Supercharging the Lexus LS430 with a FORD Blower!

Welcome back to another episode of the 6k Sports Sedan Challenge brought to you by Continental Tire today. It is power in our moment. That's right everyone, it's time to get into the nitty-gritty of adding some power to my Lexus and really look at all the options. I looked at it as bolt on power adders, it's hard to make much more power with these engines, the heads are terrible but they just don't add enough to make it competitive with an m5, so you look at nitrous or supercharger and turbocharging and that's when it dawned on me. The idea came about when chatting with the 507 shop about

supercharging

this engine and I realized that Toms makes a kit very expensive when it goes out of production, but I realized that

supercharging

was becoming an option for this car and I think this particular option is really attractive because it is remarkably simple to do, it won't be the easiest thing in the world.

I don't want to make it sound like we're installing a cold air intake but it's relatively easy to do and works with the factory ecu, the factory fuel system will make five psi so we'll add about 80 wheel horsepower , all without having to make any kind of crazy engineering changes, so let's sit back here and I'll show you a little bit more of the kit, so at the heart of this kit is of course the supercharger itself and this is a eaton m112 from a 2003 or 2004

ford

mustang svt cobra so it's not that hard to find there are actually a lot of them on ebay and they are usually like They sell for between 700 and a thousand dollars there but Pete actually found this one in Calgary on eBay for 400 Canadian dollars plus 100 dollars shipping to here, so let's say we're spending 500 dollars on this, which I think is a remarkably good deal and You can also find them in the m122 variant, which obviously It is a little larger, but for our application this is what elate Manufacturing recommends us and speaking of which, to get this to work on the engine, remove the factory intake manifold and install this manifold adapter plate.

From a late build in Australia, this is a really beautiful CNC piece as you can see, and they even went so far as to put some custom logos on here for us. You won't be able to see them once installed, but still. nice touch we'll know they're there and by the way the 507 garage is their North American distributor that's how this whole relationship started with me chatting with maurizio from 507 about giving this engine a little boost because he a Lexus type, so this bolts in here, we have to cut a flange off the bottom of the fan that is designed to connect to the factory intercooler.

We're going to run this one without an intercooler, which really simplifies the setup a lot and at around 5 psi of boost, we should be fine running without an intercooler, it's not like this is a track car, we're going to hit it constantly and put a lot of heat into it, so which I think without an intercooler for street use like mine should be. It would be nice to adapt this to the intake system. Elate also makes this really nice CNC machined adapter elbow so it's designed to go from this shaped flange on the side of the supercharger to the 3uz throttle body and this is not a cheap piece.

I think about 600 Australians or 400 Americans and this is about 1800 Australians or 1400 Americans, but when you do the math on this kit, it's still very reasonable when you compare it to buying a full supercharger kit for a car like this, which I don't know if anyone actually makes more stuff like that. Tom's kit costs around 10 grand and has been out of production for I don't know how long, so I think it's still a very af

ford

able and euphoric approach to really start making these cast. instead of a billet cut like this and the cast one is going to be a lot more affordable, so he's looking for ways to make it a little more affordable for guys who want to do this on a little bit of a bigger budget other than that, you know.

Little snippets we'll show you as we go through the installation, but before we do we want to do a quick upgrade on the supercharger. We don't know what kind of life he leads, so we ordered a small reconstruction kit here. on eBay it was like around 100 bucks, right? Pete for this kit, yes, from the videos I watched this fluid apparently smells like nothing else on earth. Gear fluid usually smells pretty bad, oh that looks fresh, oh that smells terrible, look It's like a mint man, it looks very clean, this whole charger seems to be in very good shape, so it's possible that We're pouring money into the frying pan here for nothing.

I already have a cascade of stench here because this death blow is happening. the edge here is definitely working pretty well removing the snout here here it comes dude it smells like metallic vomit it's disgusting in any case this guy you can see these three pins go into these three holes on what's known as the coupler here and the pins on this side it sits on they tend to oval and that allows some play here so when you hear a supercharger rattle a lot of times it's because this coupler is worn out that's why we're replacing it and in fact the replacement we have is done of a harder durometer type of material, so it's less likely to ovalize, but you can see how this snout drives this wheel that drives both screws in here and that's what compresses the air and makes good things happen in inside. your engine, usually what guys do is they swap out this stock style coupler for this aftermarket style coupler and as you can see it's a slightly different design, it's actually thicker because it makes up for the thickness of these three little dots. that stick out more and Because it's made of this harder material, it's apparently much less likely to wear out, so we'll change that guy out there and it's really just a matter of lining up the right three holes and hitting it in there, you'll probably need hit him.

