Yes, I searched.

After 8 years, my stock procharger hat finally cracked. I got fancy and decided to fab one up myself.

I finally got something mocked up that fit and realized its pretty much the same exact thing as the stock hat - just uglier.

I've seen some nice setups with sharp 90's into the head units. I've also seen truck inlets. Both seem to work well. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I don't have room for either. Everything is smashed up against the S/C to make room for the intercooler - and the outlet is clocked to be right next to the inlet.

So, has anyone done their own hat and picked up anything?

(pics of setup - everything is the same...except bigger filter and dirtier)

https://ls1tech.com/forums/attachmen...0000000610.jpg

https://ls1tech.com/forums/attachmen...0000000610.jpg

https://ls1tech.com/forums/attachmen...0000000610.jpg

https://ls1tech.com/forums/attachmen...0000000610.jpg

https://ls1tech.com/forums/attachmen...0000000610.jpg

 

These might help if you already haven't seen them yet...

Page 2 (ssmokin01 post)... https://ls1tech.com/forums/forced-in...inlet-hat.html

My post, first page https://ls1tech.com/forums/forced-in...ers-chime.html

 

Thanks.

I saw ssmokin's setup in the search. That is one of the ones I was wondering if he picked up anything vs. the standard procharger hat with the bypass filter.

 

wondering the same thing.. im going to clean mine first... dirty as hell... so going to a bigger filter is better? how does that work?

 

The filter is a restriction to the blower. The bigger filter/filters can flow more air. Some guys here have made a final dyno pull with the blower hat off and made 50 (+ -) hp.

 

I went with the truck hat and the biggest filter Bob @ Brute Speed offers.

 

^ Ditto. The real solution would be to relocate the headunit altogether and get a screen on it. I think the worst part of the overall fit is how low the filter is to the ground....I mean unless your going offroading in the rain you should be ok, but I still dont like it.

It would be really interesting to see someone do like Chris did with the aster bracket, and come up with a new blower hat that adds some reliable hp with as little restriction as possible while maintaining protection for the s/c. people have custom fabbed and had great success, but something mainstream would be nice for us lazy good for nothings. does anyone else here detect a lucrative business opp?

 

I agree. I think moving the head unit and putting the front end under major surgery is the 100% solution.

My problem is that I fabbed up an inlet hat, and I don't think it is going to be any better than the stock inlet for flow - so I was curious if other folks had actually fabbed up their own, tested it, and saw gains.

Another solution that I think would work great is a custom radiator. If I could get a radiator with a triangle-slice cut out of the bottom driver-side corner, then there is enough room for a straight shot into the blower.

Does anybody know of a place that does customer radiator shapes?

 

I like the idea of mounting the blower where it is in the corvette, up by the idler pulley on the passenger side. I know someone on here was working on that, but that would be a far better solution I think.

But to be quite honest, with Aster's bracket, 8-rib pulleys, truck hat, big filter, FMIC, and a 4.00 blower pulley, I was making more power than I really needed, at least in 1, 2, and 3rd gears. Rolling around at 40-50mph, drop it to 3rd and it was at the limits of traction for me. Granted, I need to upgrade my rolling stock at this point, but having enough power wasn't an issue. I was seeing 15psi of boost at 6800rpm with a 4.00 blower pulley and the 7.65" crank pulley, which at 6800 was ~53,000 rpm of the listed max of 62,000 rpm, so I still have some area to work with.

 

yeah, when i dynoed last week we saw how restrictive the hat is.. wanted to take it off but ended up doing some tuning and other stuff. i was at 487rwhp so maybe i could of made 500. lol. next time.. i cleaned mine last night, and it was loaded full of dirt. but yeah a different location would be the best. im still running 7psi, stock heads and cam.. so i have plenty of room for upgrades

 

I'm out of blower at this point - I spin the D1 to 62k. I didn't pick up hardly any peak HP or boost moving the blower from 55k to 62k...largely, I think, because of the inlet restriction.

At this stage, I'll probably just throw in the towel and buy the stock inlet hat from Bob. It worked fine before...so I'll keep it at that.