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Mark Barrett and his '05 Cadillac CTS-V with an ATI ProCharger D-1SC
This update from:
11/10/2006
We are in the design phases of getting this ATI ProCharger D-1SC GTO kit integrated into Mark's Caddy.
The supercharger has been ordered and will be here by the end of the month, as will Mark's GTO. Mark is from Kansas City, Mo and will be dropping his car off for us to install the ATI ProCharger along with an air to air intercooler.
As can be seen in these two pictures, the GTO's engine compartment is very similiar to the CTS-V's compartment.
We have been into tight places in the past, such as the GTO ProCharger that we installed earlier this year into Steve Verplank's Mazda RX7 that had an LS1 engine in it. We had to heavily modify the air intake tube that runs into the back of the supercharger to clear the shock tower.
The installation begins:
Once the air box is removed, the space on the driver side of the V really opens up.
With the polished ProCharger in place though, the room behind the blower for the air inlet is really tight! Hmm, seems like we've been here before...
We had to notch out the ProCharger bracket assembly for the electronic throttle control, which isn't part of the '04 GTO engine assembly.
We did many trial fits with the part to make sure we didn't take out anymore then was necessary.
This picture shows the notched section as prior to us relocating one of the three assembly bolts.
One more hole to add and this bracket is completed.
The F Body inlet hat (shown) stands a much better chance of working than the GTO inlet hat, as we don't have the clearance the this CTS-V that we did on the GTO and the Mazda RX7.
Next we need to space out the power steering pump to get it aligned with the new ATI equipped bracketry.
The air filter is going to be mounted down and out of the way of the engine's heat. We set the Mazda RX7's LS1 with it's GTO ProCharger up the very same way and it worked out great. Keeping the air filter shielded from the engine helps dramatically to keep the inlet air temperatures down.
We added a third hole back into the ATI supplied bracket which can be seen in this picture. The original third bracket hole was partially ground out and can still be seen at the top of the bracket.
We had to make a spacer bracket for the power steering to be correctly aligned.
The power steering bracket is shown here installed and the pulley aligns up perfectly!
The F Body sourced air inlet hat is a tight squeeze, but will work out just fine.
Mark's front end met up with a raccoon on his trip here from Kansas City, and the raccoon managed to take out the air conditioning condensor as well, as can be seen in this picture.
We were a little concerned about how we were going to integrate the lower ATI supplied GTO pulley into this combination, as it did not match up to the factory harmonic balancer. We ordered an ATI Performance Products harmonic balancer, and it did the job for us! The GTO pulley matched up to the outside of it with no problems, whew...
Nothing but nice cold air for this air filter!
Here are several pictures of the inlet air tubing routing into the supercharger.
There are three intercoolers sitting on this table, and none of them will work!... Luckily we had another one in stock that will indeed fit.
Chip and Brent are shown here coming up with a plan of attack for the front intercooler plumbing.
We found an intercooler that we had in stock that fit perfectly! Sometimes it's a good thing that we're sitting on so much inventory!!!
There is not a lot of extra room once the intercooler was mounted...
This picture shows you the room we have to work with.
We relocated the fans to the front of the A.C. condensor, as there was not enough clearance left behind the radiator once the supercharger was in place.
What a site! We can't wait to see what kind of power this V makes, and I'm sure Mark can't either!
We are just about ready to reinstall the front end.
Here is a view from the passenger side of the V.
Another top view of the engine compartment.
The view here shows you the limited amount of space at the top of the passenger side.
We plumbed a Kenne Bell Boost A Pump into the fuel system on this V, which coupled with the SVO 42lb fuel injectors that we added, should supply the engine with plenty of fuel pressure. We will be keeping an eye on the fuel pressure when we get into the wide open throttle tuning.
We're going to either go all blue or all black on this top hose configuration. All black looks to be the better choice... We were actually sent a blue 4" 90 degree elbow by mistake as it was suppose to be black.
As can be seen in these three pictures, we're getting ready to rumble.
The new silicon 90 degree hose fittings arrived, and we installed them while Mark was here waiting patiently to pick up his car. The engine compartment looks much better with black hoses!
