93 Mark VIII
Registered User
This has been kept secret for a while, but after today's progress we decided there was enough done to post some info for others.
I'd like to thank Chris Mendola for supplying the car and assistance in the project, Jeff Garza (j57ltr) for help with CAD and design ideas, Apten for sponsoring the development, and several other individuals that helped. It still has some work before it's completed, but we expect to have the car on the dyno at the April 12th TBU meet.
I got this idea from a good friend who did a similar setup years ago on his SC with a lysholm blower. He went with an air-to-air intercooler instead, and was running low 12's all day long with less modifications than our project car has. I've wanted to do this for quite some time, and Chris Mendola was kind enough to volunteer as the guinea pig.
What the pictures below show is a 2.2L autorotor supercharger mated to a custom designed laminova intercooler. On the back side is a custom designed cast plenum, and a specially selected 1600cfm throttle body. I'll get into more of each item with pictures.
The supercharger...
This is like a whipple, but manufactured by Autorotor AB. They are essentially the same thing with the exception of the case and drive. Both companies use the same rotors. Autorotor does not retail sell superchargers, so Apten contacted them to distribute their products. Because of time constraints, the supercharger and bypass in this project were pulled from a Kenne Bell 4V Navigator kit. The only other Kenne bell kit that has this supercharger is the 2003 Cobra kit they sell, and the availability was not there to buy one of those kits instead. Everything else in the kit was sold off on eBay, but that was the fastest way for us to get one of these babies. The blower then had to be sent off to have a custom length drive pressed on.
To give you an idea of the size, the stock Super coupe blower is the Eaton M90. The 90 means 90 cubic inches. The larger lightning and 2003 cobra blower in an Eaton M112. A 2.2L Autorotor would be equivalent to 134 Cubic inches. This supercharger would easily provide over 30lbs of boost if we so desired.
The intercooler...
This was actually the largest part of the project. We decided to use a Laminova liquid intercooler system because they are touted as being the best flowing and most efficient intercoolers available today. There are no kits available, so we had to design the intercooler on CAD. Apten signed up and became a distributor for the cores, so we were able to get the one-piece all aluminum cores from Laminova AB in Sweden. The end caps and water passages were all designed in AutoCAD (with help from Jeff), and then sent off to be machined. Originally we were going to build a two-core system built inside of the intake to keep the height down. Because of time constraints, we decided to go with a three core system directly on top of the intake. The cooler is getting welded up this weekend, but you can see some construction pictures.
The blower inlet plenum...
This is a one-off piece. It was perfect for our setup and outsourced for manufacturing. If Apten ends up selling a 2.2L kit in the future, somthing like this would be key.
The throttle body...
This was manufactured by Accufab. It's an all billet piece, and HUGE. It's rated to flow 1600CFM, so we figured it would be adequate.
Other notes...
There are a few things that have been taken into consideration. When the plenum was built, we had to be sure it would clear the fuel rails. For that reason there is a notch at the bottom of it.
Note the TPS and throttle butterfly are on opposite sides of the throttle body. Because of how the butterfly was built on the accufab, it had to be mounted this way. Reversing sides would mean the cable would have to push the butterfly open, and that's not acceptable.
Also notice the blower drive is on the opposite side of the Eaton. This causes conflict with the water outlet on the intake. The water outlet is now being modified and will be included in future pictures.
This design will not clear a stock hood. We worked on one that would (with a laminova intercooler), but time did not permit. It may be something that Apten does on another car in the future.
The intake tube is being worked on, it will be either built from a mold using fiberglass or carbon fiber (we haven't picked which material yet).
The cost of this project is in the neighborhood of $5000 for parts only. Obviously the one-off pieces that were produced had a factor in that price. If you included labor and design time, the price would be unrealistic. The car also previously had a liquid intercooler, so we did not have to buy a heat exchanger, ice box, or liquid pump.
As far as what we expect to see, we'll wait till the car goes to the dyno for tuning and then post numbers. Mathematically the numbers look excellent, but we are waiting for real world stuff.