Let's go with the killing blow, okay, that's completely there. I just did a quick measurement to make sure we're going to get a full commitment here, which we will, so the next step if you were worried about the condition of your uh, you know your twin. screw or root style

blower

would be to remove this section and take out the two screws examine the condition the inside of the housing there are two needle bearings that the two screws sit in also that can wear out and allow play and if that allows play then the two screws can make contact with the inside of the case and you will see physical damage to both the sides and the case itself as well as the tips of the blades, so if I lift this up Real quick, here we can show you.

You can see the leaves here and you can see how they have a nice smooth finish on the edge of this leaf. There are no signs of any scratches or scratches here that would indicate that they have been making contact with the walls, so after having looked at them closely enough, I think we are fine, there are no signs of free play there or anything like that, so We're not going to push the bear open because I think it's okay, we're going to replace the bearings here, but it feels like it's working at all because it feels new.

Everything about this supercharger is in very good condition. I think there are a lot of other things to do instead of just manufacturing. work just for the sake of it, I mean, we have the parts here, but this is all on the top front of the engine, it's very easy to access, so if we ever have a problem here, it will be easy for us and you will be able to hear. It's like it winds up or makes a noise like a bearing failure, exactly which you know, this feels so cool, I don't think there's any point in doing it, so we'll just continue to push the pulley however we want.

I just realized there's a special tool for that job, but I think Pete came up with a pretty clever solution to do it in the press without damaging these bearings, so to put this pulley on the snout here, you'd think that you just put this here put this on and press it but what you're going to do is load the axle and potentially damage some bearings we read online that's what happens so what we're actually going to do is take the load from the axis or, sorry, take. the bearing load and that's by using a bushing and putting it right in the middle of the shaft here and putting it like so and now we can put this pulley here and press it safely so far. working fine here dp yeah it looks good it's going down that's right the pulley is pressed in there it's time to put this back on the supercharger I think we need to apply some sealant there so we just tightened the snout again. put it here and we could have taken the rotors out to do this job where we need to cut this flange so that this flange here connects to the intercooler in the stock configuration, but we need to get rid of it so it bolts to the l8 adapter. plate here, so after I talked to Travis, he said late about it, he said you can take it to a machinist and have him mill it or what he does is he just uses a cutting wheel and cuts it as low as he can. can and then it comes with a flap wheel and you know, you smooth it out, you grind it down so it's flush with this mating surface, however, you're going to end up with a bunch of aluminum flying everywhere and you don't want any of that.

Going down to where the rotors go, so take them out so you can clean everything up afterwards or what we've decided to do is actually just tape this all up, pack it in as much as we can with what we've actually put in. a little foam here and then we're going to pack it up with some rags and stuff to make sure we don't get any metal shavings in there so I think you know either way we just decided we didn't want to get into the mess of taking the rotors out. and, if it is dirty, we will take them out later.

Yes, we can always take them out later if we're not happy with how things are going. That's right, we are getting contaminated here because we are not going to want to breathe any aluminum, but as you can see, we have this very well sealed here, now we are not too worried, we are going to get chips. We have recorded everything we can to avoid it. anything from getting in there and we're going to get in there with the old wheel of death, we'll also put another smaller cutting disc on this pizza grinder, big power fan, I'll probably get in there with the little kid and see how it works, so we're going to team up on this and by the way we should thank our friends at Earnestco for sending us these complete coveralls, I don't know what they're called in Australia or New Zealand. or something like that, but very sturdy, very good quality material, it's like a canvas material and man, you get hit by a truck with this thing and you wouldn't even feel it, it's very well made, so I think we need to take a break .