Mark is going to reinstall the hood insulation after he drives the car back home. It may need to be trimmed where the last 90 degree hose routes into the thorttle body.
Ths picture shows exactly why you do not want to take a picture in bright sunlight, but we didn't have a choice! You can still see that the car looks really good with the intercooler showing inside the front grille.
Mark called and said he drove the V the 600 miles back home at 85 to 90 mph, and the engine temp stayed exactly at where it was prior to the supercharger installation. Mark mentioned that the power level above 3000 rpm is incredible!
We will be seeing this car coming back late Winter to add a forged bottom end so that we can up the boost to 12 to 14 psi. The ATI ProCharger D-1SC can easily boost this engine into the 650 to 700 rwhp level, which is why the ProCharger (is there any other?) was an excellent choice for this combination.
Update: We flew out to Kansas City and drove Mark's V back to Indiana to check it out, and to add a smaller pulley to it. We installed a 3.85" pulley and we are now seeing 10 psi of boost, and after much tuning, we are getting zero knock! Check out the dyno below: 495 rwhp on our Mustang Chassis Dyno!
We got a video of this CTS-V in action, and we will be posting it just as soon as we get it edited.
Epp Procharged Cts-V Flyby
We installed an BMR Anti Wheel hop kit (pn# AWK001 $329.95) while we had Mark's V back at our shop.
Below is from BMR's website:
Anybody that's driven one of these cars knows about the serious wheelhop issues. What people don't know is how to resolve it. While this car is definitely a modern day musclecar, first and foremost it's a Cadillac and GM designed the suspension ultimately with ride quality in mind. This doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice ride quality, though. A careful balance of fixed mounts and rubber mounts can provide both ride quality and traction.
This new kit makes the cradle a fixed mount and reinforces the cradle in a critical area, the trailing arm mount. With this kit alone, wheelhop is reduced approximately 75% and ride quality is only slightly effected.
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2004-2006 Cadillac CTS-V Anti-wheelhop kit
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The Wheel Hop Kit is shown installed on Mark's car, as the car is being strapped down to our Mustang Chassis Dyno.
We also installed BMR's heavy duty rear toe rods. Chip can be seen below working on them.
Notice the difference between the stock toe rod and the beefier BMR piece.
From BMR's website:
| As you can tell by this comparison of the OE toe rod vs. our heavy duty replacements - there is no comparison. The toe rod is responsible for maintaining toe settings of the the rear wheels similar to tie rod ends on the front end. This ensures that the wheels remain set to a fixed position, not erratically pointing inward or outward under loading. The factory rods are made from 1/2" material and use soft rubber bushings at the mounting points. Under load, deflection can cause poor launch stability, inconsistent handling and decreased braking ability. Our toe rods are made from 1" heavy wall DOM and use
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Teflon lined QA1 rod ends with stainless spacers. Moderate install with no decrease in ride quality. Available standard in red or black powdercoat. Additional colors available by special order.
TR001 $274.95
The combination of the above items should really help to control the wheelhop that these cars are known for.
Mark sent with his car a boost gauge. We made a panel for it that matches the steering wheel and added it into his ash tray. This is the perfect place to install a gauge as it can be easily closed and out of sight.
Update: 12/17/05
Hmm, an empty engine bay!....
Mark decided to have us add forged internals to his V's engine, which will ensure a long life, plus allow more boost to be added. We are adding a Callies Racemaster crankshaft, which is one of the best cranks you can install into an LS engine. We went with a 4.00 stroke which will give the engine a 382 cid, which in itself will give the engine more torque and horsepower.
The two pictures above show the crank installed in the engine, all torque down and awaiting the Callies Compstar connecting rods and the Diamond forged pistons that we will be installing, along with Total Seal rings.
Here is a picture of the Callies Compstar Connecting Rods and Diamond Pistons. The Total Seal rings just showed up today!
We now have the rings filed to fit for Mark's engine.
The pistons are now installed in the engine, this engine is close to being reinstalled in the CTS-V!
The ARP head studs can be seen in this picture. We reinstalled the stock LS6 cylinder heads.
