Project Toyota Tundra- Installing the TRD Supercharger Part 1

Project Toyota Tundra- Installing the TRD Supercharger Part 1

By Mike Kojima

When we last left off on Project Tundra we had installed a TRD cold air intake and TRD exhaust system.  We were enjoying the high quality, warranty friendliness and smog legalness of our TRD factory engineered performance parts.  However being how we are we still wanted more.  In our search for the ultimate tow and work vehicle, we obtained one of TRD's awesome supercharger kits.

Read more about Project Tundra Here!

From the top the TRD unit looks like a huge honking old school 8-71 roots school bus blower but when you look underneath you can see that the Eaton TVS blower is actually quite compact and the big top is actually the housing for the water to air intercooler and the intake manifold.  Pretty tidy packaging if you ask us. Eaton is an OEM level company and the supercharger is made to ISO, TS and QS quality standards. Note the nice molded rubber o-ring type gaskets around the intake ports?  Cool feature!

The TRD supercharger is perhaps the ultimate bolt in.  TRD claims it takes the Tundra to an unheard of 504 hp @5500 rpm and 550 lb/ft of torque@ 4000 rpm.  The best thing is that its smog legal and won't void your Toyota warranty as is is engineered by Toyota.

How tidy the layout is is most apparent when viewed from the rear.  We think that this is really cool space utilization.  The Eaton blower is self contained and requires no external lubrication or drain access.

We were a little sketchy about bolting on so much power on a stock engine, especially a daily driver that we use to haul and tow.  Towing can be just as brutal as racing on your engine.  Pulling your race car up the Baker grade, Cajon pass or the Grapevine is common for So Cal racing and we have forced some of our tow vehicles to spend as much as 15 minutes at wide open throttle to get up these hills.  Imagine a 15 minute dyno pull and thats what you get!