I have a 2005 Monte Carlo SS SC and love it. My question is a regular 05 Monte Carlo SS has 200hp and mine is SC with 240hp. Why do I have only 40hp more? Is the stock SC crap? Is there a bigger and better SC I can get? I know 40hp is a big difference and that I can put a smaller pulley on it and a lot of other things I can do but really… the SC only gives 40hp?

 

The stock setup is very restrictive. For fuel economy and such.

There are a number of members here with the supercharged 3.8 who have done a lot of things.

The smaller pulley is one of the mods people have done. Other things are ditching the stock air intake and installing a Cold Air Intake system, and changing the entire exhaust system from the down tube back.

A PCM programmer came in handy for some too.

 

 

40hp is a pretty big difference.
What you really want to look at though is the difference in torque between the two - the L67 is rated at 280 ft/lbs.

You can really open up the supercharged cars for fairly cheaply. There is a thread in the "Headers/Intake/Exhaust" section entitled "General Mod Plan for 3800's" (it's a sticky, so it's always the first thread). Read through that thread. Skip down to the L67 section (that's the supercharged engine).

There are a few spots in the stock exhaust setup that are fairly restrictive. You'll find a lot of posts about the "u-bend" if you look around. The front manifold is also very restrictive, and the catalytic converter and downpipe are fairly restrictive too. Upgrading all of that by either going with a powerlog (replaces front manifold) and aftermarket downpipe (replaces the u-bend, cat, and stock downpipe) or with a set of headers instead (best option imho) will open up the car a good bit.
The stock airbox is also fairly restrictive, and there are a lot of options for upgrading the intake. Search for cold air intake (CAI) or fenderwell intake (FWI) and you'll find both the pre-made and home-made types to give you some ideas.

After the exhaust and the intake are opened up, you can start adding more boost to the supercharger (by switching to a smaller pulley to make the supercharger spin faster) and tuning the PCM to give you more timing (and also to change the transmission and torque management settings as well as the fan settings, speed limiter, etc.)

It's pretty easy to push the supercharged engines to about 300hp at the crank for under $1000. Search around the forum and you'll find some good links. Start with the general mod plan that I mentioned earlier and it will give you some ideas.

-Riggs.

 

 

seriously, trying to get 40 HP out of my stock L36 engine is very very costly. Whereas putting a supercharger on it and getting 40HP isn't costly at all.

40 is a big number. (Hell it's 1/3 the total HP of a lot of cars that think they are fast :P)

 

A s/c 3.8 should spank the n/a 3.9 with it's 280 ft lbs torgue.

The horsepower of both engines is relatively the same but it's torgue that will get you down the drag strip faster.

 

Assuming that you can get the s/c 3.8 off the line without spinning the tires too much, then most likely that is true
I bet that the variable valve timing on the 3.9L is pretty sweet at high speeds though, and a stock 2006 LTZ should spank a stock 2005 SS from 40mph up. That's really where it's supposed to shine, as in keeping the powerband very consistent.

Even though GM didn't stick with the 3.9L, some of the new engines that they are making are producing a ridiculous amount of power nowadays considering the displacements they are using.
It's really impressive to me when I look at what some of the new engines are putting out, power-wise, with new technology.
My '93 Buick Regal was putting out 170hp, and at that time I thought it was pretty fast (of course that was going from a '90 Mercury Sable which was putting out something like 130hp on a 3.8L engine).
Nowadays, GM is producing 3.6L V6's that are pushing out anywhere from 250 to 300hp, and has a 3.0L V6 that puts out over 250hp. Those are normally aspirated engines running on 87 octane too.
Very impressive to be putting out double the amount of power versus 15 years ago, and yet being able to get even better gas mileage.
Seeing that technology applied to a forced induction V8 is just ....WOW (like the new 'vette ZR1's, or the caddy CTS-V)

The 3800's use pretty old-school technology. Considering that they were designed in the 60's and were still produced until 2008, not a bad old-school design though. You pretty much have to try to kill those 3800 engines, which is definitely a selling point. I really love my new Monte (I loved my old one so much I got a newer better one when it's time was up), and hope to keep it around a good long time.

-Riggs.