Pro charging 6.2s
 

We're going to procharge our 6.2's in our 292 Formula and would like to hear about the performance gains or any feedback at all from anyone who has upgraded with this kit.

I don't have any first hand experience, but read it is very important to add a good oil cooler since the stock oil pan only holds 4.5 quarts. Are you planning on installing an intercooler? What are the details of the swap and who is doing the work? Sounds like a fun project!:drink: As you can imagine, I am very interested in the results!:p

I know Whipple makes a nice kit for the 6.2's, I plan on doing a Whpple sometime down the road maybe next winters project along with a few other things. Steve

Although Whipple is one of the best Steve, I am going to go with a Pro Charger setup. You don’t have to run an oiling system off your oil pan, Pro Chargers have a seperate oil reservoir and the oil should be changed every 100 hours. Also, I’m only going to run 3 to 4 lbs of boost so I won’t have to change the stock injectors. Yes I’ll be using intercoolers 4mulafastech. It should be a very clean set up as well as allowing the motors to run cooler with considerable fuel efficiency. My plan is to us 30p props and upgrade with a Latham marine hydraulic steering system.

You will want to put some larger oil coolers on if the engine only hold 4.5 quarts . Because they do heat up the oil !!!!! If they are working. :eek:

thanks Jeff will do

Sounds like a good project...I'm also interested in your progress and results..good luck!:drink:

What pitch props are you running now? Steve

a local guy bought a T6.2 292 with Prochargers last year (my 382 also came with Prochargers). He was running 32P props in the low 80's......but kept filling the crank case with gas (I also had that problem with them on my 500's). Soon after he got his boat he called and asked me why I removed them. Soon after he removed his as well.
If you put them on it would be a good idea to open up the bottom end and make sure the parts can handle the added pressure without blowby.

t500hp - I was wondering how much boost your 500's were running at. I talked to several people in the marine business and they seem to think with low boost say around 3 to 4 lbs, would be safe low pressure for the 6.2s. however, 6.2s that you spoke about have me concerned. Thanks, your advice is very much appreciated.

These are NOT a bolt on and go item !!!!!!!!! I do not care what they tell you at pro charger. it take a lot of time and money to get them set up right. they do work good when they are set up right. I run them with carbs so it is alot less work .With efi units i have herd more bad stories than good. Just a word to the wise . hate to see guys spend their money on stuff like this only to wish they had never seen it a year later. My advice would be do a LOT of research before you buy and not just sales ads. Just my .02 Jeff :drink:

Mine were at 8 psi with the bigger intercoolers.....his 6.2's had the smaller units (3-5psi?). Like posted above, they can work but tuning them takes someone with PROCHARGER experience. These things just seem finicky...and the fuel burn was terrible (maybe partly cause they run real rich).

I don't see the guy that had them on 6.2's very often in the winter but I'll try to find out more. We both bought the boats used so it's hard to say how things were done before we aquired them. I do know by the time he had run the boat a couple months he was changing the oil every 2-4 times out in the boat cause it had several quarts of gas in the oil.

I still find it fascinating that way back in 1999 I figured out that
none, I repeat none, of the supercharger kits are really a bolt
on and go proposition in the marine world. Unless you include
frequently repairing major damage as part of the plan.

I can rattle on endless firsthand stories (including procharged
6.2's) of excellent mechanical carnage (two words: eutectic pistons)

One lesson I learned: you either buy supercharged motors at the outset;
or take your existing engines to be totally rebuilt by a professional to
withstand the boost.

Ask Raylar, he's the pro that knows all about this on this
board.

Best of luck,

Pesky Varmint.

(P.S. 8 years and 450 hours on totally stock 575SCi's)

If You Must!
 

