The Chevy Colorado is a fun compact truck that appeals to the daily driver and the enthusiasts alike. The company offers an off-road variant with a V-6 mill under its hood - the ZR2 – but Chevy never offered a hot, powerful V-8 on it. As it turns out, aftermarket tuners saw the void and decided to capitalize on it by plonking in the V-8 from the C7 Corvette Z06. But, it didn’t end there. The owner went ahead and further tuned it with Lingenfelter’s 720 Horsepower Kit. Result? A badass Colorado that is scary fast.
Lingenfelter Offers A Supercharger Kit For the Chevy Colorado's V-6 Engine
The Colorado ZR2 is an impressive truck known for its off-roading prowess. Chevy even offered it with the supercar suspension technology from Multimatic. However, you could have this only with the four-cylinder diesel, or the V-6.
First of all, Lingenfelter offers a supercharger kit for this V-6 that puts the truck on steroids and increases the power by 142 horses on paper. Never heard of the tuner? Well, Lingenfelter Performance Engineering was founded by NHRA racer, John Lingenfelter, and the company is famous for its GM tuning packages.
Anyway, coming back to the Colorado, in the V-6, two-wheel-drive guise, it puts out 260 ponies and 235 pound-feet of torque when tested on the dyno. After equipping it with Lingenfelter’s 450 Horsepower Kit, the dyno results showed 377 horses and 321 pound-feet of torque.
Update: This article and the graph below has been updated to reflect horsepower at the crank. Lingenfelter's update provides 450 horsepower and the crank and 377 horsepower and the wheels.
What Do You Say About The LT4 V-8 Mill With A Performance Kit?
The owner of this particular ZR2 wanted more and thus decided to swap out the engine for a V-8.
This was installed by the folks at Current Performance. The 6.2-liter, V-8 LT4 mill essentially produces 650 horses and the same pound-feet of torque. It is mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission. In this example, the LT4 was further mated to Lingerfelter’s 720 Horsepower Kit. The Lingenfelter kit includes a pulley designed to overdrive the supercharger by 15 percent, thus yielding an extra 2.5 psi of boost pressure, fasteners, belt, crankshaft bolt, 100-millimeter idler kit, a low-restriction air filter, engine tune, and a plethora of other parts.
This seems to be a lot less than the theoretical ‘720’ figure, but do take into consideration the difference of power delivery to the wheels in this type of a vehicle and a supercar. The big off-road tires don’t help the cause either. Nevertheless, the truck is an absolute beast with this package.
How Much Does this Performacne Update Cost?
Lingenfelter has priced this LT4 720 Horsepower kit at $1,095. The 6.2-liter, supercharged LT4 wet sump costs around $15,000, whereas the dry sump is around a thousand bucks more. These, of course, don’t include the prices for the 8L90E eight-speed transmission.
What are your thoughts on this conversion? Share them with us in the comments section below.