I have had one tune from ZZP and it was ****. Made the car spit and sputter until it warmed up, and then randomly spit on heavy acceleration. Put my old PCM and tune back on it and guess what... ran like it's supposed to.

OP - ported heads and a full size IC will get you where you want to be. Just my opinion. You could even pick up a spare set of heads for cheap and port them yourself using clubgp.com's DIY head porting tutorial.

 

The tiny pullies are for heavily modded engines. No offense, but you have a pretty mild setup. Looks to be mostly bolt ons other than a fairly mild cam.

Your cam is right about in the middle of the road as far as 3800 cams go- it's certainly not a very aggressive cam (nor should it be- it's designed to maximize stock heads). You have the smallest possible IC to get rid of heat, and you have stock heads.

You just can't expect to be able to run a tiny pulley with a setup like that.



If your only goal was to run a tiny pulley without changing your current setup, that could be made to happen by tuning. You could pull timing across the board, and load it up on fuel. The thing would be a turd, but at least you could run a tiny pulley with huge boost numbers.

The mentality changes many years ago in the 3800 world. People used to strive to get down to 2.8 and 2.55" pullies, but people started to realize that you're way out of the blower's efficient range down there. You're pumping in a ton more heat for less and less extra air. So the trend started to go towards higher compression (at least to the 9.4:1 NA bottom ends) and running higher timing numbers at lower boost levels to make more power. Sure, some heavily modded setups still get into the tiny pullies by necessity- but just chasing a pulley size isn't the end all on these engines.

 

With a good tune and a good big ic he could run a 3.0 pulley and make 300ish whp. My buddy has done this so it's possible. He is stock cam and stock heads on a set of 1.9 rockers. He did it in a Bonneville and ran a 12.50 in the 1/4.

A huge ic and a good tune will get a 3.0 pulley I feel. Every car responds different to mods though, you will just have to see

 

We'll I'v already got 286 to the wheels last dyno run and 322 torque


And it think I'm well past bolt ons actually yea I didn't buy new heads or pistons true but very far away from being a bolt on racer . I personally think touching the heads with these cars aren't worth it

 

Heads on these cars are VERY worth it

 

How worth it??? Just need to be ported or what?

 

heads are a major restriction in air flow when getting into higher hp supercharged 3800's. the more air you get in and get out the more power you make. porting helps a ton and also bigger valves. heads are expensive but if your going for an all out build you need them. also self porting them is not easy, if its not done a certain way you can make them flow worse than factory heads. (need to keep the D shape)

 

and let the bottom end stock, no need to touch it

 

We'll after all is said and done I did have enough room to move to a 3.1 pulley... But wow I do question my tune big time, not that I have any knock but how the guy did it

 

Any further details?