Originally Posted by sonoronos
If I'm interpreting you correctly, you're speaking from the perspective of a potential buyer of a turnkey solution, and that's totally valid. I personally was addressing the issue from the perspective of the tuning equivalent of say, RUF. There's room in the market for both types.
RUF is an auto manufacturer, at least that's how they are legally considered in Germany. Of course they do sell so individual parts that you can also buy and add some bits here and there. But it's really the same exact thing I am talking about. RUF doesn't build race cars, they build street legal performance automobiles. I visited their factory in Germany two years ago and spoke with someone on this exact topic. So even their cars are built to run on pump gas. The bottom line is that the cars need to be modded so that the average person can run it fairly reliably and easily. I envision a solution to the naturally aspirate XF to take the exact same form and have the exact same quality as VF engineering (
www.vf-engineering.com) does for VW/Audi, Porsche, and BMW cars. Call up a tuner, tell them I want a stg 1 or beyond kit, and they send me what I need. For most people, this will be a great way to address additional power needs. The problem is finding the right company to make this happen.
The issue I have with going for "low boost" kits is that such a kit would have to be fairly cheap in order to compete with the obvious alternative, which is simply purchasing the SRT6. The advantage of someone developing a "monster" so to speak is that they are able to achieve something that could not readily be achieved with bolt-ons on the SRT6. What SRT6 owner would completely rebuild their AMG engine to make "really big" power? Not many, if any. The reason being that once they do that, their car really ceases to be an SRT6, and the original economic advantage gained from buying an SRT6 is lost.
You certainly have a point there. But the problem with building a monster kit, as you called it (which I'm guessing is what 12+ psi), is that it takes LOTS of R&D and LOTS of new parts compared with a lower boost kit. There is also a very important missing piece to your arguement. You have no clue what an 8psi, for example, turbo will do to the output of NA crossfire. Turbo's are much more efficient ways of generating power than a blower. The most efficient blowers are centrifugal, which themselves, are basically belt driven turbos. So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss a low boost setup until there is any reason to. And for me personally, aside from the motor, I don't particularly like the SRT6 XF. I hate the automatic, I don't like the goofy spoiler, and I hate the wheels. Aside from changing the wheels, I'm not very keen on doing exterior mods to a car. The plain XF with the 6-speed, is perfect. Except the engine could use a bit more power. I think a lot of people are content with the plain crossfire and really just want a bit more juice from the motor. I;m not sure about this, but is insurance more on the SRT6 than it is on the plain crossfire?
That's my "go big or go home" perspective. Whether it's realistic or not is perhaps dependent on personal resources. If you're ever in the DC area we can meet for drinks and argue about this further
That sounds great! As you can tell I love arguing about cars! I;m in Philadelphia, so if a bunch of us in the Philly-Baltimore-DC area want to meet in say, Baltimore and discuss the specifics over beers (etc) I'd be down for that! :-)
Well, a few do, we just don't hear much from them, ChuckNorris, for example is running on 10psi.
I'm definitely new to the crossfire community, so I don't know what sort of aftermarket boost options people are running. But I will say that I wasn;t all that impressed with what I read about on Chuck Norris's thread. I wouldn't leave the garage on a homemade FI project without a wideband O2 sensor to see exactly how I was doing and if I was severely damaging the car. It seemed like this was a secondary concern for him. It's for this reason, why I would rather spend more money and buy something from a known and trusted source in the crossfire/benz community, even if I had to spend a couple grand more. I've spent some time tinkering and frankly, I don't enjoy it. I'm a driver, not a mechanic. Create, test, and sell me a reliable kit, at a reasonable price, and I'd be fully on board. I;m very leery when people talk about homemade kits unless the person does this sort of work for a real job and is taking on a side project or they are some type of mechanical engineer by trade during the day. I always try to avoid the cheapest way of doing things, whenever possible. There's also quite a bit of difference between turbo and s/c, so it would be nice to see someone adapt a turbo to the XF.