I'm looking for some SRT6 guy's on here who have a Renntech pulley & ECU upgrade. I'm getting ready to get one of these kits for my SRT6, but I would like to know a few things before I make the plunge. I have PM'ed eracer76 because he is one of the only guy's I've seen on here that has this kit, but he has not responded to it, or maybe he didn't receive it. Some of the things I would like to know are:
1 - Is it really worth the $3,000?
2 - What do they say about the effects on the factory warranty?
3 - What are they claiming for their warranty?
4 - If you think their kit, mainly the ECU remapping is not performing like it should or if somehow you think it went back to the OEM program, what are they claiming they will do about it, (remap it for free) ?
5 - Can you really feel the difference, (in the butt dyno)?
I would greatly appreciate any input or advice.

 

I haven't had experience with the Renntech set up, but I have played a lot with the programming of the Xfire ECU and my experience has been, if all you are going to do is the ECU, then typically a good programmer can get about 28 hp from it. If you are going to do the ECU with the pulley, the ECU on its own will probably only add 10 hp, not worth the $$, if Renntech even sells the pulley separate. I have installed 2 Evosport pulleys, without their ECU upgrades and got the same MPH gain, which directly relates to hp gain, that Renntech results have shown (with their ECU and pulley). So my thoughts are, why spend $3,000, for their setup (ECU and Pulley), when you can spend $1,900 for Evotechs dampened pulley by itself and get the same results. Both of the installs I did the mph in the 1/4 went from 105/106 to 109/110, which is approximately a 40 hp gain. The 1/4 mile ETs went from 13.2 to 12.7. That's about the same that you will get with Renntechs package. My opinion, save $1,000 dollars. Most dealers wont know the difference between pulleys so the warranty shouldn't be affected, but with an hour of labor time, if the need arises (engine issue), just put the stock ones back on. As far as product warranty, its a pulley from a very reputable company, not real complicated of an item and I have never seen one fail it the last 15 years I that I have been involved with supercharger pulley upgrades.

 

Damn screaminjoe, now I am confused. I've been doing research on ECU upgrades and pulley upgrades for several weeks. I've talked with Renntech, Kleeman and Evosport about this subject and they are telling me just the opposite of what you are. I'm not telling you that you are wrong, because when it comes to the newer generation hot rodding up cars I've never done it. Now give me an old 60's car and I can gitter-done. All of these companies I mentioned have dyno sheets to prove that their #'s are right, all three of them are telling me the same thing. They all have told me that just the ECU upgrade will gain only around 10 to 15 h.p. & just doing a pulley upgrade will gain about 30 hp, and if you do both you should gain around 45 hp.

 

Well, in my opinion 1/4 mph gains do not lie and are the best proof for what power gain you are really getting. Dynos can be set to say whatever the owner wants them to. Today's ECUs have plenty of technology and sophistication to adapt to the increase flow of air, usually up to 80 hp on V6s, so yes you can fine tune the power output with an ECU upgrade, but are you going to feel or see 10 to 12 hp ? I never have... And I surely wouldn't risk it for $900 or more dollars. Can't hurt to try it without it and then add it after. I have proven by mph numbers, the best bang for the buck, is the pulley and larger intake y-pipe. The pulley will give about 40 hp and the y-pipe will give about 10 and comes with high-flow air filters from Evosport. I would rather spend the $175 on the larger y-pipe to get 10 hp than $900 or more for the ECUs 10 hp. Then focus on making the supercharger's potential hidden power come out by increasing the heat transfer of the supercharger cooler and intake temps, so the ECU won't take away power when it retards the timing. See the thread on intercooler maximizing, where I explain my cheap but effective way of doing this.

 

I have been researching this somewhat lately as i myself plan to get a similar upgrade sometime in the near future.. What I can say is that the Renntech Pulley is a modded stock pulley while the evosport is a completely new pulley which looks clearly aftermarket... although this by itself does not say much.

The Evosport dampened pulley shows a 30 WHP gain on their dyno for their slk32 and c32 and will most likely provide an equal result on our srt.. this is more than stated by renntech at an almost equal price for the pulley set. As for the ECU the renntech shows a 25 FWHP gain which is likely more than the one shown by evosport. Both of their pulley + ecu set come out with a difference of only about $200...

Now it boils down to which way you want to go... To me and most other users Renntech is a largely more reputable company that has been in the business for a long time... they get their products from a division called MKB and are barely different from those offered by Brabus or kleeman as all of them get their products from MKB. Evosport designs their own products, but the ecu tune will be done by Powerchip in this case. So as the price is so barely different it all comes down to which way you want to go and... what you prioritize... to me it seams as Renntech is slightly more reliable while evosport has a slight edge in performance...

As one other user stated that he would go to the tuner closest to him... I suggest the same thing... as this decision is difficult to make. Just make sure that if you do decide to go with evosport you fork out that extra $500 and purchase the dampened pulley as it will make it easier to sleep at night.

One more thing... I have no proof of some of the things i stated it is largely a combination of speculation and logic.

 

This "Y - pipe" you are talking about, I went to the Evosport site and couldn't find it. Do you have any pictures or a link to a pictures? When I bought this SRT6 and brought it home, I got under the hood to look around just to see if I could figure out how everything works. After studying how does the air is delivered into the engine from the supercharger, I was looking at what I think you are calling a Y -pipe on the back of the engine and thought as small as it was it seamed to me that it would cause some restriction.

