In reply to moparman76_69:
I'm finding the same thing...there are more turbo mopar guys here lurking than I thought.
Is the black Shadow still in Maryland? Last I recall seeing it, it was for sale in the Frederick or Hagerstown area.
Tony...the CSX progress looks great. For the intercooler, you can run a turbo 1 radiator (which is what it looks like you have in there anyway) with the stock AC condensor and a FMIC. You could drill the core support but it's not too hard to route the piping under the core. That does make the piping runs longer, but honestly, I have not seen any measureable gains or losses from long piping runs. Theoretically, the shorter the runs with the fewest bends would be ideal, but if we're talking 2 hp worth, it's really not worth worrying about, especially when you consider the gains to be had for a nice flowing/cooling FMIC over the stock core.
On the stock intercooler, they're OK at best. I've been into the 12's without any bottle help with the stock IC core, but they don't run consistent due to the heat soak. Flow is also an issue. I didn't measure backpressure at the time, but I used to drag race a GLHS regularly. It was mostly stock (stock head, stock turbo, stock IC) and was a reasonable low 13 second car at about 106 mph. My best pass was a 12.89, but the issue was that it was very inconsistent depending on temperature, how long of a cooldown between passes, etc. I then took two stock cores, cut the tanks off and built a dual stock core intercooler. With only that change...nothing else...the car immediately was a consistent 12.5 second car @ 110 mph with an occassional dip into the 12.4's if the stars and moon aligned just right. It picked up huge on the top end (flow) and was much more consistent (cooling). I had no where near the problems with knock either with the cooler charge temps, even in very hot ambient temps. Mounting the stock cooler up front may help slighty on the charge temp issues, but with the backpressure they cause, I don't think it's worth it.
Water/meth injection was mentioned earlier. I tried it and I have to say, I didn't like it. What I was able to do with it was run more boost on pump gas and lower charge temps a bit. My problem was that getting the mixture right was really difficult because the flow of the water/meth was inconsistent on shifts due to pump spool up and wind down time (sounds silly, but it's true....the turbo spooled faster than the pump on fast shifts and when you let off, the pump would wind down, which kept some water/meth flowing until pressure was bled off). I eventually got it to dyno the same whp numbers as I did on gas, but at the track it was slower, which I attributed to the inconsistency of the A/F ratio on shifts, which isn't an issue at the dyno...or maybe with a wussy automatic.
My opinion is a stock IC is good for a mostly stock car. If you're looking for more than 225 whp consistently and safely, get a nice FMIC on there. Well worth the effort and even with a mostly stock set up, being in the 270 whp range is not an unreasonable expectation.
Drop me a line if you have questions or need any parts. I've got plenty of crap lying around!
Pat