Stan Lee famously wrote, “with great power comes great responsibility.” While this is almost universally true, if DeatschWerks could re-write it, it would probably go something like “with great power production comes great fuel demands.” Anyone who has ever built a high-horsepower engine knows this to be true, but up until now that typically involved heavily modifying, or even replacing, the stock-style fuel system to handle the massive amounts of octane needed to power such a mill. Enter DeatschWerks, and their high-horsepower, 100 percent drop-in, plug and play systems for the 2009-2015 Cadillac CTS-V— capable of handling up to 1,000 horsepower on gas and 750 horsepower on Ethanol.

DeatschWerks was established back in 2004 out of founder Dave Deatsch’s garage. Their original concept was, and is to this day, a simple one. Make drop-in fuel components that are capable of supporting high power levels while retaining stock fitment, NVH (noise, vibration and harmonics) and operation.

“My goal when I started this company was to build fuel systems that worked with OE systems, not against them,” said Dave Deatsch, president of DeatschWerks.

While the goal may seem simple enough, achieving it is frequently anything but. Today’s fuel systems are much more complicated than those of yesteryear. Take for example the complex system that supplies the second-gen CTS-V with go juice. Instead of using an in-tank or in-line fuel pressure regulator, with or without a return system, the V uses an electronically variable system consisting of a variable-voltage fuel pump, a fuel pump control module (FPCM) and a liquid fuel pressure sensor.

The fuel pressure sensor provides a signal to the ECU that continuously tells the system whether the car’s fuel requirements are being met and ramps the fuel pump up if a predetermined pressure is not being maintained at a given rpm and load. This means the pump provides fuel to the engine on an as-needed basis. Not only does this system increase pump life, it typically runs more quietly and prevents the pump from unnecessarily heating up the fuel due to constantly running at full tilt.

Even with this advanced system, there are limits to its ability to support higher levels of power production in stock configuration. With this limit in mind, DeatschWerks set out to design a drop in fuel pump, as well as drop in fuel injectors, that will allow your V to push the boundaries of what the supercharger is even capable of producing— and do it with E85 if you so choose.

DeatschWerks began with their test mule 2011 CTS-V— which just so happens to be Deatsch’s personal vehicle. DeatschWerks wanted to put its new system to the test and push the limits of what it was capable of supporting. When the decision was made to install the 340lph DW300c dual fuel pump kit in the V, it had already received a round of modifications— including DeatschWerks 950 cc DW 16u-90 injectors, a mild cam from Texas Speed and Performance, a 4-inch cold air intake, ZL1 supercharger lid, Stainless Works 1 7/8-inch primary long tube headers and a Tony Mamo ported LS7 throttle body. This made it the perfect candidate for an E85 conversion.

The car was sent to Chuck Anders at Houston House of Power for the switch to ethanol. Anders installed a Flex Fuel sensor and gave the V an appropriate tune. This allows to it to run on straight E100, pump gas or any mixture in between.

“The Cadillac isn’t a Flex Fuel car but it’s got the capabilities in the stock ECU,” Deatsch explained. “Before Flex Fuel, you’d have to have two tunes and empty the tank every time you wanted to switch over from one fuel to another, but this system can determine what the ethanol-to-gasoline mixture is and blend the tunes accordingly.”

After the V returned to Deatschwerks, it put down 680 rear-wheel horsepower, all while holding a rock steady 65 psi of fuel pressure with a peak injector duty cycle of just 70 percent— a substantial amount of power, but still shy of the 750-horsepower goal they had set for themselves at the onset of the project. Undeterred, a new round of modifications began.

The car was returned to Houston House of Speed for a more aggressive Force Fed Stage 3 camshaft as well as porting and polishing work on the heads and supercharger. A 2.44-inch upper pulley and a 9.1-inch lower upped the boost to 15 psi. This rewarded the DeatschWerks team with 749 rear-wheel horsepower. Not only did they reach their horsepower goal, the new setup is as quiet as OE, doesn’t have hot or cold start issues and allows full use of the OE fuel tank, even when operating in low-fuel conditions.

The CTS-V’s fuel system operated flawlessly and Deatsch tells us that the drop-in DW300C dual fuel pump kit and DW 16u-90 injectors came to a grand total of right around $1,000. Not bad for a system that is capable of supporting up to 1,000 horsepower without any modification to the stock fuel system other than dropping in a new pump and swapping out the injectors.