[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