If your Mercury 6.2 engines are models that have cast pistons I would not advise supercharging them with any kind of real boost, lets say above 3 lbs!
The biggest problem you are going to encounter is reprogramming the PCM555 ECM's your 6.2 engines probably came equipped with. Pro-Charger offers absolutly no reprogramming assistance or support and the only person who can really help is Dustin at Whipple and he's not going to be excited about tuning ECM's for someone elses supercharging system, especially without a dyno or in the boat tuning to do the reprogramming properly.
Even if your engines have forged pistons or are redone with such, unless you can properly recalibrate the fuel and spark tables in the ECM's for positive boost your adventure with Pro Charger superchargers is most like going to be like a "Quickie with a Hooker" , it will get your rocks of initially but the long term success will be a real challange!
Save yourself the Drama, buy a complete properly tuned supercharger system from Whipple or build the motors up Naturally aspirated and save yourself the damages and heart ache later!!

Best Regards,
Ray @ Raylar

Been there, done that....
Amen Ray!

"eutectic pistons" can easily take the boost if set up properly. That said, you would need to go to carbs in order to ensure the proper richness and low timing advance. Forged rotating assemblies experience similar catastrophic damage from improper setup and boost.

BT :cool:

Thanks Pesky Varmit and Ray, you have definitely talked me out of a nightmare with the wrong gal! I appreciate your dedication and knowledge in engine building Ray and I am not interested in sabotaging these motors that run so well. I'll have to wait for those 10mph until I move up or am ready to purchase a couple of those 550 Raylar sbs you have been creating over there. Whipple is a class act but I had a line on the pro charges which made that project financially feasible. Again you guys, along with everyone else who chimed in, your exact knowledge is what I needed, not being an engine builder myself.

I did many hours of research on supercharging before the market tanked, and it boiled down to this: Whipple was the best solution for adding 100-150 HP to the 6.2's in my Formula 292, and I had figured it to be about $20-22k with installation, tuning, bigger props, etc. But, if you really crank up the boost you should expect to (eventually) grenade either your drives, engine bottom end, or both.

If I had the money right now and needed to see 80+MPH, I would sell\trade-in my 292 and buy a bigger boat with more horespower. If you've got money to burn and are in love with that hull, buy the Raylar SB 550 or build stroked SB Mercs AND XR or better drives that will withstand the torque of boost...and the launches you're gonna have to come down from :p

We typically run 6psi of boost intercooled with 91 octane or higher on the 6.2. We also recommending going to a 7 heat range NGK plug, we run the motor at 11:1 air fuel, and only run 24deg's total timing. This is what I consider conservative, but no matter what, the motor will not live without an oil cooler when supercharged. It simply can't maintain temp and pressure with that 4qt system. Anything less than 3psi is to me is just not worth it, just because the bang for the buck is just not there.

On another hand, the 350 Mag has higher compression so we send them out with 5psi, same air fuel, but only 22degs total timing.

There great little motors and we really never see issues with them, but like RHJS2006 said, you put too much boost too them, and they won't make it. Don't put an oil cooler on, and you'll toast it.

Other systems don't touch the computer, and this is just wrong, if you play with fuel psi, your screwing with the entire system. With stock injectors and higher pressure, your gonna be rich in vacuum. You can typically get WOT to be near perfect, until it sets a MAP HI code (takes about 150 failed samples for failure). This usually occurs in approx. 15 seconds of running in boost. Then it goes to failure mode and runs off of a calculation based off of TPS % and this gets by, but is not very accurate. It runs rich at idle and lean on top. Either way, it's not good. The older the motors, the better FMU style systems work, as the computers are not as advanced and the tolerances, fail-safes, etc. are not as accurate, therefore the FMU works pretty good. But some mfg's give you a fuel psi range of +/-10psi which is a drastic variance. This is ok if you have an accurate wide band 02, but if your dealing with reading plugs, good luck :)

Let me just say Whipple Charged - Thank You for taking the time to explain in depth about the 6.2s and how they operate when supercharged and how to properly set up the engine system with Whipples. I agree with rhsj2006, the best bet is to move up to more power or build the right power from the beginning. Thanks OSO!

For an interesting dissertation on eutectic pistons and
supercharging check out the February issue of Car Craft starting on page 36 "A Boat Anchor Into a 611HP Screamer"
It's interesting to note that they started out with a boat engine.

