Hi guys,
As some may already know, we have been working with Vortech for a little while now. The goal has always been able to offer a high quality, pre-tuned, fully sorted forced induction kit at an
affordable price. And that time has now come
First, I'd to explain why we chose to include the Vortech SC in our OFT300 package. Our business philosophy has always been to provide products that offer unsurpassed value, OEM level of refinement and ease-of-use. And it doesn't take much more than a visit to Vortech (Oxnard, CA) to realize that they share the same philosophy. Seeing how they operate and the effort they place on product development and post-sales support makes us very comfortable with including their products in our OFT300 performance package.
First let's start with their Quality Assurance room. It's bigger and well-equipped than most entire tuning shop garages:
Next, let's take a peek at the rest of their facilities which stock and manufacture product. Yes, Vortech builds just about every component in-house. This includes the supercharger itself. They cast their own housings, machine their own compressor wheels and even build their own SC gearboxes! This is very different from other manufacturers which source their components from other manufacturers and them assemble kits.
Have you ever seen a supercharger dyno? I haven't either. And Vortech has one of the two in existence. To dyno a supercharger, just insert it in this testing rig, drive the gearbox by the giant electric motor, and then measure pressure and temps with all those pressure transducers and thermocouples:
And of course, they have their own engine dyno:
And here is where it all comes together... in in their tuning/installation room:
And meet Lance Keck, Vortech's Calibration Engineer. He's the guy who tunes all their supercharger kits for safe and effective performance. He has a lot of tuning experience and understands how to build a proper off-the-shelf map. He and I got along very well during my week-long visit
:
During the week of my visit, a lot accomplished. First, Vortech installed their standard FRS/BRZ supercharger kit on the test car (2013 BRZ) I drove down from San Francisco.
Then Lance and I spent a few days on the dyno working on the OpenFlash Tablet tune. Prior to this, his only experience was with the Ecutek platform. I think we converted them
[ame]http://youtu.be/Ptyi9mT0XoA[/ame]