The engine is pretty much all back together here, waiting on the new pushrods to be installed.
Here is a picture of the dual mass clutch/pressure plate assembly that came out of Mark's V. It looks like it didn't have much life left to it, plus it is heavy!
Here is the new Spec Stage 3+ that is going into Mark's V. This clutch/pressure plate/flywheel combo is considerably lighter, which will allow the car to rev much quicker. The Spec stage 3 plus is rated at 850 ft lbs of torque, and the clutch/pressure plate combo part number for the V here is SC683F. The steel flywheel part number is SC75S.
This is the spacer that Spec uses to space out the slave cylinder, to make up for the extra room left from getting rid of the heavy factory dual mass arangement.
B&M pn#45067 is a shifter that will really make shifting the V a lot more enjoyable! We will be installing this shifter just as soon as we get the engine back into the car.
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While we are at it, Mark mentioned possibly having us install a set of Kook's headers and connection pipes. I talked to George at Kooks today regarding headers for this V, and George said his brother's V sounds awesome with the headers on his car. They picked up 40 rwhp with the headers and exhaust, and Kook's offers a connection pipe to directly hook them right up to the Corsa cat back! I just thought I would throw that out there, Mark!...
The headers arrived this afternoon from Kooks! Chip is shown here anxiously removing them from the box.
These are some of the best looking headers we have ever seen!
The right side header went in from underneath without any problems at all. An air ratchet was even used to install the header bolts, that's how much room we had!
The driver side header went in with just unbolting the steering shaft. We didn't even have to remove the shaft from the car!
These Kooks headers are designed to bolt right up to the Corsa Cat Back, and they fit perfectly!
The cats are the newer spun type, which tend to flow very well, and they don't take up much room.
The headers only took about an hour and a half to install, including hooking up the cats! We are impressed, as we have never seen headers fit as well as these Kooks headers do!
The V is now back up and running. We will get a video of how it sounds with the Kooks headers. It has a much throatier sound now, it really sounds good!
http://videos.streetfire.net/search/cts-v/1/1351b684-d9d0-48f5-a59d-3af7023eeb7c.htm
See this V in action:
Update: We're still tuning, but we're at 597 rwhp!!! On a loaded Mustang Chassis Dyno!
Conclusion:
We settled for 597 rwhp on this car, over 100 more rwhp than it made prior to adding the stroker bottom end kit, the Kooks headers and cats, and one more pound of boost. Not bad! This would be over 700hp at the engine!!
Our goal was to make this a very durable package, that will give Mark many years of pleasure. The car will easily break the tires loose in 3rd gear at 50 mph, enough to scare most of us!
We literally did back to back runs on the dyno as an experiment to see what the rwhp loss would be. We have seen Ford Lightnings and Cobras with their air to water intercoolers, lose 50 rwhp after the first run, and we knew an air to air intercooler would be much more efficient. We started the 2nd run just as soon as the tires came to a stop, and only saw a 17 rwhp reduction in the rwhp. Not bad at all!
It is officially thrash time on the MSD-V
. Two weeks ago, we shot a couple pics
of the V at Squeeg's Kustoms
in Mesa, AZ before they applied the fresh red and black. The interior was completely gutted so Brian at Concept Works
could dial-in our seats. We're scheduled to have the car
back in El Paso for assembly and detail work by the end of the week.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the MSD team was mounting the ProCharger
and getting 408 LS2 ready to drop back in between the fenders. We really need to thank the guys at Exotic Performance Plus
for their help in getting the right parts to fit the ProCharger under the hood. Be sure to check out their website
for all sorts of cool go-fast late model parts.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the MSD
team was mounting the ProCharger and getting 408 LS2 ready to drop back in between the fenders. We really need to thank the guys at Exotic
Performance
Plus
for ...
- www.msdignition.com/index.php3
8/25/06
Mark has sold his V, and sent the Caddy to us to check it out before sending it to it's new owner. Now that the V's engine has seen some miles, we decided to dyno it again to see where the power level is currently at. Sure enough, it is up to 605 rwhp now! Below is the new dyno graph.
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