Let me introduce myself

[airboater]

I am a 61 year old man that lives in central Fl. I lost my mind about 3 years ago and got heavily involved in building airboats for my personal use. My first boat is a Cadilac 500 blue printed and balanced with roller rockers etc etc etc. The motor runs a torque multiplier that we call a gear reduction. I started another project about a year ago building my wife a boat. Not being overly intelegent I seem to get interested in engines that not just the normal airboat guys use. So I went out and bought a 3.8l buick engine 1981. I did a valve job, installed a crowder cam in it, put a 1 1/2 spacer and a 500 Holley carb, and headers. Low end torque is by far the most important thing about and airboat engine. What would it take to turbo charge this engine as it still only produces around 125 hp. (guess). All help would be appreciated. Scott

 

[charlief1]

Welcome aboard Scott. I moved you to a more appropreate section since you're carburated. In NA form the 3.8L can make about 1 HP per cubic inch if done right. If you're using a 2 barrel intake that's one of your problems. Using a 2 to 4 barrel adaptor doesn't work very well. I know from experience. Do you know what the numbers from the cam are and did you do any other modifications to it? There are several options as far as producing power out of one of these engines. The carb/turbo set up will be the cheapest but hardest to tune because it's not exactly plug and play. The SFI set up will require knowledge of computors and wiring to make them work as well as some imagination and fabrication skills.

 

[WarWagon]

ANY drawthru setup will be your Cheapest way to get your engine turbocharged, very simple and small amount of parts "no intercooler", next up probably blowthru turbo systems cheaper than EFI "to a point" but more expensive than drawthru, more parts than a drawthru system, challenging to tune. EFI most expensive, most amount of parts,