Odd question about reliability

Hi again everyone, thanks for your advice to date, I'm finally shopping in earnest for a car. I do have a question though about reliability.

Yes I have read the countless threads but what I am wondering about is that there are a couple of pretty clean looking Cougar XR7's reasonably priced in the 92-95 age group with the 5L. I am wanting a supercharger however given the concerns about the SC/XR7 3.8 SC mill I am curious if the 5L XR7's are any better? Obviously the 5L is a different animal (I've owned 4 now so I know how the motor is) but I'm curious around the ancillary items (ABS, Sensors and common items that break).

There aren't a lot of SC available right now (about 4, one is a waste and one is out of town). There are 3 XR7 within 3 hours of here but 2 are 5L and I thought I'd ask before I dismiss them out of hand. That in mind, does anyone have a SC kit for 5L Cougars or Tbirds that would work on these cars?

There is actually more available for 5 liter motors than pretty much any other motor ever, maybe a 350 chevy too but you get the point. 99% of 5 liter mustang motor parts, brake parts, tranny and suspension parts are direct swap, including 99% of 5.0 blowers.

Hmm, so would that include a whipple as well do you think?

Whipples are OK but there are MUCH better blowers than whipple's. When you have low end torque from displacement the first thing you do is drop the inferior roots type blower right in the trash and go with a centrifugial blower. I had a Vortech T-trim in a Stang, 26lbs of boost. Whipples are highly overrated and overpriced. ATI procharger is fantastic as well, but basically anything will fit.

stubbs said:

Whipples are OK but there are MUCH better blowers than whipple's. When you have low end torque from displacement the first thing you do is drop the inferior roots type blower right in the trash and go with a centrifugial blower. I had a Vortech T-trim in a Stang, 26lbs of boost. Whipples are highly overrated and overpriced. ATI procharger is fantastic as well, but basically anything will fit.

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Whipples are not roots blowers. Whipple refers to a manufacturer of twin-screw superchargers, which create the great torque curve of a roots with efficiency coming very close to that of a centrifugal. For a street car with occasional to moderate track use, there is almost no benefit in going centrifugal over the twin-screw (except possibly price).

Yeah I've already gone the Centrifigal route and while very cool most of my jollys are from the stoplight these days.

So basically what I think I'm hearing (or wanting to hear) is that the 5L in the Cougar shares the same front dress and overall intake system as the Mustang 5L?

Back to my original question though, are the other items on the 5L cougars any different than the SC? Things like the ABS, ride control and the like?

Well strait off the SC's have the independant rear suspension and the cougars and LSC's(I love those cars) have the solid rear 8.8 rear axle. I have seen all with ABS, I'm not sure if it's the exact same one but thats not really a big deal.
One other question, I was taught that twin screw superchargers are roots blowers, have I been misinformed?

stubbs said:

Well strait off the SC's have the independant rear suspension and the cougars and LSC's(I love those cars) have the solid rear 8.8 rear axle. I have seen all with ABS, I'm not sure if it's the exact same one but thats not really a big deal.
One other question, I was taught that twin screw superchargers are roots blowers, have I been misinformed?

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Yes, on a couple things. All 89-97 TBirds, Cougars, and Mark VIIIs have IRS, not just the SC.

Roots and screw blowers do not perform anywhere near the same. Just check out XR7 Dave's autorotor testing post from a couple months ago, his car improved about 90rwhp with a twin screw.

oh, and I believe ABS and rear disc brakes were an option on non-SC birds and cougars, so a 5.0 may or may not have them.

stubbs said:

One other question, I was taught that twin screw superchargers are roots blowers, have I been misinformed?

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http://www.coloradocobras.com/whipple/superchargers/superchargers-compared.html

Twin Screw, and Roots super chargers share the fact that they are both positive displacement. But their method of "displacing" the intake air is different. Straight type roots blowers are highly inefficient. Generating much heat for little power. Eaton took the straight lobes and twisted them slightly. This improved the efficiency of the standard roots design and is what they have used for quite some time.

Note that much of the changes in supercharges has come from improvements in mass production. It's not that Eaton first thought of twisting the lobes. It's simply that eaton was one of the first to find a way to mass produce reliable twisted rotors that met the necessary tollerances at a reasonable cost.

With new techonology becoming available, a futher refinement of the Roots blower is the twin screw. Unlike the Roots blower, that simply forces air into the intake system, the Twin Screw or Lysholm actually compresses air as it moves through the blower casing. The method it uses is more efficient than the twisted lobe root design of the Eaton. This translates into more boost at lower crankshaft RPM and less increase in intake temperature charge.

All pluses. Eaton plans on rolling out a twin screw style blower soon, and Ford will probably start using it. Mercedes already uses them on their supercharged engines produced by their AMG performance group.

cowtown said:

Hi again everyone, thanks for your advice to date, I'm finally shopping in earnest for a car. I do have a question though about reliability.

Yes I have read the countless threads but what I am wondering about is that there are a couple of pretty clean looking Cougar XR7's reasonably priced in the 92-95 age group with the 5L. I am wanting a supercharger however given the concerns about the SC/XR7 3.8 SC mill I am curious if the 5L XR7's are any better? Obviously the 5L is a different animal (I've owned 4 now so I know how the motor is) but I'm curious around the ancillary items (ABS, Sensors and common items that break).

There aren't a lot of SC available right now (about 4, one is a waste and one is out of town). There are 3 XR7 within 3 hours of here but 2 are 5L and I thought I'd ask before I dismiss them out of hand. That in mind, does anyone have a SC kit for 5L Cougars or Tbirds that would work on these cars?

Click to expand...

Well I do know the head gaskets don't "pop" as easily as SC's as stated there
are more performance mods.

A reply from Kenne Bell said simply "we do not support custom applications" when it came to whether the 5L Mustang kit fit on the 5L cougar. This still leaves me with the thought, can I buy a Whipple and put it on a 5L XR7 Cougar?

I have a line right now on two decent looking TBird SC but we'll see how they pan out, thus far I haven't been overly lucky with what I've found.