Preparation for the STILLEN supercharger

Kyle@STILLEN

We can't give an estimated release date becaue there are still some final things to work out. For example, although we have a running prototype and tuning is about to begin, we still need to do a lot of drive time real world testing. High altitude, desert (heat), long distance, basically general drivability. These driving steps can sometimes take one week which was the case for the 350Z and G35 kit, and if the car passes everything with no problems, then we're good to go. Or, like the case of our Titan supercharger, we might find that we need to do a lot of endurance testing if something arises during one of the other tests.

When we were developing the supercharger we used my Titan and during the long distance/high temperature test I drove out to Palm Springs. I got about fifty miles out from the shop and the check engine light came on. So, turned around and headed home. The engineer's made a couple changes and I went back out again, this time I made it half way before the check engine lights came on. Came back, made a few changes, then we went back out again. The third time I made it all the way there, had lunch, then took the mountain road home. No lights, no problems, all was good. The next morning I started the truck and began my 5 mile commute into work...Check engine light came on...So, we took another look at it. Basically what was happening is that my over sized (35 inch mud terrain) tires were causing the truck to run at a higher RPM in order to travel the same speed as our test truck which had factory ride height and wheels and tires. The test truck never threw any lights but because we also did the testing on a lifted truck, we learned what would happen. Finally, before releasing that kit I took the truck all the way from Newport Beach, CA. to Ensenada, Mexico. That is about a 200 mile trip each way. We did not experience any problems on that trip so we released the kit and were comfortable that we had done sufficient testing.

I would love to be able to say that we will be releasing the kit in the first quarter of 2010 but we want to focus on the performance of the kit and ensure that everything is perfect before releasing it.