The banana was running with an Openflash Header and Stage 2 tune for a few months which was a good setup, however I still felt that the car would benefit greatly from a bump in power.
After extensively researching boost options, I went with the Vortech V3 kit because of it's reliability and ease of installation. I also recommend this
article for anyone deciding on how to boost their car. There are pros and cons to each, but in my opinion the centrifugal supercharger provides the optimal boost curve in terms of power delivery and reliability for a high compression engine such as ours. Basically too much boost near the engine's torque peak at mid range rpms will cause detonation, however at high rpm past the torque peak, cylinder pressures drop off due to efficiency losses, allowing the engine to accept much more boost before detonation occurs. Also, a centrifugal blower with a larger compressor housing will flow more air than a small one at low boost pressures meaning, you don't need as much boost to make power. The Vortech blower is huge compared to the rotrex units for a good reason. Compared to a turbo or a Roots type supercharger, a centrifugal blower is going to put the least stress on the stock internals while providing the most linear power delivery.
It also didn't hurt that I got a killer deal on a used kit with a rebuilt blower from @
Enalband24.
The car was ECUTek remote tuned by @
moto-mike at Moto-East who did an excellent job getting the car running smoothly. There were a few minor hiccups with a rough idle, however remote tuning is never completely straightforward, and Mike was very thorough and sent me many revisions until the kinks were worked out.
Along with the supercharger, I installed a few supporting mods:
Saikou Michi Dual Catch Cans - Installation is very simple and with some extra 3/8" and 1/2" OD tubing, they look amazingly stock tucked away by the battery. These will keep blow-by oil out of the supercharger, intercooler, and intake manifold. NA engines don't produce much blow-by oil which is why our car did not have catch cans from the factory, but under boost much more oil is pushed out of the crankcase into the intake. Also, catch cans are useless without properly designed baffling to condense the hot oil vapor. Saikou Michi makes properly designed catch cans that are relatively cheap compared to other brands, so I highly recommend them.
Mishimoto Radiator - This radiator is MUCH thicker than the stock one and thus has a lot more surface area and cooling capacity. That being said, the stock radiator is highly efficient so even with the added heat from the supercharger many people say it's not necessary. I got it for a great price so I decided to be on the safe side. One thing I highly recommend is to reuse the foam insulation around the stock radiator as this will direct flow through the radiator core rather than around it. With the added thickness, there is more flow restriction, so despite the added surface area, without adequate airflow, a larger radiator won't necessarily be more efficient.
AEM Failsafe Wideband Gauge - A wideband afr gauge is extremely helpful for tuning and monitoring a boosted engine. I installed the sensor in the rear O2 sensor bung since I'm running a catless header and don't really need it. The install was pretty straighforward and I wired the gauge signal output to the rear O2 input for data logging and tuning. Any good wideband will do and I don't use the added features of the failsafe gauge since the same thing can just be put into the tune via ECUTek.