I'd like to thank Chris Mendola for supplying the car and assistance in the project, Jeff Garza (j57ltr) for help with CAD and design ideas, Apten for sponsoring the development, and several other individuals that helped. It still has some work before it's completed, but we expect to have the car on the dyno at the April 12th TBU meet.
I got this idea from a good friend who did a similar setup years ago on his SC with a lysholm blower. He went with an air-to-air intercooler instead, and was running low 12's all day long with less modifications than our project car has. I've wanted to do this for quite some time, and Chris Mendola was kind enough to volunteer as the guinea pig.
What the pictures below show is a 2.2L autorotor supercharger mated to a custom designed laminova intercooler. On the back side is a custom designed cast plenum, and a specially selected 1600cfm throttle body. I'll get into more of each item with pictures.
The supercharger...
This is like a whipple, but manufactured by Autorotor AB. They are essentially the same thing with the exception of the case and drive. Both companies use the same rotors. Autorotor does not retail sell superchargers, so Apten contacted them to distribute their products. Because of time constraints, the supercharger and bypass in this project were pulled from a Kenne Bell 4V Navigator kit. The only other Kenne bell kit that has this supercharger is the 2003 Cobra kit they sell, and the availability was not there to buy one of those kits instead. Everything else in the kit was sold off on eBay, but that was the fastest way for us to get one of these babies. The blower then had to be sent off to have a custom length drive pressed on.
To give you an idea of the size, the stock Super coupe blower is the Eaton M90. The 90 means 90 cubic inches. The larger lightning and 2003 cobra blower in an Eaton M112. A 2.2L Autorotor would be equivalent to 134 Cubic inches. This supercharger would easily provide over 30lbs of boost if we so desired.
The intercooler...
This was actually the largest part of the project. We decided to use a Laminova liquid intercooler system because they are touted as being the best flowing and most efficient intercoolers available today. There are no kits available, so we had to design the intercooler on CAD. Apten signed up and became a distributor for the cores, so we were able to get the one-piece all aluminum cores from Laminova AB in Sweden. The end caps and water passages were all designed in AutoCAD (with help from Jeff), and then sent off to be machined. Originally we were going to build a two-core system built inside of the intake to keep the height down. Because of time constraints, we decided to go with a three core system directly on top of the intake. The cooler is getting welded up this weekend, but you can see some construction pictures.
The blower inlet plenum...
This is a one-off piece. It was perfect for our setup and outsourced for manufacturing. If Apten ends up selling a 2.2L kit in the future, somthing like this would be key.
The throttle body...
This was manufactured by Accufab. It's an all billet piece, and HUGE. It's rated to flow 1600CFM, so we figured it would be adequate.
Other notes...
There are a few things that have been taken into consideration. When the plenum was built, we had to be sure it would clear the fuel rails. For that reason there is a notch at the bottom of it.
Note the TPS and throttle butterfly are on opposite sides of the throttle body. Because of how the butterfly was built on the accufab, it had to be mounted this way. Reversing sides would mean the cable would have to push the butterfly open, and that's not acceptable.
Also notice the blower drive is on the opposite side of the Eaton. This causes conflict with the water outlet on the intake. The water outlet is now being modified and will be included in future pictures.
This design will not clear a stock hood. We worked on one that would (with a laminova intercooler), but time did not permit. It may be something that Apten does on another car in the future.
The intake tube is being worked on, it will be either built from a mold using fiberglass or carbon fiber (we haven't picked which material yet).
The cost of this project is in the neighborhood of $5000 for parts only. Obviously the one-off pieces that were produced had a factor in that price. If you included labor and design time, the price would be unrealistic. The car also previously had a liquid intercooler, so we did not have to buy a heat exchanger, ice box, or liquid pump.
As far as what we expect to see, we'll wait till the car goes to the dyno for tuning and then post numbers. Mathematically the numbers look excellent, but we are waiting for real world stuff.
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