2002 WS6 TA

I have one of the first 50 APS kits built, but I’m having trouble talking myself into putting this kit on.

Reasons being:

1.) cut here, bend there, and beat this (hearing that it fits like a four-finger glove, not enough room)

2.) kit is heavy, overheating problems, front sway bar hits, inlet pipes suck shut, can't lower the car at all

3.) required new BMR K-member, injectors, fuel pump, Y-pipe


Are all FI kits this problematic... even kits such as Procharger (they seem pretty straight forward?)

 

Theres always a little massaging you have to do but some less than others. Procharger kit is pretty straight forward and I didnt have to buy a new k-member. Dont get me wrong I think aps makes an awesome kit but, as far as simplicity I chose procharger.

 

i chose aps. one it is bad *** kit. two i dont like superchargers. and i honetly think the procharger would be the last one on my FI list. it has lag like a turbo and takes horse off the crank like a supercharger. that sucks both ways. (and yes i know to make a 1000 horse the procharger is great. but at 100 horse track car. you build boost before you release.) so for a street car i wouldnt do procharger. i would do like a magy

 

Why cant you lower the car with the aps kit?

 

To each his own, but a ProCharger does not have lag. That is why they make for a great drag strip power adder.



LS2/402, EPP blower cam, off the shelf AFR 225 heads, unported LS2 intake, ProCharger F1-A at 14.4 psi. Bob

 

You have it, I would use it. APS makes a very nice kit, we have installed them and they did a nice job with them. Check this Firehawk out that we built. http://www.exoticperformanceplus.com...Car.php?car=39
Bob

 

^^ Bob knows prochargers, theyre great for the street. Mine doesnt have lag. A maggie would be at the bottom of my FI list.

 

Procharger lag? That's funny, you hit it and your gone.

 

Procharger is a simpler install. No oil returns in pan to drill . No coolant lines.
Simpler a bit on piping. And of course twin turbos mean two of things.Two inlets, two blow offs, two wastegates ,etc. But once kit is installed no matter what kind of kit its installed if you know what I mean. So procharger can be done in say 20 hours and aps takes 50. Just pulling numbers out of my hat. Big deal although if you are paying big shop rates it could add up.

I did get a dud aps turbo but not unhappy with the kit. I have not had any problems dealing with aps. Peter has always been friendly with me and helpful. He can sometimes slide sideways on questions but hey nobody is perfect.

I am very impressed with the quailty of a lot of the aps kit,downpipes and gates, exhaust manifolds.All the nice inlet and intercooler pipes, the aweseome intercooler, just most all of the kit. Even at low boost breaking in the new engine the car was more than scary. Spray is not operational on the car yet either. Course I have a built 408 that is pretty powerful even off spray.

I have ridden in and test driven procharged near stock lt1. procharged near stock ls1 , sts lt1 and sts ls1 and my tt aps ta and my turbo talons.

I like all power adders, nitrous ,turbos and supers.All have their pros and cons.
By lag on procharger its not lag waiting to spool up.They spool up pretty much instantly since they are spun up by belt but centrifugals build boost like 2 psi at 2000, 4 at 4000 8 at 8000 type thing. Turbos can start boosting at say 2000 and be full in by 3000 and hold that boost to redline. Turbos have much bigger area under the curves than centrifugals.
But both can do similar numbers at track if they have similar airflow.

Its pretty much a pointless debate. Both are great and planning on buying a procharger for my 96z maybe next year. And it will have spray and supercharger!

I would install the aps on your car and quit worrying about the little stuff.
No kit is perfect.
Just read my old posts or pm me will be happy to share tips and tricks.

 

After dealing with a dud turbo on my friends aps kit, I would say definitely get a turbo shop to look and inspect the turbos thoroughly so you don't have problems later and deal with down time and repeat labor. Installing the kit does suck, but it is a decent kit. His combo put down 580rwhp at 8psi, but the turbo didnt last more than a week. His was also one of the first kits that came out FYI.

 

If your at all scared about installs on FI go procharger and sell the aps kit. Its the easist kit to install.

 

Do a procharger. I had the APS kit and IMO it was a pain. Its nice how it retains AC and all, but with the intercooler infront of the radiator, the temps do get warm. Also, where the turbos are, any work on them such as tightening an oil feed or coolant line on them is a F**king pain! My car was lowered and didn't have any issues with that. However my sway bar hit and dented but I believe that had no reason with being lowered, simply a problem for all. If I had to do it again, Procharger without a doubt, would never look back. Hope this helps! On another note, my APS kit did make sick power and pulled smooth as hell, doesn't mean a procharger can't do the same though

 

ProChargers have NO lag, where did you hear that? Of course it takes power to spin it like a supercharger, it IS a supercharger. You realize the added back pressure from a turbo impeller takes HP too right?

 

What Big Bird meant by lag is what we all know... Of course the time between throttle input and boost is instant, but that's not what he meant.

He's referring to the hp curve of the powerband... Like a max-effort NA car, you get the radically linear curve to the right of a small powerband, but get all the drawbacks of an FI set-up, viz. added weight, parasitic loss, etc. There's no arguing this. The big boost is only on the high end of the rpm range because that's the nature of the blower... I prefer to know I can stomp my car at 3k rpm and make full boost in half of one second (or instantly if I'm brake-boosting), but that's just me (Or full boost at any rpm instantaneously with a Twin Screw blower!). It's okay to have preferences. We all don't have to like the same thing...

Although, I have read a few threads here where someone successfully fabbed a "wastegate" with a big centri blower pullied for high boost that made its boost quickly but didn't overboost because it bled off subsequent boost after a set psi level... Those threads are here somewhere.




On Topic: If I had the kit in my hands, there'd be no question as to what do... APS...

