Strut replacement

Since I have had my Tahoe I have put about 30,000 miles on it and those have not all been easy miles, the majority of them are in town, a good bit of highway and interstate driving, and some off road. These miles that i have put on the truck along with the larger tires, lift, and extra weight have worn out the shocks and struts prematurely. Replacing the struts will definitely be my next edition to my car. At this point I cant decide if i should spend the extra money and go with the fox racing coilover strut replacements or just go with some cheaper rancho or bilstein strut replacements. I know that i will go with the fox 2.0 rear shocks because they are not too expensive but the front struts cost a lot. the advantages to the fox coilovers is that they can take a tone of abuse, they look great, and ride incredibly offroad. The cons to the Fox coilovers is that they are expensive and require more maintenance than a regular strut would. My next step in deciding what shocks to use will be to consult my local off-road shop which is Rocket City Off-road. In the past i have bought several things from them and had them install several products on my trucks. Another person that I could consult about the proper choice of shocks and struts would be Tommy Davis, who is also the man that I interviewed and learned about torque converters from in post 3 could give some positive insight. Most of his experience with aftermarket equipment for cars is specifically for race cars. As I have researched more I am starting to think that I will go with the cheaper option which was the Rancho strut replacement. I have found that Rancho has started to make some coilover replacements as well, this could be risky because they are a brand new line of shocks out there and there are not any consumer reviews yet.  There is absolutely no risk involved if I end up going with the Fox coilovers because everything that Fox makes is incredible. One of my friends drives a ford raptor and it has the exact same suspension set up from Fox that I would be replacing the suspension on my Tahoe with. This decision all   comes down to how much money I am willing to spend on small aspect of my car.

Interview with Tommy Davis of Prestige Automotive

Me- Do you think my Tahoe could benefit from changing the gear ratio from 3:73 to 4:30?

Tommy-You would have much better acceleration and could hold a gear towing large loads but it will be expensive to regear.

me-Do you think it would be worth the money to do it?

Tommy- I would rather build up your torque converter or completely replace it with a different model, This would save you much more money and give you the same results as changing the gear ratio but your gas mileage would be a little bit better.

Me- have you ever done this before in place of a gear swap?

Tommy- There have been multiple occasions where i have done torque converter work on these late model GM trucks and cars because from the factory GM is not putting in a torque converter that is proficient.

This is not the response i expected to get at all, I thought in full that he would tell me to go on and re-gear. Right now i am running a 3:73 gear ratio which would be just about right if i was running stock tire size and did not have all the modifications that i do. With all of the extra weight and towing that i do, i thought it would make since to go with a 4:30 gear ratio or possibly 4:56 but Tommy suggested a much better idea. I had never thought about upgrading my torque converter to one that slipped more to generate more torque, imitating what a gear swap would do. I was very happy with the results that i received from my interview. When i was on my way to Interview Tommy  I thought for sure that he would agree with my re-gear idea which he did but he had a much more economical solution to my problem that i would never have known about if i did not interview him. I look forward to following up with Tommy on installing one of these high performance Torque converters in my Tahoe, it would complement my corvette engine swap quite nicely. I trust most any advice that Tommy gives me because he has had experience building race cars since he was my age. He is great at building high performance vehicles and is a mastermind with engine swaps. I drive the only 2007 Tahoe with a 2013 6.2 v8 aluminum block corvette engine in it all thanks to him.



 

super chargers vs. turbo chargers

 Superchargers and turbo chargers can both be added to almost any internal combustion engine to give them extra power. The most common application in which we see super chargers and turbo chargers used is on cars and trucks. since super chargers and turbo chargers are both used for the same thing, many people argue on which can give you the best results in some additional horsepower for their vehicle.Both of these bolt on applications are considered forced induction systems, this means that they literally force more air into the intake manifold of the engine which causes the engine to produce more horsepower.   Many cars and trucks come stock from the factory with superchargers and turbochargers, especially within the last four or five years but which one is better?  

There are multiple types of superchargers but the most commonly used type of supercharger is a roots type supercharger. The supercharger bolts on top of the engine and has a pulley on the end of it, there is a belt that connects the pulley from the supercharger and the crankshaft of the engine. As the rpm's from the engine get higher the crankshaft spins faster which spins the pulley on the supercharger causing it to force more air into the engine. Since the supercharger is active as long as the crankshaft is turning, this makes it impossible for a supercharger to ever give your car better gas mileage or even keep the gas mileage the same. That being said, superchargers are a very easy way to boost your horsepower 100 or more very simply.

Turbochargers can give you close to the same results as a supercharger but the way that a turbo charger works in an entirely different way. A turbo charger sits somewhere along the exhaust manifold system. A turbocharger has a snail shell shape to it and uses the force from exhaust fumes to spool up the turbo which then forces air into the engine causing the engine to put out more horsepower just like the supercharger does. The only downside to the turbo is that there is a delay because of the time needed for the exhaust to spool up the turbocharger but this also can save you some gas.

