Supercharge a CSL? You’ll lose the induction roar, it’ll be unreliable, the car’s fast enough already……………. These were some of the questions we were asked before we embarqued on this project. Indeed we also wondered what the end result would be like.
So a few weeks ago now we received a customers car, a stock low mileage mint condition silver grey CSL and proceeded to convert it with our already proven handling modifications and an AP racing brake kit to try and tame the forcasted 510 bhp that adding the supercharger would give. Next to go onto the car was a full supersprint system with 100 cell cats to ensure a good basis for the conversion.
Once all this was done it was time to fit the ESS Tuning VT2 supercharger kit. Fitting was relatively straight forwardtaking no longer than expected and all parts were of the quality we have come to expect from ESS and also all fitted without modification.
This kit features the front mounted water radiator which keeps a supply of cool water to the intake manifold which has a built in air to water heat exchanger. This ensures charge temperatures are kept low and is kept circulating by an electric pump wired through the ecu which keeps the flow after engine shutoff for a while to further help reduce heatsoak.
The Vortech supercharger is a well proven choice and is more than capable of supplying the needed boost, in fact it will not need to be changed when this car goes through the next conversion to VT3 – more of this later!
Having fitted the kit we then checked the installation and remapped the ecu followed by firing it up which it did straight away and settled into a normal idle. We then road tested the car for 100 carefull miles to run everything in. All the time monitoring the Llambda readings to check that the mapping was perfect.
Having done this it was time to really try it out and we were not dissapointed although this is not really the best time of year to be trying it out as in these temperatures you really have to be carefull. Power delivery is totally smooth up to 5000rpm with the only real noticeable difference being much more torque than stock. Once you go above 5000rpm things really change!! As the boost climbs the acceleration is simply staggering and above say 60mph the car will hit massive speeds in no time, in fact its hard to explain but thoughts of induction noise and the like are just not possible!!
We are now going to deliver the car back to the customer in the next few days and it will be interesting to get his reaction and to see how the conversion works for everyday use.
Overall it has been a very interesting conversion to do and the results are stunning, we already have a lot of interest for this kit and are looking forward to showcasing it in a forthcoming magazine.
