SuperchargedRex

You can find a lot about the old Nelson/Paxton sc kit on my website, link is in my sig. I highly recommend checking out the links page for other guys that have the kit for more info. Unfortunately, Nelson is no longer making the kit; and Mariah Motorsports has been saying for over a year that they'll do a run, but nothing yet.

As some of you know, I've been looking into reproducing the necessary custom parts for the Paxton kit, and putting together a list of all the off-the-shelf parts.

I've come to realize that besides the mounting bracket and piping to the tb, you also need their thermostat housing; the factory unit will be in the way of the mounting bracket.

Black-Clawson CNC Machining, up in Fulton, NY can reproduce the bracket and the thermostat housing. They quoted me $200 for the bracket as a one-off, $125-140 for larger orders of 25-50 pieces. (I was able to show them one of Phil Garrott's busted ones.) They have an awesome shop, and would definitely be able to reproduce the thermostat housing, but couldn't give me a price estimate without my taking it off the car to measure it.

Next on my agenda is hooking up with John at Intense Performance for the throttle body horn. I figure he can model it after the plastic one that comes with the cars. I've been thinking that I'll leave the elbow between the sc and tb horn to the individual; piping can be handled by any shop that does turbo work, you know like installing front mount intercoolers. You can buy the tubing off the shelf and cut to size.

Paxton has also sold the rights (along with all their parts and stuff) for the SN series superchargers to Craig Conley of Paradise Wheels. Apparently, Craig has been doing Paxton's support for a while. I spoke at length with Craig, he's a real nice guy interested in supporting us with correct pulley sizing, servicing/repairs, etc. Craig also confirmed that you can get a sc setup for up to 17psi of boost, but that comes without a warranty. Cost is $100 if done during a rebuild ($700) or $250 w/out a rebuild. He quoted me prices of $1250 for a basic sc, but that he'd cut a deal of $1000 for
2 or more. Pulleys cost $80-100 each.

I'm in the process of putting together the list of materials and vendors, but its been slow going as of late. Stay tuned and let me know if you or anyone else is interested.

Icemark

so it sounds like you are in the $1500 range or so... selling the kits at your cost.

At that price I would be intrested and I am sure others would be as well.

SuperchargedRex

Just to clarify, I wouldn't be assembling the complete kits, only the custom pieces that you'd need, and giving you a list of what else you'll need and where you can source it from with rough cost estimates.

There are 3 basic complaints about the kit that Nelson assembled and Mariah sold for them:
1. The overspinning of the blower due to incorrect pulley sizing; Craig Conley will correct that when we order the blowers.
2. The poor quality of the cast aluminum mounting bracket; it tends to sheer off the boss where the airpump bolts on. Black-Clawson will CNC machine it from thick sheet aluminum, and then weld on the boss that's needed for the air pump making the unit much stronger.
3. The high cost. I paid $3200 for my kit, Mariah has stated that when they do their own production run, it'll cost around $3500. I haven't sourced all of the parts yet, but I'm pretty sure doing it my way will save money.

I'm not really interested in starting my own business, I just want to help other guys get the supercharger setup. If I assembled the entire kit, customers would have to pay for all of the overhead of extra shipping of all the parts. You can see all the parts in the pic below. Also, if you could source some of your parts cheaper (blower from a swap meet for example) you could save even more cash.

Bottom line is: I happen to think the supercharger is a great idea if you're looking for some more power but want to keep it reliable from relatively low boost levels. Its also a relatively quick install; Rampage Racing did mine in a day and a half.

Here's the kit as Mariah sold it, pic is from Travis Shrey's site:

NJDave

SuperchargedRex: As we discussed a while ago, I am very interested in this. I was going to talk to John, but have been extrememly busy at work. He told me a while ago that, as long as he has the measurements, the throttle body horn can be done. I would also suggest that, while you're at it, just have him make the bent elbow from the sc to the horn. After all, that's the business he is in - making or having made tubing for cold air intakes.

As an aside, I still keep meaning to talk to John about having a custom intake made for the RX-7 similar to what he makes for Durangos and other vehicles.

88gxl

How much hp would a kit like this add. Also, do you have to mod anything else such as fuel?

SuperchargedRex

The kit I purchased was designed for a completely stock car. If you have upgraded your intake and exhaust, you'll be able to flow more air, and will therefore need more fuel. I have a cone filter, header, high flow cat, and cat back, so I needed to upgrade my secondary fuel injectors from 460cc/min to 550cc/min (which are a straight plug-n-play from the TII). I also opted for an upgraded fuel pump, simply because mine was the original with 142,000 miles on it.

With my setup, I have consistently dyno'd between 200-210hp depending on air quality, gas quality, state of engine tune. On Friday night, 70+ degrees, very humid, with the plugs from the break-in period still in (most likely fouled from running rich, I just finished breaking in a rebuilt motor), I got 205.5hp uncorrected at the wheels.

If you have any other questions, let me know, or check out my website, link is in the sig.

kbrown211

i wanna know with the supercharger, will this have any problem hooking up to a 6port gtu and how much total cost is a project like this. i have the k&n intake and dual n1 catback

jcrex7

Keep me posted on this Iam very inter.....

Thanks
J.C.

SuperchargedRex

I've been working up the parts/price list, all I can say is it will cost between $2100 - $3600 depending on the actual price for some of the custom parts that I don't have quotes for and on what other mods you have. Because of your intake and exhaust, you'll need to upgrade your secondary injectors at a minimum, and possibly also your fuel pump. Also, the price comes down if you can get any of the parts cheaper.

I've attached an excel spreadsheet so that you can see what I've got so far.

Phu5ion

i might be in if we can get enough people to drive the cost down on some of these parts.

