Had the pleasure of chatting with Bob Stiegemeier, one of the country's premier performance supercharger builder/tuners. He has rebuilt, ported and blueprinted over 2,500 Eaton superchargers over the years. He is an
authorized rebuilder for Eaton.

He is extremely familiar with the Eatons on our XKR's.

Many of you with smaller upper pulleys or upper/lower combos have expressed concerns over heat build up in the supercharger. Many of you
are considering or have installed larger intercoolers to deal with this problem.

You may, instead, consider the Venom front drive cooler which is sold by Bob. It reduces supercharger temps by 50%, and is a lot less expensive
than an intercooler. It's a simple idea for which GM is now seeking a patent. Intercoolers are not a panacea. They come with their own headaches as explained by Kenne Bell. You can learn a lot about supercharger boost and intercoolers in this article:

http://kennebell.net/KBWebsite/Commo...esAndCures.pdf

After speaking with Bob, I was astonished to learn (no surprise here) that
when you open up your cats and exhaust, your boost levels can drop dramatically on the Eatons. On the other hand, too much boost can also increase head pressure resulting in blown gaskets.

As far as our xkr's are concerned, if you want dependable extra power without worries about the ECU and injector fuel shortage, Bob recommends
having your Supercharger ported, blueprinted, and the use of a small pulley and a venom front drive cooler. This will deliver a proven 30-35hp at the rear wheel. He assures me the difference in performance is very noticeable. To get more power, one can open up the cats, add a lower pulley to adjust the boost back up, and increase the size of the injectors
(which Steigemeyer does daily) to handle increased air flow. In both cases, a retune of the ECU can add an additional 20-25hp at the rear wheel. (these can be expensive and there are only a couple of tuners in the US that can do this properly; Eurotek and GPT come to mind)

Both Kenne Bell and Steigemeyer discourage any use of Mina Gallery type
air filters. These do nothing more than suck in engine heat and cause
boost to drop dramatically. True cold air intakes only.

Bob also mentioned that removing the engine hood insulation can reduce overall temperature under the hood by up to forty degrees. But, I imagine
it would pump up the engine noise somewhat. After watching a few of the videos on Bob's site, I don't think noise is an issue for most of his clientele.
His site has a great video of the Venom cooler in action. Stiegemeier.com.

Hope this helped.

 

The big question...

What does he charge?

 

Having owned a modified Grand Prix GTP (M90) I agree with the porting conclusions.

Not sure about how much difference the snout cooler makes, does he have any kind of tests?

I am also confused about conflicting fueling advice. I have no first hand knowledge of any of this on Jags, but how can avos get so much power without injecters and without running lean and Stiegemeier says that they are needed at much lower power levels?

One thing for sure is Jag upgrades are greatly held back on the lack of tuning options. On the Grand Prix's you could get a tuner for $350ish and a professional tune was about the same. For Subaru's and Evo's the software is free and tunes are about $350. With either you can load maps yourself or tune if you have the knowledge. No shipping cpu's....

 

So far Steigemeyer has not proved that he has any knowledge about our cars, so beware....

I have never seen any before/after dynos showing the difference in porting, not even on his own site (and if, it is was always a combined change). The little porting that is possible will increase noise, that is a known, and also the reason why Eaton hasn’t done it in the first place.

Heat will stay an issue with the Eaton’s, this can’t be resolved with what stiegemeyers sells on our cars, period. The heat production is climbing almost exponential when increasing boost on them, so you need much more powerful means to reduce the temps. Have no experience with these, but some say alky kits or killerchiller may help.

Good luck.

 

Avos (Andre), I will always defer to you, o' wise one.

Can you explain the effect of exhaust on boost? If I'm correct, you have sports cats, yet a stock exhaust on your powerful Kenne Bell supercharger. What do the sports cats contribute to power, boost, overall performance, heat, etc. Thanks, man.

 

The Kenne Bell document describes it already pretty well I believe, but it’s simple. When backpressure increases, especially during valve overlap, you will get less exhaust gasses out of the cylinder, so that limits again the amount of air you can get into the cylinder, thus increasing the intake pressure and more pressure means more heat.

You would have to measure the backpressure to know if it can cause an issue, and so far I haven’t (but may do once). Sport cats should provide for better air flow and possibly keeps the velocity higher. I like them as they give a better sound to my otherwise stock exhaust. Now I am sure my full system isn’t optimal, but I wouldn’t want higher noise levels and the effect of an exhaust to increase performance on our cars is limited.

 

Avos is the man on this subject for XKR's.

Has anyone put the Killer Chiller together with Avos Twin Screw Super Charger?


I used these guys in Florida for the MINI last year and was very happy with their product/work/price.

They are worth it just for the magnetic drain plug they put in their rebuilds alone.

http://www.superchargertech.com/

I see that they are doing older Jaguars...but they do hundreds of SC's and were very accommodating...so I think there is a good chance they would work on a newer SC if you sent it to them to be overhauled.


Might be nice if XKRacer chimed in here with any info on his 'top secret' Twin Super Charger project for the car shell he just bought...sorry, traded for.

Though I don't know how that is going to work when there is no engine, transmission, brakes, etc in that shell....haha.

cheers,

jj

 

I believe that Jgaxkr has, perhaps he can chime in.

