ok sounds good. what upgrades should i b lookin at for the tranny? and should i just try to find a shop that sells turbos or is there a site i should go to and order all my stuff i need and then take it in to get installed if i cant do it myself?

 

ZZPerformance for your turbo needs.

Triple Edge Performance - Home Page for your tranny needs.

 

Assuming you have the LS4 V8- you don't really have much choice. The only bolt on available is a turbo kit, and the one kit available already has an intercooler included. Sure there are plenty of bolt on SC kits for the LSx engines, but none are made for FWD- so you'd be on your own as far making it work.

You won't have to worry about lag with the turbo they supply either. The only people who worry about major lag issues are those with very small / low horsepower engines with a bigger turbo; and those who want to run a massive turbo on pretty much any engine.

The benefit to already having a 300 horse V8, is the car isn't going to be a total dog while the boost is climbing. Since you can't go wide open throttle from a dead stop anyways, the little lag in full power (which is roughly double stock) isn't going to matter anyways.

Considering the cartuning LS4 turbo kit is $5700 with shipping- the remaining $1300 isn't going to get you very far with the trans, I'd budget even more personally, especially if you really planned to get into drag racing it.

IMO, having a car that is 100% flex fuel compatible to start with is even better- many boosted guys run E85 due to its much higher octane than standard premium fuel, and you don't have to worry about fuel corrosion issues that others may have with older cars not designed to run on E85.

The reason you've probably heard its better to turbo a 3.5 than supercharge it; is a turbo would require less fabrication to fit. Since no 60* V6's came with a factory supercharger (like the 3800's)- you can't just drop one in. Sure you could make a custom lower intake manifold, deal with adding the extra pulley and new belt length, and then figure out your fuel rail mounting and intake/throttle tract- but that's a good deal of work.

With a turbo, you can just block off the current downpipe- take your current crossover pipe, and have a turbo mount welded on- then have a new downpipe and intake tube bent up- and you've got the bulk of the mechanical work done, without the custom machining involved with mounting a positive displacement supercharger.

Obviously you could always remote mount a positive displacement supercharger, or run a CSC- but IMO, you're still going to have more fab work involved than a turbo would (unless you managed to find one of the old kits for a good price).

The 3.5 being a smaller engine doesn't really matter as much. If you're wanting it to emulate a bigger engine as much as possible (lots more torque from low rpm)- then a positive displacement supercharger is a better route to go. You get full boost practically the instant you floor it, giving you tons more bottom end torque, that is smooth and consistent all the way through the rpm range. With a turbo, your peak hp will be higher, and the car will be quicker overall- especially at the higher rpm at WOT, but until you get the turbo spun up to full boost, its still going to have the same smaller engine power and torque.

Not real sure where you guys are getting this "stage" stuff from. A lot of companies use 'stages' to separate their levels of kits- but if you're talking building a one-off turbo or supercharger setup, 'stage' is really meaningless.

Also, there is no reason you'd have to do the listed 'stage 2' stuff right away either. IMO, since you obviously haven't made your own turbo kit before (I'm assuming, since you're asking-JD), I would focus more on getting it installed properly and running correctly first, without worrying about doing a whole bunch of other crap at the same time. You'd hate to be diagnosing a leaking head gasket from putting on new heads at the same time you're trying to diagnose a stuck wastegate spring, etc. Just keep it simple, and get the fueling dialed in in your pcm tuning- then worry about doing other mods later. With a turbo, upping the boost later on is as easy as turning a **** anyways.


If you are seriously considering this- you really should make your own thread about your specific car- budget, HP goals, etc. It just seems that this topic is going pretty off path from the original turbo vs supercharger topic. This way, you will get more people clicking on the topic to specifically help you.

If you can't build your own turbo/supercharger kit for your 3.5, you better prepare to spend serious cash to have a shop do it for you. Between building the trans, custom making a kit, and doing all the tuning, I bet a shop would easily charge you $7500-10k for quality parts- that labor adds up quick when you're doing total custom jobs.

I think he has the 3.5 flex fuel- so I don't think zzp would have anything for him?

