Originally Posted by Whippled 496

Hello guys,
I am hoping you can answer a few questions for me. I am looking for honest answers in regards to HP gains with your kits. First off, let me give you a little background on my vehicle. My truck is a 2003 Chevy 8.1L 2500HD. I have noticed there are VERY FEW of your kits in the truck market. I see plenty of info on your kits in regard to boats, but I can not find any testimonials for those who have bought your kits for a truck. Currently I have low miles (31,000) and have a Whipple supercharger installed on my truck. I have done the standard upgrades such as larger injectors, cat-back exhaust, custom speed density tune, etc. My problem is I can not get more than 6psi out of my kit due to the small size of the whipple 2.3L blower. Its just not large enough to supply this engine with the air it needs to go beyond those boost levels. I have discussed this with Jeff and Mike over at Whipple and they do not have any suggestions for me. I understand that the 496 is not a great candidate for a blower in its stock form anyway so I have been strongly considering ditching the blower and investing in heads and intake setup. You guys seem to be the only ones (or the most reputable anyway) for supplying these engines with upgrades. So without blabbing all day long here are my questions. Please keep in mind I have a completely stock bottom end. No upgrades to the pistons, crank, rods, etc.

1. What kind of rear wheel horsepower gains can I expect from your heads/intake/cam kit?
2. What is the total price (including bolts, gaskets, etc) for the kit?
3. How much of a power increase would I see from your kit?
4. Do your heads come assembled and ready to install? Do they come with the roller rockers installed?
5. Assuming I was feeling crazy, would you condone installing the Whipple blower on my engine after installing your kit? Would it even fit?

My truck went from having 267 rear-wheel horsepower and 322 rear-wheel torque stock....to 412 rear-wheel horsepower and 502 rear-wheel torque after the blower and exhaust install (this includes the SD tune as well). That's a respectable increase for sure. The problem is, I don't like the unreliability that comes with maintaining the blower tune. Always watching the ambient temps, timing adjustments, detonation, not to mention the difficulty of working under thehood with all the extra stuff in the way....the 8.1L is massive!. I want to bolt on a reliable kit that I wont have to worry about. What kind of (actual) rear-wheel horsepower gains can I expect from your kit with my truck in otherwise stock form? Can I expect HP gains in the neighborhood of what the blower gave me? I would highly appreciate any literature you have in regards to your products installed on any 8.1L equipped vehicles as well as any documentation you have for installing your kits in those vehicles.

Thanks you very much,
Jimmie

Originally Posted by RAYLAR

Hello Jimmy:
Yes we really do have quite a few trucks all over the globe that are
running our kits on their 8.1L trucks with very good horsepower,
torque and reliability results. Raylar Engine is the worlds only
engine and parts company who has real performance parts and proven
systems for the 8.1L - 496 engine!
If you were to install our BCK105 (new version) kit on your truck,
coupled with a good set of long tube headers from the guys at
Stainless Works in Ohio you will see about 500-525HP at the crankshaft
which should translate to about 390 -410 rear wheel
horsepower on your truck and about 600 ft/lbs of troque at the
crankshaft which would be about 500ft/lbs at the rear wheels. You
would also need our marine injector upgrade to replace the stock truck
injectors unless your whipple kit has already changed the stock
injectors to larger units. With this installation you would need to
retune the truck on the dyno for the naturally aspirated operation
versus supercharging but I am sure your dyno tune shop can handle
those adjustments. This would also allow your truck to operate on
87-89 octane fuel and the milage should increase dramatically over
what the supercharger is using.
Our kits come with the stainless roller rockers as a kit compponent.
Our cylinder heads are complete, out of the box , ready to run
beautifully CNC prepared aluminum heads that have forged stainless steel valves, springs retainers, bowl blends, 5 angle valve jobs and need absolutely nothing to improve them.
Raylar heads are plaster cast and are smoother than hand ported cylinder heads so no addtional work or massaging is needed!
Raylar does not recommend installing any supercharger on stock 8.1L
blocks because the pistons are hypereutectic emission style pistons
which can fail explosivly with even minor detonation under boost that
a supercharger will sometimes see!
The complete Raylar BCK105 truck engine 525HP kit is $6860.00 each plus
UPS shipping and handling. These are all stock shelf parts at Raylar.
I hope I have answered your questions and if we can help with your
truck upgrade plans, please call me toll free at (866) 496-8181 to
discuss or order parts.

