TVS 2300 Supercharger Kit Install - Maggie May

Magnuson and Eaton have had a working relationship since Magnuson was started over 18 years ago. Though Eaton manufactures the rotors, Magnuson manufactures everything else for itself. In fact, one of the unique characteristics of the MagnaCharger is its front-drive/front-inlet design.

"The primary reason for this design is for airflow," said Michael Hewitt, business development director for Magnuson Products. "Every time you turn air, you heat it up, and hot air doesn't make as much power as cooler air," he says. "Most kits have a rear inlet, which requires an elbow inlet with a sharp turn. Ours gets the air into the supercharger from the airbox as straight as possible by utilizing a front inlet."

Beyond that, the company has access to digital data from the manufacturers to help it better engineer its kits, and anyone who has installed one will agree-it shows.

"I've never had a supercharger kit go on that easy," said Jake Lamotta of Lamotta Performance (Longwood, Florida), referring to the Magna- Charger kit he installed on his Grabber Blue '11 GT for this article.

The bright blue coupe (which actually belongs to Jake's beautiful wife, Christina) has been seen on these pages for about a year now, and has served as a test mule for Stainless Works exhaust components, to the Barton shifter and a Zex nitrous kit, as well as being Christina's daily driver.

Lamotta had recently installed a Boss intake and had the combination tuned by Chris Johnson of SCT Performance. The combination made 423 rwhp and 384 lb-ft of torque on a nice cool evening on Lamotta's Dynojet-respectable for a naturally aspirated car. At the track, the blue coupe had run a best of 12.29 at 116 mph.

After less than a day of work, Lamotta had the kit installed, and it was time for tuning. Since we opted for the tuner kit and upgraded the injectors to 60-lb/hr squirters, we called Johnson back in to give the combo a custom tune.

If you have a completely stock car (which is what this kit is designed for), then you can just buy the complete kit from Magnuson, which comes with the correct injectors and a handheld tuner with the correct calibration tune inside.

"Our kits are 50-state-legal on an otherwise-stock car," says Hewitt. Magnuson's lead calibrator, Mark Blaha, was tuning when tuning wasn't cool. He has put together a calibration for this kit that will put a little more pep in your Coyote's step, but won't make you fail emissions inspections.

After the tune by Johnson, the new combination yielded 546 rwhp and 433 lb-ft of torque at only 6.5 psi of boost-a 123-rwhp and 49-lb-ft increase. Magnuson offers smaller pulleys, but we'll try those out later. With torque production up by over 120 lb-ft at 2,500 rpm, this thing will be plenty powerful for Christina to run her normal errands.

Unfortunately, Lamotta experienced an unrelated drivetrain issue, so we were unable to make it back to the track before this writing. We'll give you the track results in a later issue.