I know at the beginning many people blew their engines with the Procharger out of the box set-up,

BUT, recently I have not heard about any failures.

What I am really looking for is:

Has anyone blown their engines up with the out of the box Procharger or Vortech systems recently, like the last year?

I really want to go Procharger as it is the easiest system to install, no hacking the wiring harness, no tapping the oil pan, no belt slippage problems, etc....

I know many people will address the timing issue with the Procharger, but that is why I want to see the facts on out of the box systems, especially without additinal electronics.

Thanks,

Howard

 

Knowing all of its past problems you still wanna go with the Procharger. At the last GSquad meet we talked about the same thing. One of the guys who had a supercharged Z said he also heard ALOT of problems surrounding the Procharger and most people heard the same things also. If I had the money to do it, I would stay away from the Procharger, IMO.

 

between the 2 go with the vortech,i think they also have a wiring harness avalible so you dont have to hack into the oe one.

 

Yes the Autosport wiring harness is available.

But, I spoke to a major supplier and they said the JWT and AAM oil pan spacer kits put the oil feed line in a bad spot and that could cause problems
with the Vortech kit????

That is my major concern with Vortech plus the fuel line fitting problems.
I had a Porsche go up in flames due to a leaky fuel rail.
Scary stuff!

Howard

 

I'd get the APS oil pan just anyway - better cooling, more oil, has oil baffles to help prevent oil starvation while cornering, and comes with an oil tap already

 

Dude dont believe the rumors. Anyone with enough knowledge about cars knows that its not a certain FI unit that blows engines. ALL FI will blow your motor! It's all about TUNING! Its been said time and time again, and everyone knows that the VQ rods suck. I know a people with a ATI on there G/Z with over 25k miles and most of it is tracking miles and not a problem but belts breaking.

Any system not done correctly will cause you problems. Do your reseach and go off what you think is right not other people telling you one system is better then the other. I do recomend you change up the fuel system with comes with the ATI along with adding an engine management system like greddy or Fcon.

Good luck on what ever you buy and check out the FI forum on my350z youll see what FI is really about on our cars.

 

The APS oil pan is a nice piece, good idea.

I wasn't aware of belts breaking with the ATI?

I do agree that all FI can and will blow your engine, sometimes even with a perfect tune.

Howard

 

yeah the ATI breaks belts and if you go for big power, the actual frame that everything bolts on will bend - it's not as strong as the vortech's - and so far breaking belts isn't so much an issue on the vortech except ZentraediG35 who's running big power reving past 7000 rpms and has a tooth belt setup just like the ATI - he's pioneering and not running a normal vortech setup by any means so you can't really count him.

Yeah any FI can blow engines - that's a given

but we've all seen perfectly tuned turbos on a normal conservative tune even running 100 octane gas blow engines yet I haven't seen very many vortechs blow anything at all where the car was perfectly tuned. It's just not as harsh on the rods as a turbo. And like I said, the times people did have something go wrong with the engine - they were already running lean usually and instead of destroying their block, they just chipped a piston ring off

 

sentry65 -

As usual logical and great info.

I was all set to go Procharger or Turbonetics until I read some of your posts.

Your info always is great, and I agree with your opinions on why a Vortech/Procharger is often faster than a Turbo due to less traction issues and being able to put the power down to the ground.

Howard

 

thanks yell03

hehe well it'd probably still be game over though if someone with a turbo has some drag radials and knows how to launch with equal whp against a SC. They'll be able to hook up that early torque that turbos make and leave you in the dust by a good few car lengths in the 1/4 mile unless your setup has some other tricks up it's sleeve anyway with gearing and lightweight parts etc

I dunno, I'm just really happy with choosing vortech as I'm sure many people are happy they chose APS or TN or whatever other kit.

I've been seeing a lot of threads lately with turbo people pulling out their engine because of oil leaks or head lift or blown up engines. I know tightening the belt here and there on a SC car is kinda a pain to roll the car onto some ramps and take the plastic under cover off and tighten the belt a rotation or so, but eh I'd rather skip the maintenance part about pulling the entire engine and having to fix that. But in the interim, turbo guys will brag how they don't have to tighten belts and get a lot more torque and who knows, some will even last quite awhile before something big breaks

turbos run great until something goes wrong, and when something goes wrong, it goes WRONG. The stakes are higher and the power is higher. A lot of us have seen the video of the GTI that caught on fire because the red hot turbo wasn't properly shielded and caught the engine bay on fire then burned the entire car to the ground. SC's would never get red hot because they spin 1/2 or 1/3 as fast as turbos do and only use what they make. Where turbos use maybe 1/2 or 1/3 of the total power they make, and the rest turns into heat while the excess power blows out the wastegate

I still think the procharger and TN kit are still great kits with their own pros and cons. Just glad I went with the vortech as I see all the people having major issues with their engine with other kits. The issues vortech people have seems to be some rattling here and there or a defective blower here and there that makes more noise than normal

 

How often do you tighten the belt and how long does it take???

Howard

 

I guess the long and short of it is, don't be suprised if you gotta tighten it every couple months - or every oil change. But a couple times when the belt is new and stretching the most should be expected too

i think the frequency of tightening increases with the more power you run and the more aggressive SC pulley you run.

My setup is still fairly new and I'm still getting used to things.

I've read people saying if you run a Gates belt - or whatever else it's called at NAPA auto parts store, the first 500 miles it's going to stretch a lot and will have to be tightened at least once during that time. Some people have said with that belt, they've only tightened it once around 500 miles, and that it lasted 20k miles after that

My belt has been tightened about 3 times so far and put maybe 1500 miles on the car and it needs to be tightened again just a hair. Of course though, I'm just about maxing out the amount of power you can make on the stock vortech blower (I'm currently detuned a little until I get 650cc injectors and water injection)

 

The 03 Cobra guys swear by the Gates belts, I always ran a Gatorback, but the gates are great also.

Thanks for the info again,

Howard

 

Detonation blows motors. Running aggressive timing or too lean causes detonation. Until decent management solutions (read, not piggy-back hacks) are available, I'll be staying away from FI on this motor. A company needs to fully reverse-engineer the ECU so that a simple reflash with an enlarged MAF housing and injectors can handle FI correctly.

 

well or you can just run water injection and some race fuel mixed in along with a bunch of timing pulled

actually if you flash the ECU to have timing pulled on the base ECU maps, larger injectors and then run a piggyback on top of that to fine tune it, that's probably the next best route to having a standalone.

I'm doing all those things and have full confidence in the setup. I'll even be running a A/F gauge per bank and have the piggyback adjust each bank as needed