 

Required reading to go along with this thread....https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/s...ite-kit-39802/

 

I have had the Killer Chiller for 3 years now. It is truly amazing. The link I have attached shows photos of the charge coolers misting over because they are so cold.

killer chiller pictures by pattyjag - Photobucket

I have since changed the front bumper beam to one of Tony's but cant find a photo. The best single upgrade you can do to any XKR is save your money & just buy the Twin Screw setup. I can say from personal experince & having done pretty much every other mod out there.

 

Am actually working right now on my car to fit a 2nd hand 2005 bumper(and a thinner intercooler), as these offer better airflow than the older ones. I bought this one 2nd hand from XKRacer, and also his bumper beam with it, here is a picture:


I slightly modified it so it will allow beter airflow, XKRacer will see.

@XKRacer, now tell us about the secret project, we promisse not to tell anyone ;-)

 

JgaXkr Thanks for the photos.

Is that in conjunction with one of Avos twin screw super chargers?

If I understand Avos position correctly he doesn't seem to think you need an inter cooler for his Twin Screw installation.

If you do have both do you have any information on the performance gain that you got from the Killer Chiller on top of what the Twin Screw gains brought to the car?

Cheers,

jj

PS Avos you beat me by a minute...wish I typed faster and you could have chimed in with what you think the gains are for the Killer Chiller on top of your twin screw.

 

@JJ,
An intercooler is always needed form a certain boost, and as the twin-screw has lower heat output then the eaton, you could get away with the stock intercooler radiator.

The problem with intercooler radiators on the market is that they are just too thick. That means less airflow thru the intercooler radiator, and consequently also less air then thru the condenser and last but not least the main radiator. This could be dangerous on the German autobahn where you can’t relay anymore on the radiator fans !

A smart part about Jgaxkr setup is that he has removed the intercooler radiator, so more airflow for the condenser/main radiator (but he needs of course a good buffer). I have no experience with this, but he says that the power levels in the summer with the chiller killer are the same as in the winter, and I find that always noticeable.

 

Avos/Albert;

So what do you think is required for putting the twin screw on my car?

Leave it stock or go for the Chiller conversion....doubt high speed runs are ever going to be longer than 10-15 minutes at the most...more likely be lucky to be more than five minutes.

Thanks again for all of your advice and expertise.

cheers,

jj

 

I would recomend to just install the Twin Screw with the large throttle setup & air meter he has & then make your intake a true 3.5" cold air system. This will give you the abality to run with the new 5.0 ltr. XKR. The Twin Screw is a must have if you are serious, all of the other upgrades become just tweaks to the system. This I can say from personal experince.

 

Anybody experience with the Chiller Killer used with the Eaton?

 

I had the Killer Chiller on my car for 2 years with the Eaton M112. The Chiller is amazing. I think some of the photos in my Photobucket were with the Eaton. As I posted earlier anything other than the Twin Screw is a tweak, here are the tweaks I had prior to the Twin Screw. I will just list the SC cooling mods. The cooling system for the supercharger was isolated from the engine with a seperate resevoir fitted. The hoses for the charge coolers were rerouted (at the recomondation of Tony @ Rocketsports) so the coolant feeds thru 1 cooler & then feeds the second. This cleans up the plumbing on top of the engine. I installed a second pump in the circuit as well as a temp sensor on the discharge side of the charge cooler. We had to reverse the direction of the coolant flow because of problems with the factory pump mounting. I also eliminated the SC radiator & replaced it with a custom made coolant tank in the circuit. The temp from the discharge under normal driving would run around ambient. The interesting thing was under acceleration. The setup I had would produce over 20 psi of boost. I have a boost gauge & a coolant gauge mounted on the a post, so I can moniter both. On a good hard run from 70 to 130 mph the temp would go over 150 ( don't remember exact temp) but as soon as you started to back off on the throttle you could watch the temp go down. I have no idea what the stock temps would be. I know it is lower but it also cools the temp so much faster. The other thing I have done to cool the charge is Snow Performance water methanol injection. The Twin Screw runs app 20 degrees cooler on hard accel than the Eaton. I have no way of telling you which cools faster when you let off as they both go right back down. Think about it you are still well over 100 mph so the concern is more on the road than the gauge.

 

Thank's for the great info. So with the m112 you still had comparable performance to a cool day on a hot day? I live in the Phoenix area so the cooling is important to me.

The twin screw would be nice, but the cost is more than I payed for my entire car. I think I would be happy with the performance of an m112 with a smaller pulley if I could keep it from heat soaking.

Its really too bad that custom tuning is not easily available. It would be nice to have the option of going turbo...

 

Thanks JgrXkr;

"Think about it you are still well over 100 mph so the concern is more on the road than the gauge."

Um.... just what kind of brake upgrade are you running there at 100mph+ with less than 50 yards before you hit the brick wall?

And how effective is that State Police sticker at 'deflecting' speeding tickets?

Should I get one of those to go with the Twin Screw?

cheers,

jj

 

@JJ,
For long duration power usage (so minutes instead of seconds) best to just go for a larger intercooler radiator in surface area, but NOT thicker.

@ECW,
XJRs are very cheap for what you get imo. Adding a turbo would even be more expensive (probably 2 XJRs ;-)) if you want ot get that one right....