As most of you may know we (BMC Performance) 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!
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!