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The Tundra is also a daily driver and our parts runner so reliability is paramount and fuel economy is somewhat important. We were worried about all of these issues when greatly increasing our power with TRD’s blower. When talking to the Engineers at TRD they assured us that the supercharger system on the truck had been thoroughly validated under tougher conditions than our anticipated use and not to worry. The cooling system and drivetrain could handle anything we planned to do. They also assured us that the stock fuel economy would not get worse or could possibly even improve with the supercharger if we drove normally. We were pretty skeptical about this but to be able to offer such a good warranty and to pass Toyota’s stringent validation testing we knew this kit had to have superior engineering compared to your typical aftermarket fare.
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| The intake manifold is out of the way. Now is a good time to change the injectors for the supplied larger TRD units. We also installed the colder sparkplugs at this time. |
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| Now was the time to switch out the crank pulley and idler for the supercharger belt. We think it's a good idea to put a cardboard protector in front of the radiator or to take it out and set it aside. We screwed up and put a hole in the radiator core, whoops. |
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| Duh, sorry Howard we didn't mean to do that. Interestingly enough the Tundra has a HUGE radiator. It's like it was designed to handle the supercharger. We have seen smaller radiators in semi trucks. No kidding either. |
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| Time to drop in the Supercharger! The guys at TRD strongly recommended that we spend a few extra bucks to buy the supercharger lifting hook and we agree. It would have been a little hard to maneuver the heavy supercharger in place by hand. The hook is well worth the price. |
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| With the supercharger in place, we bolt it down. |
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| The supercharger, big injectors and cold plugs are in! |
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| Wow that looks impressive! |
Our first impression of the supercharged Tundra was holy shit! The slightest movement of the throttle resulted in the activation of the traction control. We turned the traction control off and let the hooning begin. The truck could spin the tires under tip in at any speed up to around 50 mph. The acceleration was so rapid that we were just laughing our asses off as it felt like we were in a huge fast house. It was hard to believe that the big Tundra could accelerate so quickly. The truck felt much faster than the TRD claimed 504 hp and 550 lb/ft of torque would suggest.
