There’s A Kit To Add A Hellcat Blower To An LS, But Say Goodbye To Your Hood

Fans of the recently-defunct MotorTrend series Roadkill (R.I.P.) will know that co-host Mike Finnegan named his Gen II Hemi-powered 1955 Chevrolet coupe “Blasphemi.” As in the unholy marriage of Mopar power in an iconic shoebox Chevy. We don’t know if this other unconventional mod has a nickname yet, but apparently, it’s now a thing to slap a Hellcat supercharger atop your Chevy LS motor, which also has a certain ring of, well, blasphemy.

The fact is that Chevy’s LS engine already has tons of blowers available without resorting to such witchcraft — both in the aftermarket and from General Motors in the form of the ZL1 Camaro’s LSA supercharger. Nonetheless, the Hellcat blower movement seems to be gaining traction for two reasons: It’s less expensive and/or has a larger displacement than more direct bolt-on alternatives.

On that first point, because of their bonkers horsepower in the hands of inexperienced drivers, there seems to be an endless supply of wrecked Charger and Challenger Hellcats being parted out. That’s not to mention that these muscle cars consistently rate near the top of the Highway Loss Data Institute’s list of vehicles which are most likely to be stolen and subsequently, chopped for parts. In fact, the Charger Hellcat is 60 times more apt to get stolen than your average car, at least in the 2020-2022 era.

A quick browse of auction sites like eBay shows that the going rate for a Hellcat supercharger hovers around $3,000. However, enthusiasts on message boards like Reddit often report buying them much cheaper locally, like $1,500 cheap, on sites like Facebook Marketplace. That said, you’re not just going to bolt your $1,500 bargain to your LS over a couple of beers. There’s a considerable list of parts required, not the least of which is a set of adapter plates to mate the blower to the LS cylinder heads. Besides the adapter plates, completing the install will require a throttle body adapter, pulley, a maze of wiring and electronics, plus some other stuff we’re probably forgetting like intercooler lines.

One company, Trinity Performance and Design, bundles some of these necessary components into a kit that also includes the adapter plates. To be sure, you’ll be scrounging for at least some additional parts, but Trinity’s $1,400 kit provides a decent starting point. Last year, a Trinity-equipped fifth-generation Pontiac GTO and a Cadillac CTS-V, both Hellcat-blown, participated in the Rocky Mountain Race Week drag and drive event. The idea for the kit was born after the man behind Trinity, Jacob Bailey, witnessed an LSA-blown LS motor underperform at a high-altitude Colorado drag strip.

Even after paying $1,500 to $3,000 for your (potentially stolen) Hellcat blower and another $1,400 for the installation kit, that’s still at least 50% less than the approximately $9,000 street price of GM’s comparable LSA supercharger kit. What’s more, the most common Hellcat supercharger has a 2.4-liter displacement and makes 11.6 pounds of boost compared to the LSA’s 1.9-liter displacement and estimated 9 pounds of boost. To be fair, much cheaper alternatives than either of these two blowers exist if you don’t need or want all of that boost. For example, the centrifugals kits available from Vortech and ProCharger. 

The one component you won’t find in any of the Hellcat-to-LS blower kits is a new hood. The same large-displacement that makes the Hellcat blower such a stout performer also makes it difficult to shoehorn into engine bays. For weekend warriors who only drive in nice weather or at the track, a hole cut in the hood — or no hood at all — will economically solve the clearance issues. Daily drivers who need more protection against the weather should probably add a high-rise or cowl induction hood to their shopping list for this mod. Come to think of it, is getting a cool new hood such a bad thing after all?