I wanted to pass on some information about superchargers I thought might be interesting.

I went to the expo at the SAE World Congress today in Detroit, MI. I noticed an F150 engine on a stand with an odd looking supercharger in front of the MAHLE Powertrain booth. I asked a representative a question about it and they redirected my question to a guy named David Hebert (his business card says Director of business development.) He seemed to be quite knowledgeable about the supercharger and told me it was essentially a Roush supercharger flipped backwards. I inquired further about this and he said this new design allow much better air flow. I asked how it compared to Whipple and Roush and he claimed it was better than the Roush because of the improved airflow and he thought that the Roush was better than the Whipple.

He told me that the supercharger is being sold under the Powerworks name and their tune gives you 150+ hp, and 150+ torque at the wheels. He made it sound like this was a conservative number and that with a custom tune, you could squeeze out a little more. The intercooler kit is listed for $5500 on the Powerworks site.

Everything sounded like a sales pitch from the MAHLE Powertrain guy which I assume makes this supercharger for Powerworks. I thought I would pass on the details of my conversation to see what you guys thought. By the way, I will be there again tomorrow if you guys have any questions you would like me to ask any of the exhibitors. I’ve been spending most of my day listening to presentations in the conference.

http://www.powerworks.net/f-force.html

 

But of course he did............

He would actually be telling you his product may be worse otherwise.

Sales and marketing... ... my wife teaches a marketing class for the local university. We have some interesting debates around my house.

 

I did not realize the "different" aspects you highlighted, although I did read something on the 'net the other day that was reviewing this kit. Whoever it was (I forget) was REALLY impressed with the kit.

Anyone know where they can be had at a great price?

 

I will add that when I was talking to him, he kept mentioning Eaton. I'm not sure if he meant this was originally sold as an Eaton, or Eaton made it or what. But I swear he kept talking about Eaton. Might be something to look into. This Eaton charger looks very similar if not identical though.

http://www.magnacharger.com/pr019.htm

 

I was at the SAE show today as well.

 

how about a pic of the s/c if u can thanks

https://www.f150online.com/galleries...w.cfm?num=9331

 

Eaton makes the actual supercharger. It IS the same unit the roush kit utilizes.
Nothing major there, lots of kits use the Eaton unit.

 

I wonder how much foundation there is to the 150+/150+ claim.

 

I'm not sure that you can say that it IS the same as the Roush supercharger since externally they look and mount differently. Internally they very well could be the same, which is what they representative was saying.

 

I do not see how that thing takes 8-10 hours to install, I've heard some s/c's are cake to install on our trucks.

 

If its an Eaton its a more than likely a Roots type supercharger, if its a Roush they use Twin Screw. Roots speeds up air and boost builds in the manifold, Roush uses twin screws which compress and accelerate the air, boost builds in the supercharger case. Benefit of a roots is when bypassed it heats the air VERY little since no compression occurs, twin screws are always compressing and thus add more residual heat during no boost situations moreso than a true roots, that is why the OEM's tend to use roots type superchargers.

Powerworks (like other companies) is known in the Cobra/Lightning community that build blower cases and drives (and usually package them with fuel rails, intake manifolds tunes) for specific applications and source the rotor packs (twin screw or roots) from other companies.

It looks like they have developed a case for the 3v 5.4 which is great. I'm not crazy about the unit using the same belt as the rest of the accessories nor the outboard driveshaft setup but other than that it looks like decent setup. They did this to bring the air directly to the inlet of the rotor packs which is known to improve efficiency appox 10%+, the downside is the outboard driveshaft required to spin the unit.