just bought a whipple charged camro , need help

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hello everyone I just joined here , 2 days ago I bought a 2011 Camaro with a whipple charger

I do have another car but the Camaro will be my main car so I will be putting about 15 thousand miles a year on the car and I wont to be able to constantly be able to romp on it without blowing the engine

my car has the 3.875 pulley (10 lbs) but I was thinking of lowering to the 4.250 (7.5 lbs) just to make the engine last

so my question is should I lower it or keep the pulley in there now ?
will the engine truly hold up if I run the car hard as a daily driver putting 15 thousand miles a year on thee car ?

I want to keep the car for 4 years (it only has 3 thousand miles on it right now)

thanks for any help

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the car is a 6 speed with the whipple , and headers and exhaust

thanks in advance

[1KillerSS]

At that power level, you will get plenty of longevity out of the engine. LS3's are good past 800 whp all day.

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Originally Posted by 1KillerSS

At that power level, you will get plenty of longevity out of the engine. LS3's are good past 800 whp all day.

I haven't had a sports car in a little over 10 years so I am out of the loop , to me the 579 rwhp sounds scary but I know by todays standards that is NOTHING , but Im a bit of a chicken , I want to be able to romp on it several times a day and drive it a lot of miles per year so I am thinking the engine will pop

Im the kinda guy where every traffic light is a chance to do a 1/4 mile run lol

[sscamaro]

Originally Posted by 1KillerSS

At that power level, you will get plenty of longevity out of the engine. LS3's are good past 800 whp all day.

You should be OK putting that many miles on it. I have put 36K miles on my SS since I put the E-Force S/C on it. As long as you don't full out race it all the time, it will hold for a long time. Nice rwhp numbers.

[Mr. Nasty]

Run it you will be okay.

[Batmanntexas]

I drive mine every day, running the 3.75" for about 11-12 psi, and I romp on it daily. I'm getting ready to turn 40K on the odometer, about 30K of that with the Whipple. As long as your tune is good (i.e. safe), and the fuel system is good (ZL1 pump & ADM FPCM, BAP, etc.)

Nice numbers, by the way! Should be a blast on the street, I know mine is...

Welcome to the club!!

-Scott

[slow-poke]

I really don't know much about it, when you buy the Whipple kit does it give you stuff to upgrade the fuel system?

[cc-rider]

Awesome car! Congrats on the purchase.

At 10 lbs, you are pushing the upper end of boost for what a stock LS3 likes in terms of safety/longevity while running on pump gas. That doesn't mean it won't be safe to "romp on it daily" as you say. But at those boost levels, your tune had better be spot on to keep it safe. There isn't much room for error there at 10 lbs. The main culprit being the Ls3 has a high compression ratio in stock form (and nothing forged internally). And octane. Do you have 91 or 93 octane in your area? A bad load of 91 pump gas and 10 psi of boost could be bad news.

If you keep it at 10 psi, I would suggest you confirm your tune somehow. Try to find out who did the tune and talk to them. Or see what kind of a deal you can get at a dyno shop to have them look at the tune and give it a couple of pulls on they dyno to confirm it. Do you have a wideband in the exhaust to monitor afr?

Or, you could drop the boost down as you have thought about. You'll probably lose about 15 HP per 1 psi of boost. Drop down to 8 psi (which is where base supercharger kits run from all the vendors) and you should be safer with a little more room for error. I would expect you to see 540-550 hp at 8 psi. Which is still very stout.

Good luck!

[Batmanntexas]

Yep, CC-Rider hit on some good points. I neglected to mention that I run a 100% methanol injection kit from Alky Control to provide that "safety net" in the event I get a bad batch of 93 octane gas. If I did not have the methanol, I would definitely be running the 4" pulley.

[1KillerSS]

He should have his tune confirmed anyway, but dont scare him about running ten pounds of boost, there are more than a few people above ten pounds and have no issues, zero issues.

Dont worry about your boost numbers, LS3's wont start pushing heads till its past 20 pounds of boost, think of terms of whp. past 800 your on borrowed time.

The common misconception around most places regarding the Ls3 is about boost numbers. its whp that you need to worry about. Not how much boost your running. Think in terms of cylinder pressure....

[slow-poke]

good points , I am thinking about getting the pulley that brings it to 7.5 or 8 lbs of boost and having it re-tuned

I have absolutely no traction now anyway at 579 rwhp so 540 to 550 should be good enough for my daily driver

I live in NY and I will only be running 93 pump gas but who knows if you can trust random gas stations


Im thinking this.... lowering boost , get a good dyno tune , and changing the 22 inch rims for 20's so I can run nitto drag radials out back all the time , I think the traction I will gain will make up for the 30-50 hp I will lose , I know I will never be the fastest but I think that set up will be better than what I have now , right now my first gear is useless

just about an hour ago I rinsed the car off so I was literally dripping wet and I went for a ride to dry it off and cts-v wanted to play , I hate to make excuses but my car was still wet , we went from a 40 mile and hour roll I was in 2nd , I let him hit it before I went and and he got about almost a car length on me I was able to pull him and start to pass spinning the whole time , and we had to let off because coming up on traffic

please don't less this start a pissing match with any cts-v guys , this wasn't a real race just playing from a roll , but I was happy to see that even spinning I was doing ok , I know if I run drag radials on here this car should be decent

but where I live my car will not be anything special , so many really sick potent cars in my area

I am not trying to be badass , I just want to have a decent set up to have some random fun like I did with the ctsv

I will say one thing I don't like the 22 inch rims , they seem to not bite at all , but I also never had a car with this much hp so maybe it will still suck with 20's and nitto drag radials , I dunno ,back in the day the nittos solved the traction problems on my 2002 Camaro but that was a lot less hp

now I just have to figure out the best place to get a tune in NY

[1KillerSS]

With DR's you won't need to drop your hp. I have hardly any traction issues running MT DR's. You won't get much more than 5k miles on them, but at your power level you won't be worried about traction .


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[sprayedv]

No need to lower boost as I doubt you will be driving at WOT all the time.