06/26/08 - Viper: I built a cold air box and got it bolted on this morning. I made it out of cardboard first to create a pattern. Then I cut it out of aluminum. The center is one piece, bent smoothly around from front to back with a hole for the supercharger intake elbow to pass through and enough room in the back for air to pass all around the air filter. The side pieces were cut with extra tabs to be riveted to the center piece. The inside was painted flat black and the outside was covered with 400 degree heat sheilding. Wetherstripping seals the box to the hood. Should be much better.

06/18/08 - Viper: Fixed one last leak, water leak this time, and set off to the dyno at Powertrain Dynamics today. Steve has helped me with my cars since the beginning. Six years ago (this month) he put the first tune on my supercharged cobra. Today the Viper didn't need any tuning work. Everything seems to be running great, and with the dyno registering 90 degrees in the garage and the everything still hot from the drive over, the Viper managed to put nearly 600 horsepower to the wheels. Pretty impressive for only seven pounds of boost. That puts this car at a power to weight ratio of about 4.82 lbs/hp, even when factoring in an extra 100lbs. for the supercharger kit.

There are a few things to work on though. As you can see from the pics taken over the weekend, the air filter is sitting in the engine compartment, bringing in hot air. This is probably hurting the horsepower numbers a bit. The second issue is the water cooler. It's not big/efficient enough. Anything under highway speeds causes the air intake temps to creep up and timing to be pulled, again resulting in HP loss. There was a 30 hp loss between runs on the dyno! More weekend projects!

06/15/08 - Viper: It's finished! The supercharger is installed and the car is running. Drove it around town a bit today just to give it a bit of a test run. Found (and hopefully fixed) a couple small oil leaks. I'm trying not to drive it hard until I can get it on a dyno to verify the A/F ratios are all in order but I have run it up to 5lbs. of boost at about 4k rpm. Feels great. Can't wait to really open it up!

06/08/08 - Viper: What's with all the quiet lately? I've been working steadily on a big project: Supercharging the Viper, plus taking care of a few other items while I'm at it. Been working at least one day per weekend on it, taking my time, doing things right. It's getting close now, maybe just another weekend or two, depending upon when some more parts come in. Here's where I'm at after this evening. Everything minus the oilpan is installed and the whole front end still has to be reassembled. I ordered a larger capacity oil pan with baffles and windage tray. Oil pan is here, baffles are too but they don't fit, and the windage tray is still MIA. I've got to replace some worm drive clamps on the fuel lines with proper fuel injection type clamps. Ordered them Saturday. I've got a aftercooler water line that's sitting on a sharp edge of the horn that I have to find a solution for. I've got an emmission line that's a little too short and needs to be replaced (ordered that Saturday as well). After all of the above is done, I still have to do the full systems check to make sure everything is working and there aren't any leaks. Here's a pic of the engine compartment, and a shot of the interior so you can see the fancy new autometer gauges in the a-pillar pods, and a link to a new page showing everything that I've gone through to get this far.

04/27/08 - V8 Miata: Even though it's been almost two months since the last update, we have been hard at work. I've got some very cool stuff in the works on the Viper, but I'll wait until the project is finished to do the write up and show pictures. But this weekend we nailed another long time issue with the Monster Miata, and the same goes for last weekend. Here are the latest updates to the car: At the bottom you'll see a new 3G alternator. This alternator pumps 130 amps of juice back into the battery and makes more power at idle than the old one did at speed. It also does not have exposed cooling fins like the old one, which once cut into the upper radiator hose. Not pictured is a new fan switch from Autometer that turns on the electric cooling fans at 170 degrees. We also had to replace the heater hose and bypass hose on the water pump. They were the original hoses from the junkyard 302 and had recently sprung a leak.

But the big new is that we're now getting cool air into the intake instead of hot air from the engine compartment. I fabricated an aluminum airbox that seals to the hood with weather stripping. Keeps the hot air out and cool air in. Jaime matched an ebay air scoop to a freshly cut hole in a used headlight cover to direct fresh air into the new air box.