I also have some question about what i should do before doing a project like this.

First I want to ask you if you did anything to your engine in preparation to the supercharger installation, like having the engine rebuilt. I have a stock '87 with 167,000+ miles on it i don't know when or if the engine was rebuilt. and i heard from a friend that it's not good to start adding boost to such an old engine if you don't know how many actual miles are on that engine, is this true? and then would a rebuild help prevent any future problems after the supercharger is installed?

Next, i don't have an upgraded intake or exhaust, but i've been planing on doing the intake with an open air filter. do you guys think it would be a complete necessity to upgrade the fuel pump and injectors then?

Well, anyways, i would love to have some more power, and i'm very excited about getting a supercharger under my hood.


Phu5ion

SuperchargedRex

I didn't do anything extra to my car besides routine maintenance. I had a compression check done when I first bought the car, which was at 89,000 miles. Within the next 20,000 miles I upgraded intake and exhaust. I added the sc, 550cc/min secondary injectors and fuel pump at 142,000 miles. My oil seals went at 168,000 miles. Did the boost cause the oil rings to die? I don't know. Its not uncommon to have to rebuild an NA rotary after 150,000 miles so its hard to say. I don't know how well the car was taken care of before me, I got it from a used car dealer in Jersey.

I don't know if just an intake would require upgrades, I already had intake and exhaust on mine before I added the blower so I can't compare.

Phu5ion

ok, i've been thinking of getting an air/fuel mixture gauge too, i suppose that will help tell me if i need to get more fuel into the mix?

as far as the state of my engine is concerned i got it from some guy here in CT and i don't know how well he took care of it, but the engine still seems to be running strong.

Phu5ion

tesla042

If you get the full setup down in the low 2xxx$ range, i think I would be in...

-Tesla

SuperchargedRex

Let me be clear, I'm not assembling the whole kit, only the 4 custom pieces that are necessary; it will be up to the individual to get everything else themselves, but I'll supply a parts list and vendors contacts. That way you can get parts at swap meets, or used, to keep costs down.

tesla042

Ahh.. My bad.. In that case, if I could piece it together, and have it cost in the low $2xxx range, i think i would be in.

-Tesla

larsyoung

I too am inerested.
If it helps, I could build the supercharger bracket in Autocad, so that a machine shop could pop it in thier CAM machine and spit them out, perhaps more economically.
Lars

Phu5ion

Let's start to get a list together of people who want to get the custom pieces from Craig. It looks like getting the supercharger and the 6 pulleys from him will be about $1500 if we go in on it as a group.

I don't know if we can get together 25 people together right now to get the mounting bracket from Ron. I would rather hold off on that for now and see if we can get more people interested in the supercharger upgrade and maybe buy it later.

Larsyoung- did you find out if it is more economical for you to make your Autocad bracket and have a machine shop build it? That sounds like a good possiblity to me.

That's it for the custom pieces that we can get a discount on, and that's the majority of the cost. So, i figure that if we get those out of the way then we can finish finding the other parts on our own. SuperchargedRex already supplied a list of the other parts that we'll need.

So, let's try and get a head count of people who want to get the custom parts.

~Phu5ion

NJDave

Supercharged Rex:

I am in. However, in addition to the parts list you are compiling, I would also like to see the instructions for installing the kit. Do you happen to have them from your kit?

Dave

SuperchargedRex

I'd scanned it at work as a pdf file; here's the link.
http://www.geocities.com/boatseason/sc-instr.pdf
You might need to right click the link and "Save As" due to geoshitties wonderful hosting. Warning, I think its a pretty large file so if you're on dial up be patient

larsyoung

To build a model in AutoCAD would be a snap. However, I haven't researched any companies that can mill one with a CAM machine.

Lars

the_glass_man

iTrader: (2)

I might be down for one of these. Depending on final cost and availbilty of parts and such. Keep me updated to the progress. I would have it added to a built up 13B and Haltech when all said and done.

Merovign

So am I missing something or are we dealing with an installation kit for a N/P SC at around $600-800, or was the kit cost going to be around $1200?

I have an interest, I have to re-build my engine, and depending on how things are going financially for the next few months, I'm considering what I might be able to do for power adders, and a supercharged RX is cool. Besides, I went to all the trouble of strengthening the rest of the drivetrain for a Turbo swap, so why not?

I might also rebuild that 90 TII engine I have sitting around (low miles but why take chances), but I might also sell that to finance the rebuild, and it is a nasty swap...

NJDave

SuperchargedRex: Thanks for posting that link to your instructions. I am definitely going to install a supercharger as long as 1) I know every single part I need (more detail in your parts list would be greatly appreciated), and 2) I can get the custom pieces we've talked about previously. I was hoping the installation instructions listed everything included in the kit - that way I could know what exactly was shipped and get each piece.

How's everything going with getting parts manufactured? Any further updates? How about the TB horn from John?

Thanks,

Dave

SuperchargedRex

I've had some personal things going on that have taken most of my time, but I'm getting re-focused now. Well, after next week at least because I'm going on a business trip. On the plus side, I'm buying a (promise not to laugh) Kia Sephia as a commuter car so I'll be able to take the RX-7 apart to reproduce the parts.

NJDave

Great! No laughs from me - anything that helps to get parts made is fine by me . That's great you can take some parts off of your car - I was just wondering how I was going to get the correct dimensions for an elbow tube . Also, is the heat shield a necessary component? If so, it would be great to have those made somewhere also - hope I'm not asking too much, but I would very much like to add the SC to the car! Probably will take it to KDRotary to have them install it if I can get all the parts.

Let me know if you need any help - I can make some calls and the like if it would do any good.

Dave