Not sure where it came from - the urge to supercharge. I guess part of me always wanted to do it - to have power on tap, to make the car move at neck-breaking speeds... to have a little 'secret' under the hood. But the urge came and went. It would wax and wane within me.
Around February though, something snapped in me - I crossed the line from only casually thinking about supercharging, to being determined to do it.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled the trigger on an ESS VT2-625 Kit. It was the highest HP kit recommended on the DCT system, so I just went with it. I've heard a LOT of stories of people starting lower, then getting bit by the HP bug, and spending a lot of money to bump their kits up, paying for new software, and paying additional installation fees - so i just decided to go for the highest kit from the beginning and save myself the time, money and headache. I know myself well enough to know that once I put on the supercharger, I was going to want to max it out. haha. Its a weakness of mine.
I gave some thought to the other competitors, but ultimately decided on going with the ESS kit because of the reliability of the kit. I'm not saying the other kits out there are unreliable - in fact it might be the case that the other kits are just as reliable as the ESS - but with so many ESS kits out there, the sample size was there for me to have complete faith in its reliability.
I reached out to Malek at MRF Engineering over in Irvine, CA to do the install. His vast experience and reputation in Forced Induction made working with him a no-brainer. Not to mention that he's worked on some of the most serious cars on this forum. What I like about MRF is that its a shop focused on performance project cars. They're not trying to do "volume" They take a few projects on, but what they do, they do perfect.
I knew I wanted to do a custom manifold, but it was important to me that the design be cohesive. Malek who's also has an impeccable aesthetic eye importantly pointed out to me, that its important for the manifold to be cohesive not only in the context of the entire car, but just as importantly in the context of the engine bay. He pointed out that while I was using gloss black accents on all the other parts of my car, those accents wouldn't work as cohesively inside the engine bay where virtually all the black elements are in satin, not gloss. That advice turned out to be instrumental.
With that advice, I decided to go with gloss dakar yellow through the center of the manifold, flanked by satin black on the left and right ribbed sides. To create the illusion of continuity and length, rather than paint only the center of manifold yellow, I decided to continue the yellow past the normal 'end point', all the way forward through the manifold bend, and also to have the vortex supercharger painted dakar yellow as well. The idea being to create the illusion of one continuous line.
For the custom manifold work, I enlisted Nate of M-Fest fame over at C&C Collision in Alhambra. He's been doing custom M3's for a long time and knows the community intimately. His attention to detail is unparalleled, so i knew the project would be in good hands with him.
Some pics....
A Major thank you to Malek @ MRF Engineering, Roman @ ESS, and Nate @ C&C Collission, for all of their hard work and invaluable advice.
Comments on the car's performance and more pics, coming soon.
- esquire