In these two photos, you can...
In these two photos, you can see what makes the Magna Charger unique from the rest of the positive-displacement blowers on the market. This photo shows that the inlet for the blower is in the front, as opposed to the rear or the top. According to Magna Charger's Bob Roese, it makes the air have to turn less before it enters the supercharger.
The results spoke for themselves. After the installation was complete and the Mustang was strapped to JDM's DynoJet chassis dyno, our ride was dynoed at 279 rwhp bone stock. With the addition of the Magna Charger and a previously installed axle-back exhaust system, the Mustang pumped out 416 ponies at the rear tires. Torque shot up from 302 to 385 at the tires, equaling a horsepower increase of 137 and a torque increase of 83, which will certainly be noticed the first time the loud pedal is planted.
Additionally, this came with a boost level of just 4.25 psi. The only difference we had with our car and the kit was the fact that since the car already had a custom tune in the ECM to not only increase naturally aspirated power, but to account for the addition of 4.10 gears, D'Amore created a custom tune to go along with the install of the blower. "I went conservative on the first couple of pulls, and the car was well below 10:1 on the air/fuel ratio," he says. "I pulled some fuel, and with the timing set at 20 degrees, I found a happy medium to make good power numbers but keep the car livable. The car wanted more timing, but that would put it on the edge of reliability. The point of this kit is to make good power and do it safely."
This photo shows the old-school...
This photo shows the old-school look of the blower, namely with the rear beltdrive and auxiliary input shaft setup. With the mouth of the blower being in the front, the traditional serpentine/blower beltdrive system couldn't be used. The input shaft has a pulley in front that runs off of the serpentine belt, while the pair of pulleys in the back is what turns the rotors in the blower.
While we had our test vehicle custom tuned, Magnuson offers a voucher to have a programmer loaded with a tune sent out. "We use the SCT XCalibrator on our kits that does allow for tire size changes, rear gear modifications, and more," Roese says. "We set up the calibration to run on 91-octane fuel, and it's not a tune that's set on 'kill.' We're conservative in our tune, as we want our customers to be able to drive anywhere under any circumstances, and not have issues with blowing the rings out of the tailpipe or running over their crankshafts."
Without so much as touching the mass air meter, the fuel system, or the pulleys, we spent two days swapping over to a Magna Charger, making almost 140 more horsepower than what we had to begin with. That's downright criminal!
In these two photos, you can see what makes the Magna Charger unique from the rest of the positive-displacement blowers on the market.
Magnuson supplies all of the...
Magnuson supplies all of the necessary wiring to make changes to the areas that need to be addressed. Each change is well detailed in the manual.
To avoid any unforeseen issue...
To avoid any unforeseen issue with the ignition, we changed out the stock 0.045-inch-gapped HT1 spark plugs for a set of HT0s gapped at 0.030 inch. According to Jim D'Amore, anytime more than 4 pounds of boost is seen in a forced-induction engine, the spark has a tendency to be blown out.
We relocated the mass air...
We relocated the mass air meter to the new cast-aluminum inlet tube that came with the kit. The location is similar to that of stock, though questions were raised as to whether or not the meter would be pegged with the increase of air the blower would pull in. No problems were found.
The kit called for reusing...
The kit called for reusing the bottom of the stock airbox, though some drilling was required to modify the box for the kit's included clips.
Once the airbox assembly was...
Once the airbox assembly was installed and the plumbing run topside, Silverman set about installing the intercooler pump. A couple of holes had to be drilled into the frame for the pump's bracket before the pump was secured.