As most of you may know we installed one of the first production Vortech Supercharger Systems on my 2006 SRT8 Charger back in July 2008. A lot of time has passed and miles have been logged in these past 8 months. Obviously, we get alot of questions regarding forced induction here at BMCP, so I wanted to post this thread with first hand experiences I have had using this system daily on my car. There have been many who have said you can't S/C a daily driven hemi, or that you can't safely run boost on a stock block. While there are definitely issues that can arise if you push the limits, my experience has been that a S/C makes a great reliable and most importantly fast daily driver. When we installed the kit my car had 38,000 daily driven miles on it. The car had bean beaten on a bit with several road course weekends on it and more 1/4 mile passes than I can count before the blower. It has been just over 8 months now and I have almost 50,000 miles on my car So I have about 11,000 on the car with the S/C on, I drive my SRT everyday nad probably have 20+ 1/4 mile runs on the car with the Vortech installed, so it definitely isn't babied One of the things I wanted to do was run this kit how it was designed and how most of our customers or potential customers would use it. What I mean is I didn't plan to custom tune or add many other supporting mods right away. I wanted to know how drivable the canned Vortech tune is, how fast was it at the track, and how did it hold up over longer term use. So to date the only mods my car has to the drivetrain is the Vortech S/C system with the canned Vortech Tune and a Bassani Cat Back exhaust. No headers, no High Flow Cats, no Tq. Converter, no ported TB, no heads/cam etc etc. What Hemi owners want to know is for $5000-6000, is a S/C reliable, is it drivable and how fast is it....in other words is it worth the $$. In my experience and personal opinon I would never do things differently. The car runs and drives great, is a low 12 second car on street radials, my personal best on Bald Street tires (LOL) was 12.4 at 117. For reference my best stock run on Streets was about 13.4. I know the car would be high 11's with traction as I couldn't get lower than 2.1 on my tires in the 60 foot. One surprising advantage that I wasn't counting on was my mileage increase...my avg MPG went up 1-2 MPG which I thought was pretty cool considering I now have over 100 RWHP more than I used to! So I say all that to say this...everyone has their opinions, and there are many different ways to get to ones goals. Boost is great and I would never go back to anN/A car again, the future holds a forged motor and more boost and some axles to handle it, but for now my 500 or so RWHP is fine with me Not too many people have been running S/C on daily drivers for very long so I just wanted to pass along what I have learned and experienced. There are lots of opinion and rumors that swirl around and I just wanted to put some first hand knowledge and facts out there for anyone that is considering modding their car, and let you know boost is indeed a safe option if it is done correctly, and you don't get too aggressive with a stock block!
Excellent your mods are identical to Pauls and with AWD he is running 11.6's with good traction and so far no problems with his Vortech
nice write up kris..... i too, plan on driving my car everyday after the blower goes in. one of the things i often questioned was how reliable will the car be after the blower goes in. with proper tuning and moderate boost levels, i have no doubt the car will perfrom fine. i guess i will find out this weekend when it all finally comes together!!
Quote from Team SRT in regards to larger injectors and increased MPG: "The AVG fuel is incorrect after you change the injectors out. Team srt has said this, the ecu measures the ammount of work the injectors are putting out...bigger injectors w/ less work on the highway = the ecu thinking you are getting better MPG`s."
Are you talking about the EVIC display? I wasn't meaning EVIC only...Maybe I was confusing, my actual miles per tank has actually gone up.
Nice - I logged on tonight to try to get a feel for adding a supercharger to my 06 SRT8. This did the trick nicely - Thanks!
Have there been any maintenance challenges running the blower day to day? Any wear and tear on engine components? Has there been any major blower specific maintenance you've had to upkeep since you've put over 10k miles on it? How often do you really get into it and push the boost? conservative driver or, like myself, drive it like you just farking stole it? I ask because I'm contemplating installing one onto my 06 300 daily driver in Q2/Q3 of 2010. I appreciate the knowledge you're sharing with your experience!
Thanks! Let us know if we can help, we carry every style of S/C available for our cars, we will be ahppy to answer any questions you have! The only maintenance is the head unit, and it takes 5 minutes to do, every 7500 miles you have to change the oil. Very simple to do, there is a drain line and dipstick. Just drain teh oil, and refill with the supplied Vortech oil. Otherwise just maintain your car as usual.
Just an update...now at over over 51k miles on the clock and going into 10 months with the blower and almost 14,000 on the car with the blower and still going strong. We will be making the treck from fla to Tennessee next week for the Meet in the Mountains, so we will get some long distance road trip miles on the beast and report back!
Have you done any data logging or CR leak down tests? Glad it is still running strong, Kris. Lower psi and a great tune makes for a longer lasting whip. Among other things. lol
Glad I read this tonight. My 300C went under the knife today. ProCharger though with custom tune. Going to keep everything safe; 5-6 lbs. boost, 11 afr, cooler plugs, phenolic spacers, NO turning off da' knock sensors, etc. This is definitely my daily driver and I don't need any headaches. Visited my baby tonight and the head unit, intercooler and injectors are all installed. The bay next to mine has a Challenger with a forged 426 and ProCharger, and behind me on the dyno was a Challenger withe a ProCharger and cam getting dialed in. Busy day at the shop to say the least. Mine should be done on Wednesday and I'm chomping at the bit.
CVP, good idea on the custom tune for the Procharger, their canned tunes are not great. Who is doing your tuning? Congrats on the mods!
