[twooldgoats]

I've been toying with the idea of supercharging my '63 Tempest for over a year and I decided to do it and started gathering parts about seven or eight months ago. After some engine issues at a race a couple of months ago, I decided to take the car down and get started on the blower conversion right away instead of waiting until the end of the season in December.

I've been doing research for over a year now, so I've got a pretty good idea how I'm going to make the conversion. I have a new IAII block I bought from All-Pontiac back in 2006 or so and never used, so that will be the basis for the new engine. Paul Carter of Koerner Racing Engines here in Tucson will be doing the engine work. To keep the costs down I'll be re-using my Wenzler Super Chief heads. Among other things, they have a unique exhaust header bolt pattern and I don't want to change headers at this point. As it is, the headers fit perfectly and it would be a royal pain to change them. Because the heads have such small chambers (and for other reasons), Paul recommended a 4.00" stroke to help keep the static compression down to 11 to 1. After a lot of research, I've decided to go with a forged crank from Wade @ BOP rather than waiting a long time and paying a small fortune for a billet crank. If money was no object and I had all the time in the world, I probably would have gone with the billet, but I decided the forged crank will work fine for my purposes.

I hope to post here what I'm doing so others who might want to do such a conversion in the future will see how one person did it. I will post pictures and document what I decided to do each step of the way. Supercharging a Pontiac is not like doing a BBC engine, but that's nothing new.

My ultimate goal is to run a seven with the car. We'll see---hopefully some time in 2013. I've included a teaser picture---the new Littlefield high-helix 10-71 blower I ordered late last spring and received a few months ago.

Jim

[Brian Baker]

Where's the "like" button (LOL)?

[misterp266]

I'll be watching this one!

[marks73ta]

Great start Jim. I'm looking forward to seeing that car with that blower. Are you going to run carbs or injection? Mark L

[twooldgoats]

Originally Posted by marks73ta

Great start Jim. I'm looking forward to seeing that car with that blower. Are you going to run carbs or injection? Mark L

Injection all the way. I got a good used Enderle Birdcatcher on eBay a few months back. After running a Ron's Toilet for several years with this car, I'd never run carbs. A blown racecar cries out for alcohol injection (or nitro). I think my experience tuning the Ron's system will help a lot with the Birdcatcher. Of course, getting it right is a lot more important with a blower. I can only afford to build this once. I got a book by Bob Szabo called "Fuel Injection Racing Secrets" has tons of good information. So does Spud Miller's website at Fuel Injection Enterprises. The old adage "You can always be rich, but you can only be lean once" applies doubly with blown applications.

By the way, I'll be using three nice pieces designed and built by PY members for blown Pontiac applications. More about those later.

Jim

[Hooter]

I don't think 7's will be a problem. Just when I'm getting my new bullet done to catch up, you're stepping up your program on me. Sounds pretty cool.

[Elarson]

Hey Jim! Sounds great! We're far from experts on the blower stuff, but if you're cuious about anything we've done, feel free to ask. We had to make a few of our own parts too.

And, we've gotten a lot of advice from a lot of people who know what they're doing. We're happy to pass the info along.

Eric

[twooldgoats]

The toughest decision I've had to make so far in this project is which blower intake to use. While there have been a few blower manifolds built for Pontiacs over the years, I believe that BDS is the only place producing Pontiac blower manifolds at the moment. While I was deciding how to proceed, PY member KGTO had a custom blower manifold for sale that was based on a Wenzler Gutsram and was custom made by Vince Mayeda (Vin63 up here) of Mayeda Motorsports. For me, there were advantages and disadvantages to both. The BDS was cheaper and was very low, which would allow for the blower to fit under the windshield in my Tempest. As the attached pictures show, I set the engine way back, so a low profile intake was the only way to save my glass windshield. The BDS has no provision for a burst panel or port injectors, while the custom intake had both. The custom intake also left room for a distributor in the back. It seemed to me only right to run a Wenzler Gutsram to go with my Wenzler Superchief heads. In the end I decided "to hell with the glass windshield"---I just liked the looks of the Wenzler better and it required a lot less work.

Interesting sidelight: A few years ago I was selling a brand new Wenzler Gutsram at the Pontiac Heaven swap meet and a guy came up and said he wanted to buy it to make a custom blower manifold. I sold it to him and never thought about it again, until I put two and two together this year after I bought the custom manifold and realized the buyer at the swap meet was Vince Mayeda and the custom intake I bought used was one of his. He made several at that time, but I like to think that it was my original manifold I bought back this spring.

Jim

[vin63]

Originally Posted by twooldgoats

Interesting sidelight: A few years ago I was selling a brand new Wenzler Gutsram at the Pontiac Heaven swap meet and a guy came up and said he wanted to buy it to make a custom blower manifold. I sold it to him and never thought about it again, until I put two and two together this year after I bought the custom manifold and realized the buyer at the swap meet was Vince Mayeda and the custom intake I bought used was one of his. He made several at that time, but I like to think that it was my original manifold I bought back this spring.

