thing that I personally will never run in my car, and will never have in my brother's either. Some have great success, I just do not want an added variable for another potential issue.

Do you have E-85 up in your neck of the woods? I think you would do fine with stock compression and 93 octane though.

Yes we do have a few e85 pumps up by us finally, and more keep popping up every so many months. The car has to be a pump car majority of the time as it does get driven regularly.

Thanks everyone for your input!

i agree with rich. 500hp wouldn't be out of the range of pump octane with a vortech. You wouldn't have to run as much boost to produce the same amount of power due to the higher compression. That will solve the belt slip issues with small pulleys as well as the issue of over-spinning the blower bearings that everyone is concerned about (which i don't think really is an issue but higher blower speeds means faster wear on the bearings).

Also, when driving around in vac he will have a more responsive car over a low compression engine.