Motovicity's Ticket To Ride FR-S Update- HKS Supercharger Kit!

By Mike Kojima

Just about all of us can agree that the Scion FR-S is a pretty fun car, a car that has been a long time coming and that the market has been hungry for for years. Most of us will also agree that the FR-S is really hurting for more power. More power would make the car more balanced and better able to reach its full fun potential.

Well we are going to bring more power to the Motovicity Ticket To Ride FR-S in a big way by adding forced induction. We're not talking about your typical forced induction turbocharged power infusion either but rather with a centrifugal supercharger kit from HKS!

The Evasive Motorsports Time Attack FR-S was the first FR-S to run the HKS Supercharger. Look for a feature on this car soon as we helped tune the suspension on this cool car!

HKS has recently introduced its centrifugal supercharger kit for the Scion FR-S. Perhaps you might have seen it on the famous Evasive Motorsports Time Attack, Pikes Peak FR-S. Featuring high quality components and an exceedingly clean installation, the HKS system looks almost as if it was a creation of the Scion factory. The HKS Supercharger employs a very unique feature: instead of the usual gear or belt driven step up transmission, the HKS blower uses fixed traction planetary rollers to step up the speed of the compressor wheel over crank speed.

The advantage of traction drive is that it is more efficient and soaks up less power than the typical gear or belt drives used by other centrifugal superchargers. The traction drive uses technology from Nissan’s toroidal drive CVT transmissions and requires a special traction oil to help transfer the drive torque between the smooth rollers. The smooth rollers are by nature much quieter than gear drives and belts. The oil is essential for the drive to work properly. Without the oil the rollers would simply spin and fail to transfer any torque at all.

The HKS FR-S supercharger kit is a complete unit that comes with the supercharger, intercooler, oil cooler and Powerflow intake.

The HKS supercharger uses a centrifugal compressor. Centrifugal compressors are typically more efficient than positive displacements superchargers used in some other supercharger kits. HKS has plenty of knowledge with regards to centrifugal compressor aero due to their extensive turbocharger development experience.

Here's where it gets interesting. The HKS supercharger uses a unique traction drive for the compressor's transmission. Traction drive use smooth toothless steel rollers with a special traction oil to transmit drive force from the crank driven pulley to the compressor shaft. The first most notable advantage to the traction drive is that it is practically silent. The second thing is that it has less parasitic power loss than gears or belts and pulleys. The final cool feature is that you can have a higher gear ratio to spin the compressor up faster for less lag while the traction drive will still allow for some engineered slip to take place before the compressor wheel overspeeds or goes into surge.

Motovicity’s Ticket To Ride FR-S Update- HKS Supercharger Kit!