supercharger help

[70challengerrt]

I was looking into a supercharger. Does anyone have one and what are the goods and the bads? I was looking on ebay for a head unit and make my own brackets. Is there anything I should look for? I have a 1975 440 my challenger and the bottom 1/2 is sound and I was going to get the heads ported to help with flow.

[moper]

What kind of supercharger? Roots, or centrifical? Blow thru carb, or EFI? Inter/After cooled?

[70challengerrt]

centrifical like a paxton or vortec. I was going through the carb.

[willhaven]

Read this. He has lots of experience with supercharged 440s. He blew it up twice in his quest to get it solid.

http://users.anet.com/~sdurr/

[moper]

Read the link. If you cant fabricate, find someone who you can trust to do it. Blow thru setups are the cheap way into blowers, that's the upside. The downside is, any issue with fuel mixture has the same result (broken stuff..expensive stuff). I wouldnt bother with any centrifical without tunable EFI, and to be honest, any supercharger takes so much to drive itself (grab a P1SC and turn it by hand...). I know some superchargers installed in cars that siphon off almost 20% of the power they make just to turn themselves. I'd just go turbo if I was ready for boost. It's a little more money, but huge results. You can bolt on a setup like you're thinking about easy..You just have a hard time keeping it in tune and safe with a carb.

[ChallengerHK]

Every turbo car I've ever driven has had terrible lag. Admittedly they're all stock machines, but the Shelby GLH-S, the Shelby Daytona, and the Shelby Charger...they didn't do it for me. Personally, I want "on demand" power.

Of course, I also hate it when engines blow up in my face 

[willhaven]

Newer turbo setups have minimal lag, especially when you have a twin turbo setup. Single turbos have more lag since they are so much larger. More mass to spin, etc.

I would go EFI as well. For tuneability.

After reading about Durr's hassles, I'd be afraid to do a force-fed setup without doing EVERYTHING else along with it.

Then again, what do I know... I don't even have a 'Cuda yet.

[MyMopar]

Turbo technology has increased a lot.  You now can get a variable vane turbo so it acts like a small turbo at lower RPM but vane pitch increases and acts like a huge turbo when the power is on and steady.  You also can run a dual turbo set-up but turbo'ing can be so expensive, bulky and the amount of add on's to a system is tremendous.
I'd rather build a killer stroker and make my power that way than go turbo.  Plus turbo isn't muscle car, it is tuner.  Superchargers (whipple)are muscle car and so is all motor power.

[moper]

A roots blower is a positive displacement supercharger. That means for every rotation of the rotor, a certain amount of air is carried in. Those have immediate boost, at any rpm. The faster it spins, the more boost it has "right now". A centrifical supercharger has a boost curve, similar to a turbo. Thats why the compressors look similar to each other. That means, a big centrifical also has "lag". The Shelbys are great cars. If you drove an automatic, you really felt lag. If you drove the stick, and could drive it well, the boost was very fast for the time. The VNT shelbys were outstanding even with the automatics. But, for the displacement, the turbo was big..The exh side was sized too big. A V8 will not have that issue, and in fact, most turbo manufacturers now are beter at sizing things up and matching the exh size to the application. A 302GMC (stovebolt) 6 cyl I know of has a compressor size 2.5 times the size of a Buick 3.8L Grand National, but with the small exh side, the boost is instantaneous, and it produces 25lbs of boost at full boogie. If you drive a 5.0L Mustang with a P1SC, you'll notice the boost really comes on at about 2500rpm, because of the small cubes. A roots style blower on the same engine has full boost right off idle.

[ChallengerHK]

The Shelbys are great cars. If you drove an automatic, you really felt lag. If you drove the stick, and could drive it well, the boost was very fast for the time. The VNT shelbys were outstanding even with the automatics. But, for the displacement, the turbo was big

The one I had the most experience with was a 5-speed Daytona. After a couple of days of driving it around, I came to the conclusion thatthe only way to get performance out of it was to drive it like a Euro sports car, i.e., get into the powerband and then stay there at all costs. Thing is, I've never been one for Euro sports cars in the first place  . The only non-supercar Euro product I've ever wanted was a Jensen Interceptor...and we're back to on-demand power again.

I agree with the comments about the dual turbo setup being a way around this. All of the comments, including those about the complexity and the cost of the setup. I have to admit to not knowing a lot about variable vane setups (I know how they work, but I don't know anything about the cost, or the pros and cons of the setup). I do recall that Ford was investigating an electrically driven centrifugal setup that kept the rotor spooled up at low engine speeds for quicker response, but I don't know if anything came of that.

[wssnkc]

Bolt-on Mopar Supercharger


ProCharger Source for Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth models.

Supported Mopar year models include:
A body type 1963-1976
B body type 1962-1974
C body type 1965-1975
E body type 1970-1974
for engine models LA, Magnum 5.2 & 5.9, B, RB, Hemi.
http://www.thesuperchargerstore.com/index.html

Very clean 70 Hemi Cuda w/ ProCharger installed
http://www.thesuperchargerstore.com/dwilliamsphoto.html

[willhaven]

...turbo isn't muscle car, it is tuner.  Superchargers (whipple)are muscle car and so is all motor power.

Why waste exhaust gasses when you can harness them? Bore+stroke+twin turbo. It makes sense to be as efficient as possible.

The fastest street car in the world (Bugatti Veyron) has a 8L W16 with quad turbos(Volkswagen engines BTW). Basically it's two twin turbo V8's side by side that put out 1000hp. It also weighs 4300 lbs. 0-62mph: 2.4s 0-200mph: 22s. If that isn't muscle, I don't know what is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron_16.4

If you are looking for a certian level of HP and torque (and you have the funds to get it done right), go with the smallest lightest engine possible that can get you there with a power adder setup. If you worry about handling and weight balance that is. That seems like the way to go to me. If you just want a fun loud car that goes fast, I guess a twin turbo setup would be unnecessary. I guess none of us really need all the horsepower these cars can offer, it's just fun and different people have different views of what that is to them.

If I ever put a Hemi in a Cuda or Challenger it would probably be a newer 5.7 ot 6.1L Hemi. Then I'd look into the bolt-in TT setup that XV Motorsports is going to develop sometime next year. It would probably be expensive as hell though. If I went through the trouble of getting a centrifugal charger or a roots style charger... I might as well go the extra mile and go twin turbo instead. That's just my opinion though.

[moper]

See, I had a Daytona auto with a wasted turbo...lol.  They also were famous for the plastic vaccum tree thingy cracking, and the wastegate not functioning right..lol. Maybe we both had that. Tuners are musclecars, with no personality. Anything that makes more than 1hp per cu inch is fine with me. A friends Nissan 2.2L (stroked 2.0) makes 298hp to the tires. No turbo, no juice, no race fuel. That's about 2.39hp/cu inch. That's equal to a 1000+hp 440, on pump gas, with no blower or turbo. That's muscle.