TRD Supercharged Solara vs. my 90 SC auto

Scott Long

Registered User
I was out cruising on saturday night down in Indiana and I stopped at a gas station so my girlfriend could go in and use the ladies room.

This guy walks up and as I'm sitting in my car, he just starts staring at me and looking at my car. When Jen comes out and gets back in the car I start to back out of my parking spot and that guy yells out from the window of a gold camry solara w/ 17" multi-spoke "tuner" wheels, and a folgers exhaust "does that thing have a supercharger?" so I said "yeah". He says "I have a supercharger too." and he backs up and takes off across the parking lot and gets to the road first. He takes off out of the parking lot and flying down an empty street. Jen tells me to catch him.

I take off and catch up to him and just as I get next to him we get a red light. I ask him "is that the TRD blower." he says "yeah". I ask him how much boost are you getting and he says "6 psi, how bout you?" and I said "11 with this pulley". Light turns green and we start off slowly, then I hear his exhaust get loud and he shoots forward. I punch it at around 15 mph and I take off. I catch him in 1st, as the car shifts into 2nd I pull a little bit ahead of him, and then the AOD shifts early into 3rd but I had about a car length between my back bumper and his front bumper and thats where he stayed. If I had a lentech I'm sure I could have pulled another car lenght out in 2nd.

Come up to the next intersection and he gets in the turn lane and turns left. Jen was laughing. She said "why would he brag about his supercharger and speed off, then try to race you from a red light, and and then lose." And I told her "obviously he was over confident about his car since he has a supercharger his ego got the boost."

I did some looking online and see many of the solara 3.0's w/ SC are turning low 15's on mostly stock engines. I'm assuming he had the supercharger and probably just a replacement muffler rather than a cat back. I don't know if his car was a stick or an auto but when he took off from the gas station it sounded like he had to shift it. So I'm assuming it was a 5-speed.

It wasn't really ricey other than the muffler was HUGE but otherwise there was no vinyl on the car. It probably does pretty good against some of the other imports which are mostly civics and integras and accords, and stuff in this area.

I didn't know what to expect and I thought he'd beat me but I had to at least try. To my surprise I pulled on him.

I found these stats about the TRD blower:
Solara stock 197 hp and 217 lb.ft.
s/c'ed puts out 247 hp and 242 lb.ft.

I turned around to see if I could find where he went and I cruised through a parking lot full of imports to see if he was there but god only knows where he went. I wanted to see the supercharger on that car and talk to the guy and see what all he had done to it. I think he'd have been pissed if I told him my car was stock.

I don't know how much it weighs. But I clearly had more torque to the ground than his car even produces.

My car is a 90 Tbird SC auto, bigger fuel pump, bigger MAF, cone filter, cats removed, mildly ported heads from when I did the head gaskets, transgo shift kit, 245/50/16 tires, stock gears, stock blower pulley, stock throttle body, stock intercooler, stock torque convertor.... basically its stock.
 
nice kill man....didnt even know they made performance parts for the solara let alone a supercharger. do you know what kind of supercharger they use?
 
It looks like a roots style blower. It bolts onto the head as a blower/manifold combo. Its not intercooled so they have to limit the boost. It is made by TRD (Toyota Racing Development) and costs about $2700 if you can get it on sale. I just searched on yahoo for TRD Supercharger Solara and a lot of stuff came up. I don't know what kind of compression the engine makes either so that could also be an issue when adding more boost on those cars.

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