Here yeah, we came in a time lapse, oh my gosh, that looked like what maybe 20 minutes of work looks like 30 seconds in a time lapse, so it was closer to two hours, I think we're in it, yeah, It's a really big job and it's a messy, messy, messy, infinitely messy job like the store is now, we did it right, we did it next to the garage door, we like to minimize our mess there, but yeah, in hindsight yeah take 100 take it to A machine shop asks them to remove this as you can see when we walk in grab that piece Dave yeah when we walked in we had to cut it at an angle because the cutting disc couldn't lay flat , so you're like in We had this angle cutting it so it was like this and then we had to go in and polish it and then we're trying to be really careful and not scratch this mating surface and oh man we did.

Don't cut it too lightly down here, I did, but it's okay, this is sealed with a gasket maker, so I don't think it's going to be a problem, no, I also only see five pounds of alcohol, so no No. I think it's a big problem, but in retrospect, take everything apart, take the rotors out of here and take it to a machinist because it will surely be a cleaner job and you won't be breathing. a pound of aluminum, yeah, yeah, so the other thing in terms of a mess that you guys saw, we cleaned it up really good, I'm sure there might be some tiny little bits, but that's like you know sand in the air. you're driving, I guess I'm not too worried about that.

I think what you should really worry about is big chunks of metal getting stuck here and yeah, and then being ingested by the engine, so I think we're good. cleanliness I think we're good on the surface, I measured it like 10 times to make sure it's higher than this now, so we just tried it on the collector and it's nice and flat, so I think We're good Pete, I think maybe it's time to put some fluid in this and then we can start pulling the car yeah yeah I'm doing it right. The collector is off and a little work took us about an hour, not terrible, a lot.

Delicate clips, they're 15 years old, some hard plastics and things Pete and I have messed around withdestroyed the thumbs, but the job is done and we have tested the Elite collector, it already fits very well there, so let's take a quick look. the manifold here although this stock guy is a big old monster and has a fancy system like uh the dual cam system racers set up his setup so you can enjoy the best he knows how, torque and power band superior, so he was a heavy man. A big heavy beast, it's quite a pain to get out of there, but in any case we have to change the injectors and fuel rails to the elite manifold, I think that's it.

Like swapping things, right? Yeah, I think we're really getting into that now guys, and before I show you a little bit more, if you have an ls, how many times while working on your car have you hit your head on this? You don't work on your car, we don't see much evidence of guys doing this kind of work, we're learning as we go here, but elate has good instructions on how to install your adapter manifold beforehand. we get into it, although we're going to clean this coolant, you can see that this coolant housing up here is leaking, we think there's actually a crack in the plastic housing here, so we're going to try to replace it, but it's been leaking in this area, so we have a lot of coolant residue here that I'm going to remove with some brake cleaning, so I taped these ports closed on the engine, so I'm going to tap that and then we're going to remove these four bolts. in the four corners where the collector goes, so we will no longer need them for the last adapter plate.

This coolant leak has been happening, I think for a long time because look at this giant piece. of coolant is like, I don't know, frozen, is the right word, hidden hardened drop of coolant, looks like a little piece of hippo meat, so the stiff stiff brush seems to be breaking it up, but there's a lot of it here. We're just trying to remove the first of these four studs that hold the factory manifold in place and we've made it so that each stud remover or each stud should be double nutted and by that I mean we've put two nuts on here. tighten them as tight as we can and then use the lower of the two to remove the bolt;

However, we're loosening the nut every time, so we're going to take out the old propane torch here gently adding heat gently adding gently heat the aluminum block, it's an aluminum block, right, it's an aluminum block, so oh, we've already started a fire here, it's probably not like that, that's not good, yeah, that's not really what we want to do, I have to be careful here. the heat because I have a hose nearby and I have a paper towel and an inlet, I think that might have worked, no, the twist, ah, there it goes, finally, we had to lock those two nuts a lot harder than we did.

