Throttle Body spacer on a Supercharged Car?

[stealthJamal]

You guys think it is worth it to get a throttle body spacer for a belt and pulley driven supercharged car? For example you get a smaller supercharger pulley to create more boost. Is a Throttle body spacer really needed as a heat shield to block some of the heat from the supercharger from getting to the air intake?

Does the spacer really do anything significant for you or is it a waste of money? Thanks guys.

[SmaartAasSaabr]

You'd probably be best off with an intercooler. However on your car the supercharger basically is the intake manifold so it is difficult to plumb that. Actually I think there is a secondary "undermanifold" thing that it bolts to in the valley.

Putting a spacer wouldn't do much, since all you want is cold air. The supercharger can get as hot as you want, though of course you want it cold to not heat the air. The spacer would eventually heat up and it wouldn't cool the hot air (since it's compressed). Keep in mind in a heat engine hot is good, except for cylinder filling issues you want cold air.

There would also be the issue of fitting that - the supercharger does come fairly close to the hood.

And if you put the spacer on the throttle body on the side of the supercharger that wouldn't accomplish anything, except maybe a slight reduction in top power since you have a more convoluted intake snorkel

What could potentially be used to good effect to cool the intake charge would be water injection. However I don't think unless you are running extremely high boost pressures (like the 440+ hp one they had in HPP a few years ago) that the temperatures would be high enough for it to make a real difference.

The smaller pulley is good but it doesn't do as much for boost as would really be desired. It spins the charger faster so it can pump more, but then it is still limited by the PCM at the end right? I'd want to just crank up the peak boost in the PCM and leave the hard parts alone. However keep in mind the transaxle in your car is rated for 280 ft-lb and no more... and guess how much torque your motor puts out :wink: The PCM curtails the boost at various points to keep the torque output that low... so increasing the boost and thereby the torque does have the potential of reducing the longetivity of the gearbox (as we learned a couple months after HPP made the 440 hp monster, because the gearbox exploded ).

[stealthJamal]

Thanks Saabr, You confirmed my suspicions that the throttle body spacer is BS.

[ELVATO]

By throttle body space you mean? Is it like the Tornado things that are supposed to "spin" the air or something like that? If so, then yea, they don't work. Actually, alot of people say it lessens power.

[holein1]

You guys think it is worth it to get a throttle body spacer for a belt and pulley driven supercharged car? For example you get a smaller supercharger pulley to create more boost. Is a Throttle body spacer really needed as a heat shield to block some of the heat from the supercharger from getting to the air intake?

Does the spacer really do anything significant for you or is it a waste of money? Thanks guys.

Are you talking about these: http://www.airaid.com/spacers.asp I used one and a good friend of mine had one on a gas guzzling 5.9RT and they did work! Power gains yeah maybe one or two horse on the ol butt dyno but they really did make a difference in gas mileage. The spirals help atomize the gas and make the fuel burn more efficiently.

Now something like this will make a big difference on a forced induction engine! http://www.whipplesuperchargers.com/...sp?ProdID=1205