96k3500 454 Whipple Supercharger build thread

[dale_gribble]

I was having so much fun with boost on this truck, I got rid of my v6 mazda 6 and got a 280HP AWD turbocharged Mazdaspeed6.

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[97SubMan]

That truck is seriously sick! Nice work man!

 

[dale_gribble]

UPDATE:

I have about 1,000 miles on the truck since the supercharger. The blower + Westers Tune + Injectors = 100% win. The truck's driveability hasn't been sacrificed at ALL. The truck drives with a lot more power and I haven't sacrificed anything. My mileage is inline to where it was before (when I stay off the gas). My AFR is ~14.7:1 when I am just cruising and it lowers to around 11.5:1-12:1 when I am under full acceleration.

When I am cruising down the highway, you wouldn't even know the blower is on there. When I get on it though, it has a nice whine and the truck moves out. I do realize now that I have to beef up the brakes; it goes a lot better then it stops now. I don't have to anything else now except drive it. My intake air temps are about 50-60F over ambient and that seems to hold. On a 90F degree day, I see 140-150 intake air temps. On cooler days, its anywhere from 130-140. It's not too bad, especially since I am running without an intercooler.

Now that I trust the blower setup, I am towing my trailer for the first time this weekend, so we'll see what happens there.

 

[Blue95]

Really glad to hear you have it all where you want....for now lol

 

[dale_gribble]

Me and the truck had a bit of a hard weekend. This was my first towing weekend and the old truck wasn't super happy. I don't think anything is monumentally wrong, I just think I need to work with the tuner a bit.

When I am cruising while towing, I am seeing sustained IATs at 180F or so and EGTs around 1200F (in 90F outside temps). I think that is reasonable based on what I have read (and without running an intercooler). Also, the WB02 AFR was around ~14.7:1 when cruising with around 20-30 degrees of advance or so.

What I noted was that when I was off cruising speed (20-50%) acceleration, my EGTs would skyrocket up past 1400F on their way to 1500F+. During that time, I would basically lose all power and timing advance would pull down to single digits. IATs were around 180-190 max during this time. AFRs appeared to be around 14.7:1; that is to say that I didn't see the AFR change when I accelerated until I went WOT. I had two choices to correct this: I quickly backed off acceleration when I saw this or I had to downshift; then the truck would then get power back and EGTs would drop back down. When I went WOT or near WOT from a dead stop, I would see the EGTs climb high for a brief period but the truck seemed to have plenty of power until I reached cruising speed.

I did have one time when I was WOT pulling a hill at 65MPH, EGTs climbed very high (up to 1500F), and AFR was ~11.2:1;the truck pulled all timing and I heard very light popping sounds, like in an old hot rod when it hit the gas hard and then let off. I slowed down and downshifted and it was ok.

The truck is much more temperamental now. I basically can only cruise or go WOT in a lower gear. There is basically nothing in between and even under WOT I would see timing pull way back and it didn't have that much power at times. I feel like the truck may be on its way for a heart transplant if I don't get this figured out soon.

I have a suspicion that the knock sensor was picking up some knocks and retarding the hell out of the timing. I am only running 91 octane fuel, that is all I can get in CA. I am wondering if the tuner has me tuned for 93 octane and it was running too much advance. We'll see what the tuner says.

If we can't get a solution, I might have to take truck back to NA. I don't feel like grenading the motor on a family camping weekend.

 

[dkh_524]

your truck is sick!!! nice work

 

[kn1ght]

I know with my diesel, my egts go like that when I'm over fueling, and its having issues burning it.

Sent from my Infected thunderbolt.

 

[dale_gribble]

I know with my diesel, my egts go like that when I'm over fueling, and its having issues burning it.

Sent from my Infected thunderbolt.

That's funny, it seems so counterintuitive; I always think that EGTs would go up with being lean. I would think that overfueling would = cooler, not hotter. I am waiting to hear back from my tuner.

I think we can work through it. Even though the EGTs are high, the coolant temp is low (~200F) and my IATs are ~180F, so it's not like the engine is about to overheat.

 

[dale_gribble]

I am also wondering if I am supposed to run a different heat range of plug. I heard you are supposed to. I am running stock heat range plugs.

 

[dale_gribble]

Ok, got info back from my tuner. FYI, Lyndon @ Wester's Garage is the best if I haven't already said so. He is so responsive. I am running too hot of a plug. It is very likely that I am pre-igniting the mixture because the plug is retaining too much heat; this makes 100% perfect sense with my symptoms. When I installed the blower, I was supposed to run 1-2 heat ranges cooler of plug.

The OEM plug is an AC DELCO Platinum 41-933 that I gapped to .050.

AC Delco is pretty bad about decoding their plugs. Actually, AC Delco = FAIL. They should have a datasheet that spells out exactly how to decode their part numbers so I can go up or down a heat range as needed. Even worse, they have changed their part numbering scheme over the years. From what I gathered online, the 9xx is the series, the first 3 = thread type and the last 3 = temperature range. It isn't clear if a lower number on the temp range is colder or hotter. AC Delco = disqualified.

Fortunately, NGK specifies a stock replacement platinum plug for my truck as PTR4B-15. Good for me, NGK has a decoder for their spark plugs:

http://www.ngksparkplugs.com/techinfo/spark_plugs/partnumberkey.pdf

The 4 denotes the heat range. A higher number = cooler plug and a lower number = hotter plug. Therefore, I am going to run either PTR5B-15 (1 heat range colder) or PTR6B-15 (2 heat ranges colder). I am still waiting to see what heat range my tuner recommends and I will update that here.