 

k....right now i'm deployed to afghanistan so i cant really do ne thin and my car is in storage right now...but i am seriously thinkin bout upping the hp in my car.....and btw thanx for everyones input it helps me get closer to wut i want to do

 

Hi Chad, another great/informative post...Great to see you
online. I've learned a lot from your post/knowledge 4-Sure.
Thanks for sharing with your Monte Carlo Family.
==========================================
Hi JdcrankMonteCarlo,
Thank You for your service to your country & we wish you
a safe return back to your family/friends & Monte Carlo.
BeSafe over there 4-Sure. Good Luck from `Space

 

Another thing you can do is stack turbos. This reduces some of the lag. If you have a small turbo spooling a larger turbo the boost increase is multiplied. So if you take a small turbo boosting 4 psi, it kicks in quick, have it feeding a larger turbo boosting 10 psi, which on a v6 would take more time, then your actually running 40 psi boost. Train engines and a Chrysler concept did this. You can get huge HP out of small engines but you need to make sure you build the engine to handle that kind of boost. You can also stagger turbos so they spool at different speed. A small one for low end and a Big one for when the small one Drops off at higher speed. I myself am a supercharger fan though. On the track a turbo wins, in the quarter a Supercharger wins. A supercharger kicks in right now turbo takes a bit. So Superchargers take the lead off the start and turbos try to catch up and its a gamble to play catch up in the quarter.

 

not really i have seen some people rev or high rev there turbo type vehicles before getting off the line to try to spool the turbo. but bumpin thanks for the heads up for the info i noticed that no one said that. but i did get som pricing on how much the custim turbo headers and the lines and a tune was for the turbo set up. i am happy right now what i am with right now. i do have some turbos waiting to go on some thing but i perfer to not to have any bills hanging over my head befor diving in on when i am going to put them on

 

On a front wheel drive revving to get the turbos spooled is a bad idea as you will just go side to side trying to get traction instead of forward like a supercharger would. and instead of needing modded exhaust, waste-gates, and other needed turbo parts, a centripetal supercharger bolts on like a turbo, plugs into your air intake with ease and needs no extra fabrication for attachment. Procharger makes really good ones, they are about the same price as a turbo but you save money by not needing other mods.

 

Turbos are not bad at all on these cars. I'm going to be doing a turbo build. You don't NEED gigantic turbos to get power on these cars. You can have a good sized one, that doesn't take long to spool and can double your HP easily.

And the CSC kit was discontinued, I would love to run it (Zipper has one) but unless you can buy it used, the "kit" is very expensive to have it made for you again. I had many talks with Matt from Stattama about remaking the kit.

 

You can still get a Centripetal supercharger. The only fabrication you would need is to fabricate tubes bolting from the csc to the intake. You dont need a kit just the CSC itself some tubes, sheetmetal, bolts, and a welder. CSC and Turbos both cost around 2k for good ones. Both will need mods to equip. Turbos need moded exhausts and CSC need a custom fabricated box over the intake so the boost gets in to cylinders make sure it is airtight though. The CSC setup is easier to do though and you dont need to even put your car on a lift. Just buy the CSC itself man its way simpler and in my experience the more complicated a system is the more places for it to go wrong. My friend had a +400 hp turboed delsole and had nothing but probs with the turbo system and he got beat by mustang v6 with csc systems all the time in the quarter. Only time he had the advantage is when he was already doing 70 down the highway when the race started. only time i would say dont use a csc is if your car is a 3800 sc then stick with it just work the sc a bit. With a CSC you have a belt driven CSC, a tube to the intake, and maybe an intercooler. so if your losing boost it is easy to find the prob. Turbo have custom pipes from exhaust to the turbo, wastegates, tubes from turbo to intake, the turbo itself, and maybe an intercooler. See how there is more places for something to go wrong? If your losing boost its not 1 maybe 2 places to look it is 3 maybe 4. Akams Razor anything that can go wrong will go wrong keep it simple imo. But I had these same arguments with my friend that had the delsole until 3 years later when he finally said I was right. Track race = turbo, drag = SC. In a few years i plan on getting a 2006-2007 ss with the 5.3 an making it into a 10 sec car.