Supercharged Park Ave (94)

[WKelly]

Hey Everyone,what's up? New member here,Kelly. Got a few ?'s
re: my '94 Park Ultra with the stock blower motor. Factory horse shows only 225 ponies & I'd like to boost that number a bit north,say 280-290 if possible. Are 'chips the answer or a different blower or what? Last question is: I know the difference between turbos & blowers (how they work) but don't understand why turbos use intercoolers (to cool the intake air) but superchargers don't. Wouldn't a blower benefit from cooling the intake like turbos? Thanks every1 ;-) L8r.

 

[83ttypecooled]

Park Avenue

Hi,
All forced air motors can benefit from cooling the intake charge, but Roots blown ones are a little tougher to do it to. However, as your 3.8 is nestled into a big, high hood, package like the Park, not so tough, but expensive. You should extract all you can from the hot air system, before intercooling. Your engine has a smaller blower than the series II 3.8, but a smaller pulley is still the way to start. Then, probably a cold air package. Do a couple of searches, and am sure you can come up with a lot of stuff. Good luck!

 

[Drewster]

ultra!

nice cars my wife and i have one.
turbos and centrifical superchargers are not connected to the intake dirrectly. they are piped to the manifold so you can easily slip in an intercooler to cool the air charge on the way to the engine.
a twin screw (manufactured by eaton) is what you have. better known as a roots style. unfortunately they are mounted dirrectly to the motor and cooling the air after the compressor screws is difficult. i saw a intercooler which sits on top of the engine block (below SC) from Thrasher. i think it was $2200 ouch!
magna charger makes v8 roots blowers with an intercooler built in and thoes arnt cheap either. $5000 for complete setup.
are turbos starting to look better?
smaller blower pully is the best way to start if you are going to run 91 octane or better all the time.
check engine vacuum for leaking intake gaskets where you could loose boost pressure. no sense in putting in more boost if it will just leak out faster and make the leak bigger.
im not saying you have a leak but it can be a source of lost power.

 

[terryk]

I'm big fan of the S1 engines and have one in my 86 Ciera GT. I had a couple of them.

You can swap to a 92/93 pulley and gain about 10-15 HP. You have to run at least 93 octane or the knock will be high enough you will likely get surging.

I had a custom pulley made that was 1.92" (vs the stock 2.6" or 94/95 and 2.1" for 92/93) and then set the shift points to 5000 RPM. It ran great but I had to pull more timing out than I would have liked (I was down to 8 degrees at WOT). They like to ping in the 3500-4500 range and then it seems to drop off past that.

Beyond running the 92/93 pulley, you can install an Aquamist H2O injection system and bring up to the advance. That will give you more power and should get you into the 260-270 HP range. I took the one off my Regal and installed it long enought o play around and yes can definitely get a nice improvement. Just don't run out of water... I was able to get up to 16 degrees of advance which is dang good considering the boost.

After that you have to open up the engine and port the heads and maybe a cam to get much more.

As for an intercooler, there just isn't much room in there so the cost for one is pretty high.

Finally, the 4T60EHD like the 4T65E hate being beaten on a 2-3 upshift. The shift torque can be raised on 1-2 and a bit on 2-3 and get more power during the shifts.

Winding them past 5500 is pretty much a waste of time. They will, but they tend to flatten out. I set the limiters to 6000. I also removed most of the ABM. That's fun from a start.

Another change which is fairly simple is to swap to a 3.4L DOHC final drive (3.29). That really helps. There are 3.43's also from the U-Van's I believe. Lower gears are a nice improvement.

TK