Dominick32
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Originally Posted by Dirty Sanchez
How much stress are we putting on the eatons with this upper/lower combo?
Dirty Sanchez, I am glad you brought this up. Especially with all the recent upper/lower pulley combos and high boost applications like myself. This is a great question considering that out of all the post responses to my upper/lower combo results, not one person brought up the detrimental effects posed to this combination. I feel this discussion is a definite necessity and hope a few others chime in with responses.
I would say first of all, I agree with Jimmy Vaccaro: Boost is not your friend, especially with the factory "Heaton" supercharger. It is the enemy. The ideal situation for a supercharged Cobra would be to make the most power on the least amount of boost:
A perfect example would be Jims car making 507 rwhp. He is running a 2.93 upper pulley only with 12.5 lbs. of boost on his car, which is an extremely low number compared to most cobra owners who usually select a 2.80 or smaller pulley. The one difference in Jimmys combo is that he also installed headers and a throttle body.
I chose the dangerous way of making power. Jimmy makes 6 more horsepower than me and I am running 18 lbs. of boost. That is a full 5.5 more lbs. of boost than him. Yes, I am making close to 40 more ft. lbs. of torque, but its only because of the 4# lower that I just recently installed. I hope you can see my point here: Jimmy has an extremely safe combo compared to mine and is still making more horsepower than me on any given day of the week.
Heat, most likely from high boost applications like my own is the number one cause of failure and grenading a cobra engine. The eaton supercharger has a nickname "Heaton" for this reason exactly.
On that note, if you like to do back to back 155 mph highway runs. 18lbs. of boost creates extrememly high intake temperatures from the eaton. When I was tuning my car on the dyno after 5 to 6 runs Joey Lazaurdo (The Mustang Magic EFI Tuner) said he never saw intake temperatures even close to what mine were reading. And this was on a cold day. High Boost engines have a tendency to go "BOOM" when you are consecutively slapping through 5 gears at full boost on the highway. :nono:
Thats something I dont see myself doing anytime in the future.
This does not necessarily mean taking the car to a drag strip and running down the track is going to blow your engine. However, running two or three times down the track within 10 minutes apart and no cooldown period could definitely do something to those pistons. (IMO, the weak point of our engines)
I drive my car like an 85 year old man. I am never under boost and occasionally blast the car in 2nd gear and run it up to the top of 3rd, or occasional 4th gear blasts. Other than that, I never really drive this car hard. If you fall into my category of a cobra owner: You baby the car on the Street w/ occasional boost and 3 to 4 track visits during the year I feel the upper lower combo could be a great asset to you.
On the other hand, if you fall into a "Venomous John Category" where the car is being constantly driven hard than I would not suggest running more than 14 to 15 lbs. of boost.
Disclaimer
"Venomous John" driving is not recommended to any inexperienced members and could be seriously detrimental to the health of your engine. Use caution when driving like John, he is a professional. :lol:
All kidding aside there is one other side affect of 17 to 18 + lbs. of boost on the eaton. You are spinning the ever living shit out of this blower. I see this combo cutting the life of your blower by 30 to 40%, not to mention there is always a risk of destroying your blower over short term use. Not every eaton is the same, and some might not like the fact that they are being spun at incredible rates of speed WAY more than they were ever designed for.
With that being said, before I ported my blower and installed my upper/lower high boost combo I had the intentions of a backup plan. That being, if my blower ever took a shit I would buy an aftermarket Kenne Bell, Whipple, or Turbo Kit. I am getting extremely greedy when it comes to making my car faster and I have a few options that I am considering right now to make it a hellava lot faster than it already is. Call me crazy, but I am in the research stages of another project for my 2003 cobra. In a few short months you will have even more incredible results and information based on my car.
Good day to you all,
Dom
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