96-98 owners with Kenne Bell S/C?

[SKMCOBRA]

I'm very likely buying my old 97 back in Feb. It has about $10-11k of aftermarket parts including longtubes, gears, CAI, suspension, etc. I sold it because it wasn't making enough power for me n/a'd and I didn't want to invest anymore cash into it. Now I can buy it back four years later for nearly 1/3 of what I sold it for so I feel better about sinking some more cash into it.

If you now have or have had in the past a KB s/c on your car please share your thoughts. Ultimately I had developed my car to be for road racing and therefore a non intercooled car wasn't an option. I don't forsee me using it for that again as I don't have the time right now. So I'm considering the 2.1 KB for some more horses but the hot Oklahoma summers concerns me a bit.

Has anyone replaced the B heads with C heads and put the 99/01 KB on there? If so was anything else required to pull this off parts wise?

 

[96S/Cobra]

Now this is my .02, so take it with a grain of salt.

I had a 1.5 KB on my car for years (~14 years and 80k+ miles if my memory serves me correctly). For all those years/miles, the KB never gave me any problems, so I would say the reliability was excellent. The instant off idle tire frying torque was fun, but it constantly left something to be desired for me. It always felt like it sort of hit a brick wall in the upper RPM range. Which is contradictory to where the 4v engines really shine...which of course is in the upper RPM range.

The hotter it got (both weather and heat soak from back-to-back pulls), you could definitely tell the car would not perform nearly as well as when it was cooler. I think upgrading to C heads, thus being able to upgrade to an intercooled KB/Whipple would be the way to go if you wanted a top performing 4v. This would help keep heat soak at bay, and I'm sure it would consistently perform better than what I had been used to.

Now with that being said, several years ago I sold the KB and switched to a Vortech centri blower. In my opinion, this was a much easier/cheaper route compared to doing a C head swap/blower upgrade. My car now makes decent power, pulls all the way up to redline, and doesn't seem to have any issues what so ever with heat soak. I run 4.10 gears, which helped out with the missing feeling of the off idle torque produced by the KB. It really is a whole new animal with this blower, and I couldn't be happier.

Good luck with your decision, but make sure you keep us posted on which route you decide to take.

 

[ImThatGuy]

^^ is solid advice, even a c head swap with an eaton will yield better results than the 96-98 Cobra KB, including a platform to build on later.