A friend of mine just offered me a used whipple kit for my 93 5.7l tbi at a price that is way too good to pass up. I dont have any experience with blowers and want to know what Im getting in to. I already have long tube headers and exhaust. I do also have a March Pulley kit on the truck. What else would I need to make it run smooth? I have a 700r4 tranny. Is this going to be an issue? I assume I will need to do something to the tranny but not sure what. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

One other thing Im worried about is hood clearance. My truck is bagged and bodydropped so clearance is an issue. Do these blowers add height to the motor. My friend said no but Im skeptical. If anyone has pics of a whipple'd tbi motor that would be great. Thanks again.

 

I wouldn't unless you know who can professionaly install it. I'm not real sure if this is necessarily a Whipple friendly site.

 

bolt it on (blower and associated hardware).. change engine cailbration.. have fun

 

The TBI kits mounts the supercharger on a plate that sits on the intake manifold. The TBI unit gets relocated to the rear (inlet) of the supercharger. There should be an FMU and a boost-a-pump to get fuel pressure increased and it should include a PROM with tuning on it. It gets complicated with the TBI kit because there were different ECM calibrations for different years and models. You'll be hard-pressed to find someone with knowledge on what the combinations of compatibility were - including Whipple themselves.
The reason you don't find too many people here running Whipple is because they STILL don't have a smog-legal intercooled kit for hte Gen-III/IV engines. This has been promised now for something on the order of half-a-decade. In fairness they nearly went bankrupt when Lysholm screwed them over on their compressor supply (Ford+Greed) and they couldn't fill their orders. While Whipple struggled, other companys' kits evolved into better products, even those with less efficient blower technology. In the past three years many have transitioned away from bolt-on supercharger kits to bolt-on and custom turbos. Bang for the buck and turbos yield pretty amazing satisfaction.
You won't see much talk here on Gen-1 and Gen-1e small blocks. Some folks here do not even know what a TBI 350 is and even fewer have any clue what "L05" means.
Good luck. You've got yourself a can of worms.

 

I know what LO5 means . It is the TBI 350 used in truck from 87-early96, then in late 96 it was fitted with vortec heads and renamed L31. The LO5 is reconized by it centerbolt valve covers. It was also used in cars from 89-93, then it was replaced by the LT1 in cars untill 96. corect me if I am wrong. Not trying to be a smartass or anything, I just know that engine pretty well.

 

You're right.
There are a lot of differences between the L05. Some are relevant to this thread so I'll cover a few:
L05 was hydraulic flat-tappet, L31 hydraulic full-roller
L05 has conventional intake ports, L31 has raised intake ports
L05 has conventional combustion chambers, L31 was first to use swirling to improve mixture distribution.
L05 uses convention SBC intake gaskets, L31 uses composite plastic gaskets.
L05 has center heat riser in intake, L31 heads do not have this.
L05 has coolant crossover in rear, L31 has these passages blocked.
L05 came with the green coolant, L31 was first SBC to get Dex-Cool.
L05 has two throttle-body injectors over single-plane intake, L31 has Central-Point Injection and is a multi-port design.
L05 blocks are the first single-piece seal SBC blocks in production. They have castings to acommodate roller cam thrust plate but are not machined for them. L31 has all these features machined and uses them.
L05 run EPROM-based OBD-I ECM. L31 runs on Flash-RAM OBD-II programmable PCM.
L05 is speed-density calibrated, L31 is mass-air metered but with a lot more weight on MAP than current technology PCM calibrations.
L05 ECM has not provisions for "abuse mode" or "torque management", L31 PCM started it all.

The problem with bolting a blower onto a TBI engie is fueling it. You can't just program these, have to burn a PROM.

 

That is some good info there. I learned something today.

 

I do have someone I trust to install it. Are there any "Whipple friendly" sites? The kit is only going to cost me $200 so I'm not going to go for a turbo or another brand supercharger. So the kit should come with a chip of some sort? For the price I dont think I should pass this up. Im not looking for huge horsepower or 12 sec. quarter mile times and Im not towing anything. Is this kit more trouble than its worth? Thanks for the help guys. I appreciate it.

 

Maybe svtperformance.com

 

www454ss.com