Nice. Yeah, I've seen before where people complain about an intercooler "losing" boost, thinking its a bad thing, I figured you knew that, but others reading might not. While you're adding a flow restriction of some kind when you add an intercooler, I'd guess it only restricts flow maybe a tenth or two of a PSI at max flow. The rest is cooling, and is a good thing. Keep it happier at a lower boost pressure and the same power output, or crank it up and get more out of it for the same level of risk. Something makes me guess you will "find" those lost 2 pounds and more now that you have more margin
Side question, how critical is it to run premium on one of these, stock? I'm guessing it will pull timing and keep it safe, but don't know if it kills it bad enough in normal driving to make the overall MPG difference into spending more dollars per mile in fuel or still come out ahead by saving 50-60 cents/gallon.
I definitely intend on turning the boost up! Currently its got a stock 3.8" pulley on the blower. I bought a 3" pulley from ZZP. That ought to get me up to 12-14 psi
To answer the question regarding octane, its like a 8.5:1 c/r motor i think in the s/c L67s. Whereas i think the n/a 3800s are more like 9-9.5:1 c/r.
ive been running 89 octane in it because im a cheap a$$ but the times I would put 93 in it when the forecast called for HOT days ahead, the spark retard would definitely lessen to only a couple degrees.
The timing maps in this ssei factory for high octane was like max 8-12° btdc in the power band, and the low octane table was around 5° less. So if it knocked any it would favor the low octane table.
That coupled with the aggressive IAT spark offsets from GM, there was times I was shifting @ WOT with single digit timing non-ic LOL
HONESTLY the best thing you could do for a s/c 3800 is either tune it yourself like I did, or take it to someone else and immediately give it proper fueling.
Pretty much the first thing I did when I got it was give it more fuel (richer afr), and made it enter power enrichment sooner than GM had it factory. Didnt even touch spark.
I adjusted the MAF meter a little in the higher airmass, and literally drove it like that for months.
I also changed the shift strategy so it would stop going to 3rd gear as quickly as possible. Just stretched the gears out.
GM for WHAT EVER reason had it holding stoich up to 2 or 3 psi. Probably economy.
I could see why so many of them blow head gaskets.
They just made it impossible to enter PE, made it lug everywhere, and let knock retard run rampant to keep it from blowing itself up.
Regarding MPG, It allegedly was calculating like 18mpg... the readout not says 21.
But I also deleted some unnecessary fuel wasting chit for the e - p - a , and leaned out accelerator enrichment and utilized deceleration enleanment a little.