But the whole failing turbos thing is scary... Sounds like a bunch of bullshit too... I hope those affected are getting compensated.

 

lol, you can't compare the hp loss of a belt-driven accessory to an exhaust driven one...

The only blower, IIRC, that has come the closest to the thermal efficiency of the average turbo set-up is the TVS in the new ZR-1 that boasts over 75% I think? Does anyone here know this? Someone agree with me or correct me... I'm not too sure.

 

Yeah again that is what he meant by lag .It is boost lag of sorts.You don't get full boost at lower rpm on the procharger. You don't get as much area under the curves .
Compare two dyno charts one of procharger and turbo with similar power /airflow outputs and the turbo curve is absolutely huge comprared to the procharger. More torque lower down on the rpm band ,more hp lower down and thru the range. Peak power can be simlar on both ,turbos usually seem to have more peak torque.

Again this is centrifugal dyno not roots or twin screw types which give more turbo like dyno charts and can even outdo the turbos at low rpm and twin screw can also do a good job right thru the rpm range,the roots type a bit better down low not as much up top.

As said a few times, going up normally thru the gears turbo is going to be much stronger again assuming using units with similar airflows . The ati might have slight edge at lower rpm as it could be making say 2psi at 2000 but some turbos can start spooling up very early too. At 3000 you might have 15psi on the turbo setup and still only 3psi on the procharger.Again these numbers are just out of a hat but they are still accurate to describe what happens.

So in the just going up thru the gears situation the turbo has some advantages.
But in real life these advantages can be minimized.You can gear down in the procharger if you are in say third in the city to say second and the procharger will now put out more boost since you bring the rpms up. Course you can do same with the turbo and again the turbo might then be getting full boost at 3000rpm where the procharger is at maybe half its potential boost.
On highway in fifth or sixth bang down to fourth. Same effects.
You can use things like two steps and antilag to get turbos boosting off the line. Ati has bit of advantage making boost off the line especically on manual turbo cars if they don't use antilag or two steps. Autos work good on turbo cars as well. Builiding boost off the line easer than manual cars.
At the track you can rev up the super and keep the rpm up .Helps to minimize full boost delay in the procharger. This full boost delay is basically centrifugal "lag".By leaving at say 7000 rpm you could stick close to full boost on the procharger.

Anyway they both do great at the track. But its hard to compare a turbo against a procharger totally directly since both come in different sizes which give different max hp potentials and change other things. A big turbo or turbos can get laggy and take longer in the rpm band to spool up.It can give you a very narrow powerband which sucks on the street. Proper sizing is more critical with turbo setup.

Complexity of turbos are a bit more for installation. You do need oil lines on the turbo only on the old 600b ati. You need water lines on some turbos. You need intercooler really on both but you could get buy with alc injection and no intercooler.
You have a bit more piping with turbo and more stuff when you go to twin turbo.Two blowoffs, two inlet pipes, two wastegates.

As for reliabilty both should be very reliable if quality parts are used .
Ine real world the turbos advantage in effiiciency is not really a big deal. You can also simply go to bigger procharger to gain more power to compensate for lower efficiency or run at higher boost level assuming the engine can take it. I am not sure if the bigger prochargers have more full boost "lag" than the smaller ones but with bigger airflow in the bigger units they would still make more power than the smaller ones at same boost levels. At least thats what bigger turbos do.

The gradual way centrifugals buildi more and more boost going up thru the gears
can help them get traction. Turbos you can also setup by rpm, gear,etc to help traction.

These arguments do get silly.Both procharger and turbos work great. All the power adders work great. All have pros and cons but all are fun. Combine two like super and spray or turbos and spray for even more fun!

 

I too was one of the first 50 kits. And the install was not too bad. Yes you have to trim a few things and bend a few flanges. But a friend helped me cut the bumper cover out with his plasma cutter. The rest is straight forward bolts right on. Yes it gets tight once everything is in place. Just take your time during the install to make sure everything is properly tightened. I had to tighten the oil and coolant lines on the turbo's after the first time it fired back up and that was tough! But not impossible. I would recommend checking the turbo's closely. I have not had problems with mine so maybe I got lucky. As for the dented pipes, spacers and shorter sway bar end links are supposed to help. I need to try that out as I have lowering springs to go on my car this spring.

For the record my kit went on Fall 2007 and I have driven the heck out of the thing. I have over 16k miles on the kit. It goes to work on nice days, roadtrips to NY to visit family, track rentals with the carclub. And never had an issue. It got hot on me once on a 95 deg day but I discovered the overflow tube had some cracks so I was loosing coolant. I will have to watch temps again this summer.

Personally I prefer turbo's over superchargers as they do not draw power when not in use. I am still averaging 17/24mpg with the car and can't complain. I doubled my HP and only lost 4mpg on the highway.

All in all, it is a quality engineered, built, and assembled kit. For the most part it bolts right up and does everything it was supposed to. And as you can see can be reliable when driven a lot. Good luck man.

 

Lowering the car with the front sway bar hitting to begin with would only make it worse.

 

You can space the sway bar and shorten the endlinks. You could also put silicone couplers where the sway bar hits. I currently have mine off but will be doing one of the two mentioned things this season. I just left sway bar off for now. My car is dropped about 3/4 to 1 inch. I have big fat hotchkis sway bar.

 

Most of the extra parts/pieces I knew about before buying the kit, so fair enough. However, I didn't know I would have to hack the **** out of my car to get everything to fit.

Overheating problems and the inlet tubes sucking shut are a pain in the ***.

But the thing that really ***** me off the most is the front sway bar problem, which APS will not admit... Pisses me off to the point that I may not use their kit.

Seems to be issue after issue after issue... I shouldn’t have to compensate for their mistake; sway bars need room to move.