Supercharger on my Gen I 350??

Apr 18, 2006 2 Replies

hey everyone, i have a 69 camaro with a 350 in it.. i have done alot of work to it, building it from the block up. it is a four bolt main, bored .040 over with 10.5:1 compresion. it has a set of fuelly double humper heads with a 1.90 intake valve. also it has a radical comp cam. for easy air flow it has a pair of hooker headers on the exhaust side, with a edelbrock 750 cfm square flange carb on top of an edelbrock rpm performer high rise manifold. the carb is jetted stock right out of the box. im am running an hei distributor for better spark. my tranny is a th400 with a small 1500 rpm stall



what i am wondering about.. is i am looking into centrifical superchargers, and im wondering how a supercharger would run with a large lope cam and high compression. would it be best to lower the compression or would 10.5:1 not be bad, with a lower psi boost charger?



charger?

10.5 with today's best gas would allow you to run about 1 psi of boost before it burned a piston. Not worth it. Basically your engine is set up all wrong for a blower. You want a lower duration cam with less overlap and much lower compression to run a blower without problems.

You also might want to look at a little higher stall converter (2k or even 2500) to allow that engine to build a bit more torque. Might also want to put it on a dyno and see what spark curve you have, stock HEI units work great up to 6 grand but the spark curves are all based on the original engine installation and are not a universal setup.

You are better off to stay where you are with the exception of installing a higher stall converter to match your cam specs. Your compression is way too high to use with a blower. There are cam grinds to accommodate the use of a blower but, you will still need to reduce the compression. IMHO, the only thing you need is the higher stall to allow the engine to get into it's power band quicker. The stall speed is usually dependant on the cam specs for a particular engine which determine where the power band is placed. The cam grinder can usually recommend a converter very close to ideal if he knows your engine specs, vehicle weight, tire size and rear gear ratio. If you have a trans with a lockup converter, you may want to consider helping it out with some trans mods. It sounds like you may have a decent setup already. You should also install a good trans cooler if you increase the stall speed. IIWM, and based on y past experiance with blown small blocks, I would forget the blower for your engine. If you are into straightline competition, may I suggest a 125HP NOx kit which your engine should be able to handle with the proper carb and ignition calibrations - lots cheaper than a blower.

Lugnut

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