Jim

Here is an old photo I found today and posted in Glenn Lever's thread earlier. Jim, the manifold I bought from you is on the far right. I believe Ken Bohenek's manifold that you now have is on the left. I thought you'd like to see the progression.

BTW...the blower restraint top plate should arrive tomorrow.

[Steve Barcak]

Wishing you the best with it always Jim. I am sure it will be a screamer.

The more blown/injected Pontiacs that exist, the better the world will be

[SupergasDil]

Here, Here !!!

[twooldgoats]

Originally Posted by Elarson

Hey Jim! Sounds great! We're far from experts on the blower stuff, but if you're cuious about anything we've done, feel free to ask. We had to make a few of our own parts too.

And, we've gotten a lot of advice from a lot of people who know what they're doing. We're happy to pass the info along.

Eric

Thanks for the offer, Eric. I may well take you up on it. I've already learned a lot from your posts up here and I'm sure I'll learn a lot more. I've particularly liked your posts on safety and your frank appraisal of your fire earlier this year.

Jim

[twooldgoats]

The switch from naturally aspirated alcohol injection to a blown alcohol set-up involves a lot of changes. I was forced to remove a lot of parts,especially from the front of the engine: the Ron's Toilet system, the Victor intake, the whole vacuum pump set-up, the BOP water pump, the front drive distributor, the balancer and the mandrel for the belt drives. The attached picture shows the first time I set the new manifold on the engine, even before I removed all the old parts. One upside to all the changes: I'll get to improve the looks of the engine by eliminating some things I never much liked but was too lazy or cheap to change once I'd done them. I'm still not sure why I stuck with those ugly corrugated rubber radiator hoses for as long as I did.

Jim

[twooldgoats]

For the last year or so I was considering options based on what changes I would have to replace on the car, how much it would cost and whether everything would fit. Since I picked a high-rise intake, I knew the glass windshield would have to go. I had the guy who installed it a couple of years ago come out to try to save it, but unfortunately it broke while he was taking it out.

I then notched the lower windshield frame and stuck on the blower, intake and Birdcatcher for the first time. This was clearly one of those moments car guys live for. I had to get Ellen to come and look and I had to sit in the car to see how it would look from the inside. Actually, visibility is still pretty good. The new blower set-up is about six inches higher than the Toilet was.

Jim

[marks73ta]

Hey Jim. That looks so awesome. It's going to knock down 2 seconds just from the looks, LOL. Thanks for doing the thread so we can watch its progress. Mark L

[vin63]

Looking good, Jim! Good talking with you today...the replacement blower restraint top plate should be delivered to you early next week (hopefully, Tuesday).

[Torment]

Looks like a neat project! Spud does a great job if you choose to get an initial tuneup - which I'd highly recommend. Gets you close and you can then sharpen the tune from there. IMHO definitely the right decision on the Gutsram manifold! I'd recommend hat and port, if you're not already moving that direction. Gdlk and keep us posted

[twooldgoats]

Originally Posted by Torment

..... I'd recommend hat and port, if you're not already moving that direction....

Yes, definitely hat and port. I've added EGT monitoring on all eight cylinders to do the fine tuning, since I'm using a "mini-retro" blower. More on all that later.

Jim

[twooldgoats]

One BOP part I think I can use over (besides the belt drive itself) is the BOP mount for the crank pickup. It looks like all I need to do is redrill and thread the hole and move it in an inch or so closer to the engine to use it with the new blower drive hub. I decided to remove the balancer and original crank trigger wheel and replace them with a BBF blower drive hub from RCD with the built-in crank trigger wheel option (thanks for the tip and part number, Brian Baker). As always, PY has been a great source of information. The idea of replacing the balancer was to keep the blower drive pulley as close in to the engine as possible. That relieves stress on the crank. From what I've read, blown race engines don't need balancers. The blower belt serves the same purpose.

Jim

[twooldgoats]

Besides information and advice, I also am using several parts on this blower conversion made by PYers. This piece was designed and made by KGTO (Ken Bohenek) and serves as a combination idler pulley mount and fuel pump drive and mount. I used a belt drive fuel pump with my Ron's Toilet, but just about everybody uses a cam-driven fuel pump on a blown application and that's what I decided to do (Enderle 110). This piece nicely mounts the pump (or pump and extension) right over the BOP belt drive and also provides a mounting spot for the idler pulley. I've decided to run water in the heads only (more on that later), so I don't need to worry about covering up the water holes in the block. It would be possible with a little extra work to run water inlets through this piece into the block, but I decided not to bother. Most blown alcohol race-only engines don't use water at all, but I'm just ornery, I guess. I like hauling my junk around on an open trailer and I like driving up through the lanes and then back to the pits after the pass.

Jim