Project Toyota Tundra- Installing the TRD Supercharger Part 1

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The TRD piece is an impressive OEM level casting with the blower and liquid to air intercooler nicely integrated into one sleek and compact package.  It sure beats the stock plastic lawn mower shroud.

 The heart of the TRD supercharger kit is Eaton’s new TVS Gen 6 roots positive displacement supercharger.  Using the latest in supercharger design technology, the Gen 6 supercharger gets rid of some of a roots blowers biggest disadvantages, mostly poor adiabatic efficiency.

This side view cutaway shows how the blower and intercooler assembly is packaged inside the housing.

A positive displacement roots blower has a pair of rotating lobes turning in a housing that displaces a fixed amount of air with every revolution. The advantage of this is that the supercharger can make boost at a very low rpm giving good low end power.  The disadvantage has been that this blower uses external compression to create boost which is inefficient.  Prior roots blowers have had efficiencies as low as 50 percent.  When compared to the 70-80 percent of a modern turbo compressor, this means you get a lot of parasitic power loss and charge air heating.

The Gen Six blower that TRD uses has a greater helix twist on the rotor lobes as well as 4 instead of the previous 3 lobes.  This gives more internal working area, and more internal compression boosting efficiency and creating less noise.  The Gen Six gives turbocharger like compressor efficiency.  This means less parasitic power loss, less charge air heating and more power with less boost.

Another disadvantage is that roots type blowers tend to be very noisy, rattling and whining.  They are also big, bulky and difficult to intercool.  The TRD Eaton has addressed every one of these issues with unique engineering solutions.