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November 29, 2005
A supercharged year
Well, time flies. It's been over a year since, after a long wait, Comptech Sports USA of El Dorado Hills, Calif., installed their supercharger system in my 2004 Acura RSX Type-S. Mine was the first customer installation and so I learned all about being a "test driver," recording every knock and every other little thing via the Hondata K-Pro programmable ECU, discussing it with Comptech and Hondata so that the final product would be as close to perfect as it could be.
Despite all the effort that went into designing and testing the supercharger kit, problems developed. This was to be expected, but it still came as a bit of a shock when first the so nicely designed tensioner and then the blower snout showed weaknesses that needed engineering corrections. This showed me that even extensive testing does not also reveal all inherent problems as neither the tensioner nor the snout (nor anything else) failed in my test car.
I also learned a lot about fuel injectors. Over the past year I must have tested almost half a dozen different injectors in my car, and they each perform a bit differently and require different calibration. They even have an impact on gas mileage. I still liked my (expensive) Power Enterprise injectors best, but it is plain amazing how well the modified Honda injectors Comptech ships with the Stage 2 kit work. I have had those in my car for many months now, and even with the 3.3-inch pulley they are not nearly maxed out.
I am disappointed in two things. First that we never managed to find the true source of a weird MAP buffeting at high RPMs. It can clearly be felt, and it shows up big on datalogs: boost fluctuations of up to a psi with an irregular frequency of between one and seven or eight times a second. I am certain the car would run better without it, and I simply hate an irregular, unexplained phenomenon. I even sent Magnuson a well documented inquiry. I got a "due to the high number of tech assistance request it will take us a few days...." and nothing more.
The second is the aftercooler. Though we have an exceptionally well built motor, reading Corky Bell's "Supercharged!" convinced me that charge cooling is really needed/beneficial at anything more than street level boosting. I am a realist and know that no matter how well run and professional it is, a relatively small tuner company like Comptech has too many irons in the fire to crank out whatever products we want. What frustrates me a bit is that the cooler was supposed to be available many times within weeks over the past 13 months, and it still isn't. I personally feel that had I been set up to at least test and tune the cooler, it would have been to Comptech's advantage.
I probably should also mention the realization that power is one thing and traction another. A dedicated drag racer colleague pretty documented in his supercharged Acura RSX what's needed to actually get the power on the road, so if quartermile numbers are part of what one expects from a SC kit, then the kit itself is only half of the package. Drag radials and then slicks are the other half. My own switch from Kumho Excta 712 street tires to stickier Falken Azenis RT615 helped a bit, but did definitely not solve the traction problem. I am about to order a set of Hoosier drag radials specifically for the track.
Overall, though, it's been a terrific, exciting experience and I certainly learned a lot.
Posted by conradb212 at 2:06 PM