At first I thought we had it done, but it kept pushing both of them away and we finally thought about sending that top nut all the way. I felt like I was going to like remove the top of the nut or bolt. off, but it did the job, so now we know you have to go deep, send that funny, what kind of things hold you back sometimes, right, yeah, yeah, this isn't the glamorous part of the job, is it? But we have to finish with those four. bolts out of there, we're going to clean the gasket surface and normally I wouldn't worry too much about that, but considering we're applying a little bit of boost pressure through this, I want those surfaces to be really clean and we're going to use gaskets as well. new, okay, just finishing cleaning everything and, uh, this works great, it does a really good job, I just give it a nice light touch, so no, I'm just going to vacuum this whole thing up and Pete's going to jump in and Show us how to redirect some of these coolant lights to the throttle body.

We're going to reuse this, believe it or not, on the supercharger thanks to the latex adapter, but it moves here, so obviously all these coolant hoses are a problem and we're not really going to need them because this car won't be driven much. in winter, which means that all of this, like the coolant going through the throttle body, is like warming it up. real quick so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to coil the system here and that's going to be putting one of these as hose crimping pliers these are really nice so you come and pinch the hose and this minimizes the actual fluid. that goes from there and now I have these pliers that I recently bought and you can actually see that they are curved and curved so that you can grab the hose and pull it without damaging it, so I'm going to come in here and the guys probably can't see this, it's very tight, but what they do now is they just turn them back and forth, oh, okay, then see, oh, there's a lot of cooling coming out of that side, damn, not what I wanted, but okay, now I'm going to quickly get this guy out.

Here you can see the hose how well it works, and now put it back in there, okay, there we are. It's pretty simple if you want to know how. I'm sure we'll never have to do rod bearings or any major engine service like we do with certain BMWs around here. We are removing the lifting hooks from the engine and I think it will make it easier too. to get the supercharger and adapter in and out, so, yeah, that's a bold statement. I know everyone, but I think you Toyota know what I'm talking about in the hole.

Hopefully it goes in easily without those bolts. you think that's true so here's our fuel line in question which as you can see this flexible line goes up to the feed line on the side of the chassis and then it comes here and sits on the fuel line on the pa or in the fuel on the driver's side. rail and would normally go around the factory intake manifold to the fuel rail on the passenger side, but it will interfere with the supercharger, which we knew beforehand, it's in late instructions that this is something you need to figure out. and man pete and I have really put our heads together on it, we've gone back and forth on a lot of different ways of approaching it and in the end we're going to call in a professional, so next episode we're going to have a VIP here showing us how to do this the right way because we don't want to go boo-boo here and have a line fail and you know, shooting fuel on a hot engine would be bad news, right?

Originally what we thought was that we were going to cut the line and put a rubber hose right there, but from what we read, a system with 50 psi is not suitable for just a rubber hose with a hose clamp, probably not the safest approach, so we'll do it a better way than that, but that's for the next episode and before we get to that, why don't we put the supercharger in here just to show you what it's going to look like. Well, there you have it m112. instead looking snazzy, it looks good, I'm pretty excited about it, but we have another problem here though with these heater hose lines, right?

We thought maybe we could move them up, but I don't know, I don't know, yeah, that thing is right in the shape, I don't think it's going to work, so we're going to have to change this, at least this bottom hose. , we have to figure out the length of the pulley or sorry, it seems like the belt length and the position of the pulley are slightly off so we have to think about that a bit too, but progress is being made so no I know, Pete, I think we're out of time. Here today, isn't it? So I think this is a summary for everyone.

I hope you guys enjoyed seeing what this engine looks like with an m112 supercharger thanks to the Elite Manufacturing adapter plate which by the way comes with all the really nice zinc coated accessories so this. it's a Canadian climate approved and in the next episode we'll show you our solution for that fuel line as well as those coolant lines and any other type of troubleshooting we have to do to make this work, but wait, there's more to it than have. We're pretty excited about all the progress here so we decided to put the elate uh throttle body adapter elbow here and we put the stock throttle body in place here and you can see that even the wiring just plugs in there which is cool .

Okay, so we're dreaming about how to fit an intake tube over the factory intake box. This looks good and even our coolant lines up here. If we think we can make that work without having to reinvent the wheel, we can do it. just move them around a bit, maybe cut out a little support here and there, so what do you guys think? Are you interested in this whole supercharged 3uz thing? I know, and if you are, maybe even consider hitting that subscribe button down there and giving me a like. and commenting on how bad it is for me, yelling at some BMW M5 Touring but you