so... no time or money for the V8 conversion..... but elastic band power is just too tempting! Yep.... just like the Destroy or Die Suspension arms seeing as I cant go for the V8 straight away I want to make as decent as I can MX5 on the standard engine and drive train..... unlike the suspension arms I have no "time saving" defense for this - just that I saw something shiny and cheap (cheap is relative) and I went and bought it.
So what exactly did I buy? oh yeah, I bought a supercharger kit from Vindi (hoarder of all things)
Anyway, so from right back in the day, before I started building the first Project:Bankruptcy, I went and took a load of passenger rides in various boosted MX5s , from 170ish BHP up to 270BHP, and from all these "research" passenger rides I decided that I wanted to supercharge Project:Bankruptcy........ and then ended up with a turbo charger.... HTF did that happen? oh yeah, Lanks on MX5Nuts advertised his turbo kit cheap, and much like this super charger kit.... I couldn't resist.
Scan forward a few years and Im working on Project:Bankruptcy over with Clive at Autotronix Developments and he had another boosted 5 in for rolling road tuning.... and this one was supercharged. Now in the MX5 world in the UK, by far the most common supercharger set up is a twinscrew/roots set up, usually utilizing an M45 which has been half inched of a Mini Cooper S there second seems to be an M62, followed by a whole host of other homebrew options. The one at Clives place that weekend had something that I hadnt seen before though, although I have since found out that they are more popular across the way in America. Rotrex centrifugal super chargers almost look like a Turbocharger, but the end that would normally be spun by the exhaust gasses is spun by a belt off the crank, then it goes through a very compact gearbox to spin the compressor.... I was really quite intrigued as Clive chatted to me more and more about them.... and here is a quick vid of Rotrax from the MX5 Forum in the practice pen at santapod many years ago
So lets face it.... when I saw one come up for sale, I really didn't have a chance of passing it by.
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