Chevrolet Silverado Walkinshaw upgrades revealed

Walkinshaw Performance has lifted the covers off a range of upgrades for the Chevrolet Silverado 1500, enhancing its performance, comfort and towing capabilities.

The core of the Walkinshaw upgrades is the Fury Packs revealed late last year. The $11,500 Fury 1 pack includes 18-inch rims with 295/65 Goodyear tyres, retuned 35mm twin-tube dampers with a 2.0-inch lift, a cat-back exhaust and decal kit.

16

The $16,400 Fury 2 is more comprehensive, featuring all of the above – but with 20-inch rims, 285/60 tyres and 410mm front brake rotors with six-piston calipers.

Walkinshaw senior engineer David Kermond says the Fury packs satisfy what many Silverado customers are asking for with new wheels, tyres and a lift kit – with the majority of orders being for the 20-inch wheel package.

The final piece of the performance puzzle is the new supercharger kit developed in conjunction with Harrop. It uses an Eaton TVS2650 supercharger with dual twin-path intercoolers, which Walkinshaw calibrated along with the bypass control valve to control temperatures and boost. The supercharger kit retails for $21,990, excluding fitting.

16

In conjunction with the exhaust and headers, it produces 406kW and 740Nm at the hubs, while the engine claim is 485kW – with torque likely to be in the 900Nm range.

Walkinshaw’s own testing resulted in 0-100km/h in 4.76 secs and a 12.66sec quarter mile at 177km/h. With the supercharger only, power is limited to 385kW at the hubs.

16

Cruising fuel consumption is claimed to be unaffected thanks to the supercharger bypass control valve, and the fact that the standard car’s cylinder deactivation remains functional.

Under heavier loads, the long-range fuel tank might come in handy. This expands the Silverado’s capacity to 185-litres, more than double that of the standard vehicle’s 91-litres.

With many customers using the Silverado for heavy towing, Walkinshaw has introduced a number of upgrades. The first is a GVM upgrade (pricing TBC), which increases Gross Combination Mass (weight of vehicle plus trailer) from 7160 kilograms to 7512 kilograms. While the maximum tow rating remains 4500kg, this increases payload from 712kg to 1000kg.

16

A 550kg weight distribution hitch (pricing TBC) improves towing performance by transferring more of the towing load to the front axle, while Walkinshaw’s locally-developed dampers ($1663) – standard as part of the Fury kit – are firmer than the OEM items to prevent rear sag and improve body control. Walkinshaw has dealers in every state.