Supercharging the Sierra
For years the only vehicle I drove in the winter was a truck of some kind. Before COVID, my daily commute was 25 miles each way. Since buying it new in 2016 my “daily driver” in the winter was the Sierra. It is comfortable…does everything just fine but it is big and heavy (slow!) with a transmission that never does what I want it to. One of the things that makes Wisconsin winters feel so long to me is a lack of driving something fun. Don’t get me wrong it was always a very nice vehicle…just not fun. As summer of 2019 passed the warranty expired and it was time to modify the truck to be what I wanted it to be. The last time I modified a truck for performance I put a ported intake and throttle body on my 1995 Silverado. Those mods didn’t help at all!
I decided bolting on some form of forced induction was going to be the best plan. Being a truck I wanted to go with a Positive Displacement blower for low end torque. At the time I had never had a PD blower before. I was shopping options and decided on the new (at the time) Edelbrock E-Force TVS2650 based kit. It uses the new 2.65L Eaton rotors used in the C7 ZR1. They had a sale on them at Summit Racing so I jumped on that knowing I wanted to supercharger the truck before winter. Charlotte and I took the truck on vacation to Tennessee and about half way through started filling up with 93 octane to get all the 87 out of the fuel system. Once we got home I got to work.
I couldn’t work out a way to lift the supercharger into place by hand even with a friend or two helping but fortunately there was just enough room to get it in with the engine crane. The fuel line feeding the high pressure fuel pump under the valley cover is really in the way since it also has to slide under the cowl but eventually got it squeezed in there.
This was the worst part of the install. The instructions were 110% useless for this step. They were clearly for a different (probably older) kit that is very different and they made no sense at all for this step. The rest of them were fairly coherent (wiring, intercooler, lines etc). I even took the time to e-mail them corrected instructions and they ignored me. I just checked months later and they FINALLY updated them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Even the updated instructions skip over how you are supposed to tighten the bolts. I’ve got a lot of tools and the only way I was able to tighten the bolts was to remove the coil covers, coils, and valve covers which gave me JUST enough room for a wrench.
Then came the intercooler/hoses/pump/wiring.
Done!
The install was frustrating, and the tune left a lot to be desired, especially the transmission, but once those were mostly sorted out it completely transformed the truck. Fuel mileage dropped from ~16mpg to ~13mpg and the truck requires premium now but hey that’s how it goes. With boost it is like a switch from every other truck to something special. It will never be as fast or engaging as summer toys but it puts a smile on my face and launching it in 4wd is awesome.