Now days most all diesel cars and trucks some with turbochargers on them, this is because diesel engines produce much more torque than gas engines do but at the same time they don't have as much horse power. Once you add the turbocharger to the engine these cars and trucks are able to push the engine much harder producing lots of horsepower and already having tons of torque out of a much smaller displacement engine that is more efficient. Within the last two years many car manufacturers have been putting a smaller engine in their cars and adding a turbo charger to it. this is beneficial to the gas mileage of the car because the smaller engine uses less gas but with the added turbocharger the horsepower stays the same as it would have been with the larger engine. An example of this would be the change that BMW made in 2011 to many of their cars, one in particular is the BMW 528i. This car used to have the inline non turbocharged six cylinder, in 2011 BMW started putting a four cylinder turbocharged engine in the car that was as fast and powerful if not better than the inline six cylinder engine.

Between superchargers and turbochargers i prefer a turbocharger. I have had lots of experience with both the supercharger and lots of turbocharged engines and the Turbocharger just makes more since to me. There is more to go wrong with a supercharger such as throwing the belt off and blowing the supercharger up. I have a 260 horsepower jetski with a supercharger on it and one day i was riding it and the belt shredded which caused the supercharger to blow up. Another con to the supercharger is how much worse it makes your gas mileage, at all RPM ranges, low to high on the engine, it constantly needs more gas than usual. That being said on marine applications like boats and jet ski's i prefer the supercharger because of the acceleration you have from the lower RPM range. On cars and trucks i prefer the turbochargers because while they give you such a boost of horsepower and performance the turbocharger does not engage until you give the car some gas causing more exhaust to flow through the exhaust system spooling up the turbo. This means that while at highway speeds or just a constant speed through town without slowing down or speeding up the turbocharger is not engaged causing your gas mileage to stay the same if you want it to.

All of this being said i would rather not have a supercharger or turbocharger, I think it is just something else to go wrong with the car. In my opinion there  is no replacement for engine displacement. In my family we have twin turbo powered cars and have had supercharged vehicles too and i find the horsepower and performance of a car without forced induction systems to be more impressive. Even though the sound of the blow off valve on turbos sounds cool i would rather have raw power but between superchargers and turbochargers i prefer turbochargers.          

Cars

     

Ever since I was little I have always loved cars and anything with wheels. I can remember always having a fleet of power wheels cars and trucks in my back yard as a little boy. I always looked forward to coming home and driving my cars and trucks around in the yard. My mom would always buy me books with cars and construction equipment and I would memorize everything in each book. My first power wheels vehicle was a yellow jeep and I drove it everyday, rain or shine. My dad always bought me extra batteries for my cars because one just wasn't enough for the amount I would drive them. Power wheels vehicles led to a love for cars and basically anything with wheels that I still have today.

                After I got too big for the power wheels cars I switched my interests to fourwheelers. I was obsessed with them and begged my dad to take me to ride them every weekend. I got my first fourhweeler when I was in kindergarten and I still have it to this day, It was a Honda foreman 450. This was way too big for a five year old to be riding alone so my dad was forced to buy something for me that was more of my own size. I would ride with my dad and brother every time I had the opportunity to. Fourwheelers were tons of fun but at the time I was not old enough to drive to take my fourhweeler somewhere to ride and I couldn't ride them in my yard. This forced me to become interested in something that I could ride closer to my house and on the mountain.

                Riding bikes was my next interest in things with wheels. Bikes were much more practical for me to be interested in because I could ride them wherever I wanted to, they gave me a since of freedom becaue I could go so many more places that I had never been able to go before. My friends and I would ride bikes everyday, we would build jumps and trials on Montesano after school. Sometimes we would ride our bikes to the skate park downtown or to various places to get food downtown. I became very good at mountain biking and started to ride much more difficult trails. I even went on to ride down hill and freeride parks in Wyoming and Colorado. One of my biggest regrets is not sticking with downhill mountain biking, I could have started to race on the weekends but the distance you had to travel to these races was too far and my parents couldn't give up the time to help me pursue this dream.

                Through my many phases of interests in things with wheels my love for cars had never gone away. I cant think of anything that I have been more excited for than getting my first car and drivers licence. I began looking for the perfect car when I was in 8^th grade. I easily changed my mind on what I wanted a couple of times a week. I searched eBay every day it seems like. I knew I wasn't going to get a car for two more years when i was in 8^th grade but I just wanted to make sure I would make the right decision when the time came. The second week of my sophomore year I found the perfect car it seemed like, a new body style, low miles Chevy Tahoe that was lifted with aftermarket wheels and tires and many other upgrades. I called my mom and dad into the office one Friday night and showed them the Tahoe that I had found on eBay and both of them liked it. I was so excited when my dad sat down and looked at it and clicked the buy it now button.

                It wasn't for two more weeks before my car that I had searched so long for arrived to pick me up from school. The car was in Baton Rouge Louisiana so my dad had to find time to fly down there and drive it back to Huntsville. Once I got my Tahoe I couldn't wait to start modifying it and making it my own. The list could go on and on about the ideas I had for my car. Once I got the car I had to wait 2 more months before I was able to get my licence and drive it alone. It wasn't that long after I got my drivers licence that the customization to my car began.