Best Regards,
Ray @ Raylar

Originally Posted by Whippled 496

Thank you very much for the response Ray. I am VERY intersted in this Kit and would love to see any literature or info you have on other 8.1L trucks in the US that have this installed. Is the BCK105 safe for stock bottom end motors? What is the difference in this kit over the other kits you have? Do you have any dyno charts showing the HP increase over stock in any truck applications? What is the turn around time for delivery on the BCK105 kits?

Originally Posted by Raylar

Jimmy:
Jimmy we have never done a write up on our kits in trucks that have
installed our kits as we have been doing so much more with the marine
motor 8.1Ls that we just have not taken the time to work with one of
the magazines like GM tech or such for an article. As for the safety
and reliability of the stock bottom end, I can only say that in all our
in house dyno work during R&D, and the hundreds of these kits that have
been fitted to all the high performance marine motors, we have never
seen a failure in an 8.1L engine that was attributed to our kit and its
operation.....and believe me when I say the marine engine loads and
stresses are far greater than those on a truck motor. A lot of the
marine 496 (8.1L high performance Raylar equipped engines) run in Poker
Runs and racing applications where they are spinning 5000rpms for
hours at a time under full prop loads, they never coast like a
vehicle!! The other kits we sell like our BCK103 kit is designed
just for boat use where the engine will be operated in the 5000+rpm area
for longer durations, hence the camshaft is a different profile than
we use in the truck 105 kits. The BCK106 kit is a 600+ horsepower kit
equipped with a bigger camshaft that requires redoing the short block
with larger valve relief forged pistons and H-beam billet connecting
rods and a forged crankshaft to take the higher cam lifts and higher
horsepower and torque loads.
These have only been used in marine Racing and performance boats and
trucks that were being raced 1/4 mile drag or tractor pull competition
events. These kits are not usuable in street driven - towing and
normal truck operations or uses.
If you go to our website (http://www.raylarengine.com/index.html) you will see all the products as well as
some articles about our kits in marine high performance uses.
Jimmy we are not a magazine advertising type company where all type of
hype and claims are made touting our products. Most of these high
volume advertising firms get lots of write ups in the magazines saying
their products are so great because they buy a lot of very expensive
advertising in those very magazines. These manufactures also tend to
use a lot of terms like "as much as", "nearly" and "up to" this much
power! When we take a stock 8.1L -340HP 460ft/lbs of torque engine, and add our Raylar kit, then measure this same engine on an independant dyno facility at 525HP and 600ft/lbs of torque, the results are real, corrected numbers with full loads and no tweaking the numbers or results. Raylar has over 500 happy kit customers and we did not get those by overstating or "tweaking" our results. Raylar manufactures and sells only super high quality proven products and you can be assured they will work, be reliable and make big power in a truck
thats properly equipped and tuned to use the engine improvements our
kit components provide.
Best Regards,
Ray @ Raylar

Originally Posted by OLD BULL

Sounds like a great setup! I say give it a try. If you decide to take the plunge you'll probally be the first here to be running that combonation. I'm sure you have been asked this before but, have you thought about going turbo? Infinate possibilities and boost.

Originally Posted by fastnblu

Whippled, I've always been into small blocks. Why? Perhaps it's what I grew up w/ that I attribute that to. Big Blks on the other hand are for generating a gob of torque. & swill fuel. If one is a gearhead or needs the TQ for work/ or pullin a whatever, they get it done. Enuff ramblin.

I commend u to try your hand w/ something that parts are hard to come by, if not non-existent.

Sounds like power is in same ballpark, & , IIRC, the Raylar TQ is better. Their customer service sounds top notch. I won't deal w/ a co. or people that don't communicate back in a reasonable time or stand behind their product.
I liked the fact in the 3rd quote they spoke of real world results not smoke & mirrors.

I know they said no boost. If u decide to use their kit, do u plan to change pistons or rods? Particularly if u later boost?

Originally Posted by BADMOFO

I don't know Jim. First off, the 496 Whipple kit most likely won't be an easy sell. 2nd, after all of the effort, you're really not looking at any more power are you (looks like a little less)? The numbers that they estimate should still have you in the mid 13 second range (maybe low 13's) at best....And the headers would have to be $1k I'd think??? I like your truck as it is. A bone stock looking 2500 Extended cab 4x4 that runs mid-low 13's. I'd be leary of spraying on top of adding that kit as they warn of the weak pistons and short block woes.

Originally Posted by XLR8NSS

Anyone make a stroker kit for that sucker?