 

Sidez, I was thinking that the Renntech pulley was a dampened pulley, do you know if it is or not? I did think that the Evosport package sounded like as far as performance could be better. The biggest problem with that kit to me is changing out the alternator & power steering pulleys, my past experiences with getting these pulleys off of older cars that I've worked on is they are a real pain in the butt. Another thing about changing all those pulleys is that if you had to take the car in for warranty work and wanted to put everything back to OEM it would be a lot easier if you had the Renntech kit. As far as going to a local tuner there aren't any around where I live that I could take my car to do any type of remapping the ECU. The person I've talked to at Renntech say's they tune the ECU to the customers wants, I'm sure with in certain limits. It's to bad there isn't a programmer on the market that you could plug in and make changes to your needs at the moment. Before I bought this SRT6 I was looking at a '03 SVT Cobra that had a lot of aftermarket performance parts on it and they were all done at a SVT Ford dealership and he had a programmer that was installed on the car that he could switch to three different programs. Still leaning toward Renntech.

 

To answer your first question yes the renntech pulley is with a harmonic balancer...Also the renntech pulley looks very similar to stock and lack of knowledge a typical chrysler dealer will most likely not recognize them.

Hmm... wonder what they meant by "tune the ECU to the customers wants"... probably just the fuel octane accessibility...

Also in the previous post y-pipe was mentioned maybe "SL55 intake splitter and hose" is what you are looking for...? Evosport sells them in a set called evolution 2 power package, but that set also comes with some products that are incompatible for our cars... I am sure that if you give them a call they will be able to sell you the sl55 intake splitter and hose by itself... another good place to find it is asking a local dealer or mercedes tuner... as this is not a custom made product, but a stock product on the sl55.

- Sid

 

Well, I shelled out the $$$ yesterday for the Renntech kit. Pulled the ECU last night and shipped it off this morning. Since the weather conditions suck this time of the year here in Indiana and the car isn't going anywhere, I told them not to bother with express shipping so that should save me a couple $$. I just hope the weather gets better around here in a week or so because it will be tough to not be able to get the car out for a test drive. Anybody heard or seen a post or thread from eracer76, I PM'ed him awhile back about the install on his SRT6 and he hasn't responded. I have the install instructions but just wanted to ask him a few questions about when he done his kit.

 

Hi Steve,

So what was the total cost? How easy is it to pull the ecu? Now I see why you didn't chime in at all on the dyno tune with SpeedInnovation thread. :-)

Please do report back on how everything goes and what your assessment is of the product and if it's really worth the $$$.

Thanks.

 

i'll answer one of those.. the kit costs 3,000+ shipping costs depending on your locations.. and if you install it yourself that will be all for the costs heh.

 

The kit was $2,995 and if you go with the fast turn around shipping on the ECU it was $75 more, but I told them I was in no hurry if it would save me any shipping cost. So I don't know what they will be charging for the shipping, but it did cost me $28 to ship the ECU to FL. from IN. with $2,000 of insurance on it. It was pretty easy to pull the ECU I printed off directions from their web. site, the hardest part was getting the two outside connectors off. They have to be removed first and they were tight, the ones in the center have retainers that pulls the connectors out as you push them down.

 

Now I Got Renntech, I had a box on my porch when I came home from work yesterday. I started the install last night and should finish it up tonight, but it will probably be to late for a test drive. The car has not even been out of the garage for over a month, it's nice & clean and I hate to get it dirty. If the weather is half way decent Friday, (not raining or snowing) I'll won't be able to resist going for a test drive. I almost hate to really get into it hard because it only has 1,049 miles on it. The kit came with two small powered by Renntech emblems and one big Renntech trunk badge, but I don't think I'm going to put it on the hatch, I set it on the lower left corner and there was just too much going on back there. The two little powered by emblems will probably go on the top of the air filter housings, they would look good under the side grill's, but I've already put some real nice supercharged emblems there.

 

Nice... would be pretty hard for me to resist driving it after the install. :-)

As far as the emblem, you can try placing it by the faux side vents. I've seen some Renntech tuned cars that have theirs by that area. Looked pretty decent.

 

Gratz I hope you will fell the difference and dyno the car to show it to us also.

BTW. If you ever decide on selling the big renntech emblem I would buy it.

 

It's to cold to put any emblem's on here in Indiana, my garage is heated but I only keep it 55 to 60 degrees. So I'll have plenty of time to figure out where I want to put these three emblem's by spring. I've also bought all the CTD switch and vent surrounds, well pretty much of all of the chrome design stuff for the interior that was on their site too. But I haven't been able to put them on because of the cold, but I did take my grill off the car, took it in the house to put on the chrome covers.

 

i bought the first renntech upgrade for srt6 and feel it was well worth it. there's no doubt you will see a diff. first i installed the new computer upgrade and drove up to 140, ran out of road then the pulley kit. i'm not sorry about the cost and i'm not wealthy. just want the best for my favorite car.

 

I finished the Install last night and "Houston we have a problem". After I got the ECU in and everything was back together except putting the engine cover on, I got in the car and fired it up. Well it fired right up but the check engine light was on and it was running rough, I lightly give it some gas and it sounded like it was only hitting on about four cylinders. I shut it off and waited a few minutes and fired it back up, the check engine light was off but the car still sounded like it wasn't hitting on all six. I was very pissed and wondering what the hell could be wrong, so I pulled all of the connectors off the ECU to make sure I didn't bend a pin or something but everything looked good. So then I put all the connectors back on, fired it up again and it still ran like crap, the engine was shaking so bad you would have thought it was jump out of the car. I just got off the phone with the sale's person at Renntech and now I'm waiting on a call from their main tech to see what the hell is going on. The sale's guy told me not to worry they would get this straightened out.

 

steve, i wonder if you let the timing belt slip? i built a small tool to hold the flywheel started ring so this would not happen. you may need to first check to see if your timing is correct. don't get discouraged. the renntech upgrade is well worth it. you'll see.

 

If everything is installed correctly than... the only thing left is a problem with the ecu mapping... in which case you send it back and they take care of it. Doesn’t sound like a big or uncommon problem.