Project Toyota Tundra, Installing and Testing the TRD Supercharger
By Mike Kojima
We have been building our Project Tundra into the ultimate towing machine over the past year with the help of Toyota and TRD. Toyota and TRD’s accessories are great in the fact that they do not affect your warranty and can even be financed at the dealer at the time you purchase your car if you are so inclined. You can check out our look at the supercharger kit contents here.
If you are curious here is TRD's warranty policy:
Warranty
Toyota/Scion Warranty – Length of Coverage
Accessories installed at the time of the new vehicle purchase are covered for 36 months/36,000 miles, from the vehicle's in-service date, whichever occurs first, under the New Vehicle Limited Warranty.
Accessories installed by the dealer after the new vehicle purchase are covered for 12 months, regardless of mileage, from the accessory installation date, or the remainder of the New Vehicle Limited Warranty, whichever provides greater coverage
Accessories purchased over-the-counter are covered for 12 months from the date of purchase.
Car covers are warranted for 12 months from the purchase date and are not covered by the New Vehicle Limited Warranty
This is a killer warranty considering that some of these parts are hard-core performance bits.
It’s not like our Tundra was hurting for power and we had already installed a TRD exhaust system and cold air intake in previous installments of our project for a nice gain, but when towing it is never possible to have too much power!
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| Howard Watanabe of Technosquare starts out by removing the skid plate under the truck. |
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| Next he removes the bolts holding the bumper fascia in place. |
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| Some tape on the fenders prevents us from scratching the paint. |
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| The bumper is removed so we can install the intercooler and water pump. |
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| The bumper is off. |
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| The horns and hood latch stay are removed. |
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| The coolant is drained, the hoses are removed and the intake manifold is also removed. |
Still we were really cautious about our project and wanted to thoroughly test the supercharged Tundra before reporting our results. Towing is actually pretty brutal on trucks; it can be even harder on a powertrain than racing. Things like towing a heavy load over the Grapevine or the Baker grade in the middle of summer can mean minutes at wide-open throttle in 100 plus degree heat. Well, not in the Tundra, it has enough power not to strain like that, but regardless, towing can be incredibly hard on a vehicle.
