PhoenixGTS
Enthusiast
Comments from the heart of the Belanger \"pickle\" debate
I live about ten miles from the B&B and Belanger factories and "Fat" Albert Box's shop. I recently had a header gasket blow on my Belangers. The Belanger Header facility recently moved (same building so same address/phone) so their lift is out of commisssion until the re-install is complete. Lou Belanger immediately stepped up and paid Fat Albert's crew to replace the gasket for me. This allowed me to mention the recent rash of posts on this and the other forum about the collector-filling pickles on the Belanger units resulting in a power loss over an open five-into-one collector design on supercharged engines. Here is what I heard:
Albert builds the premier Gen II engines going. You give him a core and $37,500 and he gives you back a stock displacement externally oiled dry sump engine with a small journal forged crank, 11.5:1 compression, a programmed AEM unit and all the other goodies that you can spin to 7,500-8,000 rpm if you want, and makes just shy of 800 corrected horsepower and well over 800 foot pounds of torque. They do all their tuning on a Stuska engine dyno and have taken their tuning to the level of running 68mm throttle-bodies instead of 70mm because the power under the curve was greater and the engine ultimately was faster. Al has his own drag car that is making just shy of 1,000 horsepower (9.45 @ 155 IIRC at nearly full weight) with no power adders. Alberts position is that on his normally aspirated engines the pickle is essential and his customers who have tried cutting theirs out always go back to the pickle. Al thinks that the idea of cutting the pickles out of your Belangers is insanity. Now it seems to me that given that a safe A/F ratio on a blown enginge is fatter than an engine without boost, that 800 hp from a non-blown engine is going to be moving at least as much air as an 800 hp engine with boost. I'm no fluid dynamics engineer, but the concept of the stepped collectors and pickles makes a lot of sense to me. And given that Albert can use anything he wants, and uses Belangers with pickles, I'll take that as an affirmation from the premier Viper engine builder.
As for Lou, his general comments are dyno this and dyno that - whatever. Put open collector headers on your car and see if it is faster at the track than with the Belangers and you will be disappointed. My follow-up to that is that if us Viper guys learn anything from the Supra crowd, it should be that dyno-queen status is what it is, but how fast do you go when the car is not strapped down.
I live about ten miles from the B&B and Belanger factories and "Fat" Albert Box's shop. I recently had a header gasket blow on my Belangers. The Belanger Header facility recently moved (same building so same address/phone) so their lift is out of commisssion until the re-install is complete. Lou Belanger immediately stepped up and paid Fat Albert's crew to replace the gasket for me. This allowed me to mention the recent rash of posts on this and the other forum about the collector-filling pickles on the Belanger units resulting in a power loss over an open five-into-one collector design on supercharged engines. Here is what I heard:
Albert builds the premier Gen II engines going. You give him a core and $37,500 and he gives you back a stock displacement externally oiled dry sump engine with a small journal forged crank, 11.5:1 compression, a programmed AEM unit and all the other goodies that you can spin to 7,500-8,000 rpm if you want, and makes just shy of 800 corrected horsepower and well over 800 foot pounds of torque. They do all their tuning on a Stuska engine dyno and have taken their tuning to the level of running 68mm throttle-bodies instead of 70mm because the power under the curve was greater and the engine ultimately was faster. Al has his own drag car that is making just shy of 1,000 horsepower (9.45 @ 155 IIRC at nearly full weight) with no power adders. Alberts position is that on his normally aspirated engines the pickle is essential and his customers who have tried cutting theirs out always go back to the pickle. Al thinks that the idea of cutting the pickles out of your Belangers is insanity. Now it seems to me that given that a safe A/F ratio on a blown enginge is fatter than an engine without boost, that 800 hp from a non-blown engine is going to be moving at least as much air as an 800 hp engine with boost. I'm no fluid dynamics engineer, but the concept of the stepped collectors and pickles makes a lot of sense to me. And given that Albert can use anything he wants, and uses Belangers with pickles, I'll take that as an affirmation from the premier Viper engine builder.
As for Lou, his general comments are dyno this and dyno that - whatever. Put open collector headers on your car and see if it is faster at the track than with the Belangers and you will be disappointed. My follow-up to that is that if us Viper guys learn anything from the Supra crowd, it should be that dyno-queen status is what it is, but how fast do you go when the car is not strapped down.
