cummins cowboy

I heard mention by a couple people that a vehicle that runs a SC looses less power at high altitude, lets say you have a super charged mustang that is putting out 500 HP at the crank, then you have say a N/A Z06 corvette that is also running 500 hp at the crank. how much power loss do you think both cars would have at say 5000 ft,

jahudso2

its all about barometric pressure. the maximum amount of pressure in the intake manifold of a naturally aspirated car is the outside pressure. The higher altitude you go, the less air pressure, and the less oxygen you get in the intake. turbocharged cars will still make around the same amount of boost no matter what the altitude is so the intake manifold pressure will not drop as much if you are at a higher altitude.

sleepless

The loss will be the same since a supercharger has a fixed boost level based on the pulley size. Of course you could put on a smaller pulley to compensate; the N/A car is out of luck.

AmericanSpeed

get nitrous, you are bringing your own air

grampa_stang

According to the NHRA correction factor. If a N/A car loses 1 second, and F/I car only loses .5. So, up at altitude, us N/A cars really have a disadvantage againt the FI guys ie: STI's and Evos.

See this link: http://www.nhra.net/tech_specs/altitude.html and scroll down...you'll see this

NOTE: Supercharged and/or turbocharged cars (i.e.: AA/A, AA/AT, BB/A, BB/AT, A/PM and AA/PM) use half factor; TA/D and TA/FC cars are not factored.

bottom line is yes...they only lose 50% of what us NA guys lose