Supercharger anyone?..

[Arjxh56]

I was mooching around the motorshow this wekend and came across this.....

http://gmr-uk.co.uk/

Has anyone had a unit installed?
What do you think about it?

[tonyhall38]

no thanks and why?

[yeti]

1) No.

2) Tick tick tick tick... BOOM!

Mmm, 583bhp on standard internals... Yeah, sure bolt one on, nothing can go wrong

Oh.

I'm sure it's been tested in a series of cars, for hundreds of thousands of miles and raced extensively

Oh.

I believe I have seen the car at Goodwood, install is nice and neat as you'd expect... There's a lot of room under that bonnet after all

You pays your money and takes your choice. A BR hand built and warranted race-spec engine with race-spec internals for a normally aspirated 550bhp for a 5.0.

Or a supercharger kit fitted to one personal test car from a chap in his home garage.

[bogie]

it all looks nice, but its a niche product for a niche car

if it was a £5K-10k bolt on kit im sure there would be a few buyers of Vantages upgrading their cars...

but as a £20k upgrade with limited warranty its going to be a hard sell

did you ask what the warranty is? Id guess at 12 months on the supercharger itself ?

Will any low volume aftermarket manufacturer put their money on you not blowing your engine up within 12 months/20K miles with this fitted?...would be financial suicide I guess....

so its a novelty item with little market......imagine if you can afford to spend the money on this, and take the risk, likely you could stretch to a £70K V12 Vantage or £20k of work at Bamford rose........

[Neil1300R]

Warranty?
Not just on the supercharger - the rest of the engine?
Testing? 500 miles enough?
On the rolling road the car did close to 500 mile and 200+ full power pulls with perfect reliability.

[yeti]

Neil1300R said:

Warranty?
On the rolling road the car did close to 500 mile and 200+ full power pulls with perfect reliability.

500 whole miles?? Zowee, that's Devon and back before the engine blows up then. It would be impossible to be more thorough. Where do I sign?

Cost of conversion notwithstanding... with even an alleged 583bhp, the car is going to requires som big brakes very quickly and probably better suspension if you want to go anywhere... Add another close-to 10k?

[michael gould]

You would have to be mad to fit a supercharger to a standard V8 4.3 engine.......it's so wrong for so many reasons......however I bet ya we will see them fitted by the factory in the next 5 years......its the cheapest way for them to increase power and MPG and reduce co2 emmisions.

[George29]

michael gould said:

You would have to be mad to fit a supercharger to a standard V8 4.3 engine.......it's so wrong for so many reasons......however I bet ya we will see them fitted by the factory in the next 5 years......its the cheapest way for them to increase power and MPG and reduce co2 emmisions.

I bet turbos come in instead of superchargers. Which is a shame, superchargers sound fantastic

[davidexige]

I had a quick read of their blurb and the test car has done 20,000 miles with the kit fitted, still on the same clutch.

yeti said:

Neil1300R said:

Warranty?
On the rolling road the car did close to 500 mile and 200+ full power pulls with perfect reliability.

500 whole miles?? Zowee, that's Devon and back before the engine blows up then. It would be impossible to be more thorough. Where do I sign?

Cost of conversion notwithstanding... with even an alleged 583bhp, the car is going to requires som big brakes very quickly and probably better suspension if you want to go anywhere... Add another close-to 10k?

[Neil1300R]

davidexige said:

I had a quick read of their blurb and the test car has done 20,000 miles with the kit fitted, still on the same clutch.

yeti said:

Neil1300R said:

Warranty?
On the rolling road the car did close to 500 mile and 200+ full power pulls with perfect reliability.

500 whole miles?? Zowee, that's Devon and back before the engine blows up then. It would be impossible to be more thorough. Where do I sign?

Cost of conversion notwithstanding... with even an alleged 583bhp, the car is going to requires som big brakes very quickly and probably better suspension if you want to go anywhere... Add another close-to 10k?

On the rolling road the car did close to 500 mile and 200+ full power pulls with perfect reliability.

That was a quote from their website

[bogie]

so they havnt blown the test car up yet...thats good news for potential purchasers

[v8woollie]

Neil1300R said:

On the rolling road the car did close to 500 mile and 200+ full power pulls with perfect reliability.

That was a quote from their website

That kind of flies in the face of this taken form the website:

"There will be undoubtedly concern over the longevity of the clutch. I can assure you that in the 20,000+ miles the clutch has done with this conversion there has been no detectable deterioration in either feel or travel."

[v8woollie]

It does state on another part of the website that the Geyser water tank has to be filled every 500 miles so perhaps that is why 500 miles is mentioned.

[Jon39]

davidexige said:

I had a quick read of their blurb and the test car has done 20,000 miles with the kit fitted, still on the same clutch.

Still the same clutch maybe, but what about the same engine.

This topic came up a little while ago. I enjoyed telling the tale then, of a friend who enjoyed his car years ago with a supercharger. All went very well, and the delightful whining sound was great as the car drove by.

UNTIL, one day BANG. Engine in many unusable pieces. I gather that increased heat is the problem.

Edited by Jon39 on Monday 14th January 15:24

[yeti]

davidexige said:

I had a quick read of their blurb and the test car has done 20,000 miles with the kit fitted, still on the same clutch.

Oh that's me convinced then.

But only if I suspend common sense that is.

Yes the factory will probably switch to forced induction eventually, that's the fashion... But a factory engine that has even through 100s of thousands of miles and Nurburgring testing is very different from a one-off project by a bloke with some spanners, though I genuinely applaud him for what is no doubt a clever bit of engineering.

[v8woollie]

Jon39 said:

I gather that increased heat is the problem.

Edited by Jon39 on Monday 14th January 15:24

It is an interesting read as they reckon they don't stress the engine much more than normal and the heat is reduced to normal temps by the Geyser system squirting water.

Going to need some beefy brakes though, although their website just says harder pads!

Maybe when a very early 4.3 can be had for sub-£20K then it may be worth a punt. Evo seemed to like it.

Now where is that thread about the TC being switched off

[Arjxh56]

I also read the Evo review and they did enjoy it.
I would like to see a side by side comparison of the superchared car vs a standard V8 and a V12.
I would be interested in seeing the drive performance head to head, including the telematics of the cars to compare the actual goings on under the hood.

[DangerMonkey]

As bogie mentioned further up if they can get this out there for between 5-10k with some sort of warranty attached I can see people going for it.

[mikey k]

Old news with all the issues previously highlighted still unsolved


I've done this sort of thing in the past several times and look at each of the kits available for the V8 Vantage closely
Not one is "right"
So I've just done a deal with BR for similar power with an unlimited mileage warranty on the conversion AND any parts affected by it.

[Jon39]

v8woollie said:

It is an interesting read as they reckon they don't stress the engine much more than normal and the heat is reduced to normal temps by the Geyser system squirting water.

George with his engineering knowledge, might be able to comment upon this.

Presumably, most of the additional heat will be within the combustion chambers. So, how will the water squirting system, be able to reduce the extra heat inside there?

A friend, who has raced the same car for decades, has recently had several exhaust valve failures, due to too much heat. It is thought that the new E5 petrol has raised the combustion temperature by just enough, to burn out the valves. The valve failures resulted in further engine damage.

It seems therefore that just a little extra heat, can possibly result in trouble.