In short, they broke a bunch of pistons.

There's a message board called justanothertoy.com, and one
of the participants, pipelayer, supercharged a couple of 6.2's
in his Powerquest and experienced this kind of joy. I don't know if you can still find it on that board, because the board got hacked a couple of times and rebuilt. He still posts there from time to time.

I'm not an engine builder, just passing on a few observations.

Pesky Varmint

Were either of these carb setups Pesky? I have yet to see or hear of a properly set up carb supercharged engine that have the hypereutectic (or cast) pistons as the primary mode of failure. That means proper ring end gaps, proper head gaskets and bolts, proper a/f and appropriate advance curve, and otherwise no detonation due to leaky valve seals or anything else. If the setup is wrong forged will fail too, its just a matter of time difference, forged are more forgiving. But the real advantage to forged is when they fail they melt a hole in the top and cause less damage than when a hypereutectic fails, which is it shatters and destroys the engine.

So you see, it makes little difference what your pistons are, if your setup is incorrect. With FI is is very hard to get the setup right. So if you want to supercharge a newer style engine with the hypers, you should plan to go to carb. Otherwise you will be prone to fail as others have mentioned. I just disagree with the idea it is the pistons fault.

BT :cool:

Motors don't just fail, and hyperutetic pistons don't just fall apart. These pistons fail, in these types of applications for multiple reasons, many would also fail a forged piston, it just takes longer, and at 5000rpm, were talking seconds, not hours. Number 1 killer is detonation, and this is far more likely with high boost levels, suspect gas, agressive spark curve, lean air fuel, too hot spark plug, high engine temps (above 140 on stock engines is hot when SC'd), high oil temps, tight clearance, etc. All plus more have effects.

The simple fact is that you can supercharge stock motors, and as long as things are kept within reason, you'll get extreme pleasure and excellent reliability from them. If it's not setup right, as some mfg's don't sale a 100% pre-done system, then thats already 1 major thing thats going to possibly add to the chance of a failure. Thats why the "system" is so important, you have to rely on the mfg. to give you something that won't give you 8 ash-trays!

It's only hard when you can't control the ECM. The ECM has all the capability needed to make the motor work, whether it's the MEFI 3 for the 99-02 motors or the ECM from 02-08, both can be setup properly by the right person or mfg. Although carbs are nice, and simple, the EFI gives you far more ability in spark, knock and fueling control, but because of this, your dependent on the calibration. Similar to a carb, if you got a moron tuning the carb, you might as well hand over your wallet and go home. So good carb guy can make a carb SC'd motor run, good FI guy can make a EFI motor run. The problem is, there's many EFI guys that claim to be experts that aren't, and a lot of times, that gives EFI a bad rap.

I believe we have agreement here. The only thing I would add is a carb is an analog type signal, meaning one change and you get a whole range of change. FI is digital and you need to either map the whole profile or be able to write logrithms to simulate analog. I stick to carbs for the moment because that is what I have the technolgy to tune. Others contemplating SC should consider their tuning ability before venturing beyond stock calibration on FI. But let's not blame the stock hypereutectic piston for these failures. If you have FI and want to supercharge, I am convinced you need to invest in the technology or hire a pro like WC above. Anything less will get you ashtrays as WC says.

Very well said. Many blame issues with motors on the parts themselves (pistons, rods...), and while it's certainly possible, it's not always the case. Most go off prior knowledge, example, the 2005 Mustang GT had a new high compression motor, 3v per cylinder, hyperutetic pistons and the ring is almost on the top of the piston. So many people said you can't make power with that, can't run boost. Well we run 12psi, intercooled and take power from 300 to 575hp, on a stock engine. It passed a 100 hour durability test, 50 peak torque, 50 peak hp. Sold a few thousand, failure is less than 2%. Piston isn't ideal, and certainly not what you would do for a built SC'd motor, but, it works just fine in it's given arena.

Whipples are the ****, and Dustin knows what hes doing !!!!!