New ProCharger Blower Intake Makes Power, Fill A Street Car Void

Once upon a time, people were happy to have 500, 550, or maybe 600 horsepower in their street car. Superchargers stuck out of hoods, driveability (and visibility) was meh, but they got the job done. But even 600 horsepower now seems quaint. At this writing, 1,000 horsepower seems to be the starting point. And for those people, ProCharger’s new blower intake is the perfect solution for making big horsepower, maintaining drivability, and still fitting everything under a stock hood.

This new ProCharger blower intake manifold is ideal for the guys who want to make 1,000 horsepower but still fit under the factory hood. The engine in our photos also shows the supercharger company’s latest accessory drive system, which allows you to add the blower later in the build stage, if need be.

“You remember when guys wanted to make 600 horsepower and that was cool? Well, now it’s gotta be a thousand horses for, basically, every streetcar,” say Erik Radzins, ProCharger’s Director of Communications and Calibrations. ”So we needed an intake manifold that they could use with forced induction, like this ProCharger setup we have here, but fit underneath a stock hood. So, if you got, like, a Nova or a Chevelle or, I mean, anything — square body truck, OBS truck, what have you — this intake manifold fits under the stock hood and has the big intercooler core inside of it. So that way it’s basically plug and play. All a guy has to do is run a heat exchanger, a pump, and some lines, and he’s good to go.”

We have written about this intake in the past, but now all the revisions are done and the latest version is in production. Best of all, the set up is completely modular, regardless of what powerplant you are using.

“We wanted to make sure that this intake manifold worked with our accessory drive kit, as well as our blower bracket. So all of this is modular. So, if you have an LT or an LS, or a big-block, Chevy or small-block Chevy, or small-block Ford, the accessory drive here on the front works, Radzins adds. “We’re all getting very used to seeing what these look like, but what we did is we scooted it forward just a bit. So that way, if a guy wants to add a ProCharger later down the road, he can slip the ProCharger bracket right behind, add the ProCharger belt, and now it’s boosted.”

The intake has been around for a couple of years in testing. It debuted two years ago, but there have been changes and updates along the way. 

“We just keep making revisions to it and revisions to it, because, as most people know intake manifold runner length, plenum volume, and all of that are … motors are picky, so it matters. So now that it’s basically dialed in and set up 100 percent, now we can start cranking this out. And again, we have the LS version, the Coyote version is just around the corner, and maybe someday we’ll do it for some of the conventional pushrod motors —small-block Ford, big-block Chevy, that thing — but for now it’s just LT, LS and Coyote.”

It is available with port injection or without port injection. All the LSs have the port injectors, but the LTs can come either way, Erik told us. 

As we noted earlier, back in the old days, your blower-through-the-hood would announce your intentions long before you came to a stop. Obviously, you can’t test fit every combination, but can you imagine having a GM G-body or ‘68 Mustang with 1,500 horsepower under the factory hood? Super sleeper and super powerful. 

We test fit it — I mean obviously you can’t test fit every combo under the sun — but we brought in some older trucks like C-10s and square bodies and Malibus and Novas and first-generation Mustangs and Mavericks and all kinds of stuff, and just as long as it could fit in the bulk majority, then it was, it was good to go.” Erik Radzins, ProCharger.