I have read that a polished or chromed part will retain more heat than a porous part. However, how much difference is there? I really want to chrome the blower housing, and add some kind of color inside of the fins.

BABolt, I am sure you know what the pros and cons of chroming would be, could we have your opinion please.

 

I will try to give you an answer on why I would not chrome plate a supercharger case; I do not profess to be an expert. First off you will have to polish the case to a fine polished surface to begin with. The next steps would be to Copper plate and then to polish again this could go on several times. The reason for this is to fill void and create very smooth surface (if you thought a polished S/C would run hot one of these would be smoking). The second plated material would be Nickel followed by the third and final Chrome. Since I'm not an expert on the process I know of no material that you can use as a "resist" to protect the machined surfaces of the supercharger or the snout to insure that nothing is plated out on those surfaces. As for painting on a chrome plated surface you will have to some how change the texture of the chrome area that you would wish to paint. There are several ways to do that and they all involve time. A nice look is to combine polishing and bead blasting. It can provide a very interesting look but the maintenance is out of this world.

This is the polished and bead blasted case that was on the Ford GT40 (now GT)


This would be another option or paint and polishing could be mixed.

 

The problem with the extra heat not escaping from a polished or chromed blower becomes instantly evident if you run a 4,5,6 or 8# pulley and don't use a shot of juice to cool it down with.

These polished blowers are sweet looking,but make no mistake,they will keep the heat trapped much longer than a stock blower if you are running big crank pulleys and/or smaller snout pulleys and generating lots of extra heat over stock temps.

Here is a good example....at the last big gathering of L's at a local strip,the temp reached a high of 40 with 20+ mph head winds+ a rain and snow mixture.and with the headwind,it felt like 25 degrees

I ran my truck twice before time trials started and let it sit with the hood open for over an hour and you could barely hold your hand on the blower case at that time.
Others[members here and nloc] would run there truck with a big crank pulley and within 5-10 minutes there blower cases were a lot cooler than mine which had sat for over an hour....were talking a major difference here.
Now on a stock L or one with a 1-2 # upper only or a 2# crank pulley only,the difference would probably be hard to notice as the blower is not generating the same heat as a one with a big pulley which is overspining the blower.
This has nothing to do with how it is polished,and evertything to do with stock vs overspinning the blower and generating a tremendous amount of heat.
A stock blower case would dissapate the extra heat on my blower more than twice as fast as a polished one, no matter who does the polishing

There are so many people that have big pulleys now,that i thought a warning to others was in order...bling can cost you performance or at least consistent times if your overspinning your blower with big pulleys.

 

ib fast
Sorry I would have to disagree on the cool down times but then I was not there when you made your observations. The very best way to go would be to run a natural finish but once a coating has been applied to the surface you will defeat the ability of a body to radiate heat (exception being the High Tech AeroSpace coatings). Polishing decreases the surface area therefore less area to radiate heat but it is marginal. Additionally, I have no ax to grind either way but a person need to review good honest data before they decide to go with a polished S/C or not. Information is available from Kenne Bell or Vortech.

 

I really like that blue one. Is that powder coated?

 

The blue one is paint. Baked on paint.

 

Info is available,but not on an overdriven blower,evidently you have not touched an m112 after a couple of runs with 8-10- lbs of extra boost.
I have no axe to grind either but this info can only be had by someone who has tried it,and not from k/b or vortech.

Most of MiLoc was there[freezing ] if you had been there,you would agree.

At first i beleived the extra cool down time was because of the hot weather that i ran in in the summer months,but when this happened under very cold conditions....well ask Soap[joe] if it felt marginal

If his words not good enough,i have a few more for you and they all mentioned it to me,without me pointing it out

 

To all:My answer to the heat issue after reading many posts seems to be to use a 1/2 inch phenolic spacer .This suposedly not only keeps the intake cool,but also increases flow.I'll let you know my results shortly.

 

BABolt,
What type of intake is that on the blue engine?

 

I think the blue engine is a picture out of the lightning motor that is in the Ranger as an SVT concept truck.Kind of like the mini-me of the L using rear entry.

VINNIE

 

I know that there is not enough space for rear inlet (rear entry!?), but would that intake work on o Lightning? I think that looks much cleaner that the “over the top” intake we have now.

 

From here it says a modified induction system

 

I wouldn’t mind a set of the 18X12.5 wheels.

I would really like to get my hands on an intake like that.

 

That's a custom fabricated inlet on the blue Ranger. It appeared at Autorama and I showed several of the photos here back in February. It is a top entry blower and works in that application. I worked on the design of a rear entry S/C several years ago and that required a shift of the supercharger position to package in the Lightning. Considering the constraints in the Lightning engine compartment I think that factory item is rather well done.

 

After looking at the photo more closely, I realized that if there was enough space for that intake, then you could just get a rear inlet blower. DOH!