Preparation for the STILLEN supercharger

Kyle@STILLEN

Hydrolocking can be a huge problem if the filters are too low. Take for example the Nissan 300ZX engines. We used to have those things come in reliably every winter because all of the cold air intakes mounted the filters directly in front of the radiator just a few inches above the bottom of the car. It never failed, every winter for about ten years we would have about 4 or 5 cars in our shop getting rebuilt motors due to hydrolocking.

I've also seen a few G's and Z's with hydrolocked motors due to the intakes being mounted really low. It should absolutely be a concern. If it wasn't a concern then companies like AEM wouldn't worry about including their by-pass valves in their intakes.

With that being said though, you have to submerge the filters in order for the water to be sucked up through the intake. You have to look at the engine like a big air pump, that engine starts sucking in air pretty hard when running and even harder when boosted. It can absolutely suck up water and damage the engine.

LiquidZ

Stillen, what HP level did your engineers design the intercooler for? GTM's is up to 700 hp.

I'm just trying to get an idea for future expansion, if needed.

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Kyle@STILLEN

It's kind of hard to answer that question.

An air to air intercooler can pretty easily be rated to a certain amount of horsepower because you can measure the volume of air traveling through it efficiently.

However, with an air to water intercooler setup there are a few other things to consider. In the packaged standard form that the kit comes to you with no modifications, you can expect to support around 600 horsepower or so. However, if you decided to modify the system with a few minor little changes, you can support even more. An old trick used by many drag racers is to pack the coolant reservoir with ice. Obviously this chills off the water even further thus improving the efficiency even more.

Another option is to upgrade to a larger heat exchanger so that you can cool off the coolant longer thus lowering the temperatures further.

Because there are so many different things that can be done with an air to water intercooler we can't really put a blanket number on how much horsepower the intercooler can support efficiently.

What I can say is that we are using a heat exchanger which is larger than the heat exchanger that Magnusson supercharger's uses on their kit for the Corvette's.

How much horsepower do you want and what do you plan on doing with the car? Is this going to be street only? Road Course car? Drag racer? Dyno queen?

NewYorkJon34

My car will be used on the street only, do you have a S/C kit if I want about 450whp? Nothing too crazy, just a complete turn-key kit.

Kyle@STILLEN

As much as I want to answer this question I'm having to keep my mouth shut. Until we're ready to release more information and have dyno's to support our claims I can't definitively answer any questions regarding levels of horsepower.

m4a1mustang

Kyle, I want at least 400 whp. Are you going to give me at least 400 whp?

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NewYorkJon34

That's fair, but when you can start giving info, I'll need you to suggest which route I should take to achieve a safe power level on the stock block.

LiquidZ

Kyle, thanks for the reply. The exact power goals are not yet known, but I would definitely consider pushing 550-575 on a built block.

I am aware of the ice trick as many Mustang drag cars used it. I dont plan on using that method as I am a road course kind of guy. I would like something a little more permanent. If you guys have a bigger radiator available, or know a place where I can get one, that would definitely be something I'm interested in. I'm sure a higher rate coolant pump would be needed, but its all still hard to tell until you guys release more information about the kit's components.

When it comes to boost, I would prefer to overbuild.

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Kyle@STILLEN

I can't say too much but I am confident we will be able to supply you with a kit that will meet or exceed all of your goals. Shoot me an email and we can begin planning your build.

kmillen@stillen.com

LiquidZ

Email sent!

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Kyle@STILLEN

Well, I will be out of town until the 21st so I wanted to give an update on our development before I leave.

1) Things are going great! We are right on track and we have made some big leaps ahead over the past week!

2) We spent last week dyno testing the car without the intercooler and the numbers are awesome!!! We have a few things holding us back from reaching some pretty magic numbers but we're still getting close! The car we're testing with is an automatic G37 coupe with heavy 20" show wheels...So there is a lot of additional parasitic loss through the heavy wheels and the auto trans. We can't wait to get it on to our manual gearbox 370Z. Also, the intercooler manufacturer has had some hiccups and they weren't able to get us the core until today. We CNC machined the end tanks and they are out at our fab. shop getting welded up today. Yes, that means we were getting great numbers without the intercooler, and with an auto trans and heavy wheels!!! Just wait until we can start getting more aggressive with the tuning when the intercooler is in there and we can put the kit on the Z with less parasitic loss!!! This thing is going to be awesome!!!

3) One of the concerns we had was deflection of the mounting bracket causing belts to slip. I am very proud to report that our engineer's were focused on this and thanks to their creative mounting solutions there is absolutely no movement on the mounting bracketry. The blower is sitting perfect and there is no deflection at all. On some of our previous kits we used cast aluminum mounting brackets with the Vortech kits but on this one we have gone with a water jet billet aluminum mount so that there is a lot more material in there so a lot less movement.

This week we will be finalizing the tuning and instructions. Next week we will begin our endurance testing. We will be prepared with pricing and horsepower information very soon.

We are still right on track for release around the end of February, beginning of March!!!

Kyle@STILLEN

By the way...

We are using the Vortech V-3 supercharger. One of the great things about Vortech is the ability to easily change the internals and really crank up the power. The blower that we're using is the same blower that one of our good customer's is using on his 7 liter Dodge Charger pushing over 700 RWHP.

Our standard kit obviously wont be pushing that much power but for those of you interested in building the motor and pushing the limits, we will be able to to support your needs!

StillenZ

Kyle, if you wanna PM me I promise that I won't tell a soul... It'll just be our secret! This is the first time I have felt the need to contradict anything that M4A1 has said but I'm gonna be needing 450-500 Unicorns! lol lol lol (sorry prolly not that funny to some, but a few will understand)

I will also send you one of the best frozen pizza's that you have ever had in your life not playin, you name the toppings lol... A little bribery never hurt anyone right?

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RCZ

I think a couple of very interesting questions were just answered for us who read between the lines

m4a1mustang

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