So what’s better than a car that comes with over 400 horsepower from the factory? How about one that you can convert to over 600 horsepower in about four hours? No smoke and mirrors here folks, these are real numbers that anyone is able to achieve. I will stop speaking in tongues and get to the point. We just finished installing ProCharger’s brand new 2011 Mustang GT 5-liter kit and we picked up an astonishing 164 rear wheel horsepower with the aforementioned seven pounds of boost. Best part of all, you don’t have to cut a single thing to get the kit to fit properly. Read on and we will give you the full scoop.
Unless you have been living in a cave somewhere, you have seen that the 2011 Mustang GT 5-liter has galloped to the front of the muscle car pack. It is the fastest 0-60 mph, quickest to the quarter mile, and best handling muscle car out of the big three… and it’s even the least expensive. At 412 horsepower stock, it is pound-for-pound the best Mustang ever produced.
“ProCharger and Mustang go hand-in-hand,” Jeff Lacina of ProCharger remarked. “We started in late 1993 during the height of the 5.0 craze. A key to modern supercharging is fuel injection. The Mustang was the modern performance vehicle at the time, the compression ratio was ideal for forced induction, and the rest was history from a ProCharger standpoint.”
A Moment with Jeff Lacina – From Drawings to a Completed Kit – How ProCharger Built the 2011 System
“We are very fortune that Ford is committed to the SEMA technology transfer program,” explained Lacina. “When they re-did the body in 2010, that posed a problem for us with the design of the front fascia in relation to the intercooler. With the release of the 2011 5-liter, we knew that there was going to be more changes that we would have to adapt to. We received the new data files from Ford on the redesigned engine back in February so we could figure out what we needed to do with the brackets. What we didn’t know was the environment in which the engine sat in – where the radiator was, surrounding accessories, etc.
“We were able to get a California Special 2011 Mustang in early June and then ProCharger purchased a company-owned 5-liter as well. We were pleased that our concept designs for the brackets were VERY close, which helped us develop the kit even faster. One of the biggest challenges was the intercooler lines. Ford changed the location of some of their air conditioning lines in a way that made us design the system to place the piping on the left side of the car to where it enters the engine bay. By the middle of June we had both cars in the shop with the engineers working on them. We had a supercharger on the car and making boost in under three weeks.”
An Overview of the ProCharger 2011 5-liter High Output Mustang Kit
One of the biggest worries for new car owners is having to hack up their brand new car to make a lot of power. ProCharger has gone to great lengths with their new 5 liter kit to unsure you don’t have to do any of that…and that includes fitting the air-to-air intercooler. This kit is designed to fit perfectly under the stock hood without cutting anything, including the 5.0 engine cover. The other great feature is the dedicated supercharger drive system that keeps the stock belt system untouched and the ProCharger crank pulley adapter is a direct bolt on affair.
The supercharger unit ProCharger selected is their patented and proven P-1SC-1, which is a self contained unit that does not require any external oiling. The version of the P-1SC-1 we went with is their helical gear set upgrade. This option significantly reduces the supercharger’s noise level for a truly stealth install. Though if you prefer the traditional centrifugal supercharger whine, ProCharger offers that as well. “This is the first entry of our 2011 Mustang lineup,” continued Lacina. “This High Output system is simply the introduction for what we have planned.”
The air is delivered through a molded intake pipe, compressed and forced through ProCharger’s front mount intercooler. The driving air cools the air charge through the front-mount intercooler as it makes its way into the throttle body. Supplied fuel injectors and an SCT tuner ensures that the additional fuel is added into the mix for spot on air/fuel ratio numbers. Though if you want to manage your own fuel system, ProCharger also offers a tuner kit.
This particular P-1SC-1 system we’re installing will deliver 7 pounds of boost with the current dedicated 8 rib drive pulley selection, though there’s also a D-1SC upgrade, or if you are looking for big power, the bracket system can support up to a F1-A supercharger with the ability to make over 1000 horsepower!
Baseline Dyno Numbers and Installation Highlights
The first order of business was to get the 2011 5-liter strapped onto the dyno. The Mustang is a SEMA-show-car-to-be and had a mere 10 miles on the odometer – nothing like a proper trashing on the dyno for its first use! It was 1 o’clock by the time it was strapped down and the air temperature was already over 100 degrees outside. We weren’t expecting magical numbers in the heat, though the Mustang still performed well by making 359 horsepower and 347 lb/ft of torque to the rear wheels.
Installing the Tune and Dynoing the Mustang
We couldn’t be more pleased with how the Mustang drove on the street. At idle, the helical gear set would still radiate just enough blower whine, but under acceleration, the sound virtually disappeared. The stock exhaust growled louder than a stock vehicle, but not enough for the untrained ear to know. Also, only one of the intercooler pipes is visible when looking at the front end. Off throttle you can hear the blow off valve trailing the un-needed air from its valve. Cruising through city streets under normal load the Mustang drove like it did completely stock. All in all, 165 horsepower from seven pounds of boost hitched with a short install time and no cutting made the ProCharger High Output kit almost too good to believe.
Stay tuned as we have a complete installation and dyno video coming soon!