Hey all, I'm the tech working on the car, the customer is a good friend of mine. He asked that I share my findings on this setup to better help any of you interested in doing it in the future.
Why the LSA blower?
1.) It was available off another customer's car for sale for a VERY VERY good price with several supporting parts necessary for installation. Price-wise, this setup may not make sense in some cases, but as CTS-V's & ZL-1's become older, prices may come down making it a more reasonable option in the future.
2.) Direct, independent belt drive. For those of you not familiar with the LSA unit, it uses an independent 8-rib ring on the face of the balancer. This has benefits such as being able to overdrive the supercharger without doing the same for the accessories and is way less likely to throw your accessory belt. Last I checked, 8 rib accessory pullies are quite expensive too, so this allows you to avoid that expense while still reaping the benefits of the larger contact area on the blower pulley.
3.) We have much experience with the LSA supercharger and it is VERY impressive. We have found it to be much more efficient than the Maggie with MUCH better temperature control (lower IATs). I think most shops would agree.
4.) We've all seen a Maggie under the hood on a GTO, but this is truly unique!
With that said, I'd like to say that if you plan on doing this with factory accessories, forget it. Using the LSA blower will require you to use the ZL-1 (or CTS-V) water pump, idlers, bracket, both tensioners and your choice of accessories with the proper offset.
The amount the accessories need to move toward the motor exceeds the thickness of the ps bracket. This means modification to the accessory brackets and/or accessories is out of the question. Besides, even attempting this would be a silly waste of time. Custom balancer is out of the question, the accessory drive overlaps the blower drive. So to go that route, you would have to push the blower drive out further, modify the supercharger, space the blower tensioner out as well as the idler bracket. Hmm.... sounds way more expensive than buying new accessories to me! So, for just over $500, we found all CTS-V accessories & brackets (power steering pump, alternator).It also just so happens that the CTS-V alternator plugs right in. As a bonus, he will have shiny, brand-new accessories in a slightly higher mileage car. Corvette accessories can be used also and may be cheaper, but those familiar with them know that the alt / ps bracket is obnoxious and ugly. Due to budget constraints, the A/C will not be addressed during this phase of the setup, but the plan is to use a C5 compressor / bracket in the future.
Only thing left to do so is make a bracket re-locating the ps reservoir, as the cts-v one cannot be used, it is too tall. Updates to come on this when the accessories come in. Some simple fittings and AN ps hose can be used to re-plumb the ps.
The bypass valve needs to be re-plumbed as a manual bypass valve as this is electronic control on the LSA. This is easy, just remove a bracket and several vac lines (pics to come). A MAP port on the snout needs to be tapped and plugged, and we had to machine a bushing to adapt the stock MAP to the blower hat. Some harnesses need to be extended (purge, MAP, ETC). No biggie.
A list of parts used thus far:
ZL1 heat exchanger
ZL1 water pump
ZL1 electric heat exchanger pump
ZL1 hoses (fit nicely with little modification)
CTS-V alternator, power steering pump, brackets
ZL1 idler bracket, tensioners, idler pullies
ZL1 balancer
ZL1 MAF
All in all, this setup is not that difficult, and if you have the ability to do some light fabrication, can be done anywhere. Hopefully this answers some questions and in the future, if somebody tries to duplicate a setup like this, they will be able to obtain some easy answers with a quick search!
- Ryan