Fitting a supercharger was never going to be easy!
The subframe needs extensively modifying in order for the supercharger belt pulley to have sufficient clearance. There was a lot of trial and error to get it right
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It has been a long time coming. About 8 years to be exact that I have wanted to purchase a Pro-Motive R1 kit. The day finally arrived on Friday 6th March 2020 when I took delivery of kit No: 125.
An important element of the supercharger conversion is the induction system to ensure cool, clean air is supplied to the supercharger and subsequently to the engine intake. To the best of my knowledge I am developing one of, if not the first supercharger conversions for an R1 powered mini. It's therefore not possible to buy a ready made induction kit off the shelf.
I have been gathering parts over the last couple of months to enable a system to be fabricated. I have also designed my own parts and started having them made or I am making them myself. How annoying. It turns out there isn't going to be enough space to easily mount the Eaton M45 supercharger I was planning on using so I change of plan was required which brings me to the Aisin AMR 500.
A Thing of BeautyA lot of progress has been made on the Supercharger conversion since my last update. All of the parts have been machined and the main casing has been treated to a lovely coat of Cerakote, my new favourite discovery.
Having made good progress prototyping a supercharger conversion for the R1 motor, link to last post here I decided I would take the plunge and have the main casing part CNC machined. That proved to be a lot harder than expected. Finding a company willing to quote for the part was difficult. Most just didn't seem interested failing to return emails and calls before I had even disused a price with them.
Fortunately I discovered a guy in Greece who was able to make the part for a reasonable price in a short time frame. Good progress is being made on the supercharger prototype. I managed to get all the custom parts printed up so a test fit was possible. A bearing and oil seal will still need to be fitted but that didn't stop a quick trial fit. The main components shown here consist of the custom couplers I've designed, a custom shaft and a custom engine casing. I also printed up a cush coupler so I don't damage the one I will be using in the finished product.
Transplanting a Yamaha R1 engine into a classic mini might be a little crazy but wouldn't a supercharged one be even better?!
Following a ride in my friends new Lotus Exige S I couldn't get the idea of having a supercharger out of my head. The noise and torque is so addictive. I started conducting a little research and couldn't find much for inspiration. A company called TTS Performance produce a supercharger kit for later R1's but sadly not for my 2003 5PW engine. Not letting the lack of off-the-shelf kits get in my way I have set about creating my own! The main obstacle to overcome is finding a way to get drive from the engine to power the supercharger. Sadly the standard R1 engine does not have any external pulleys to use so I needed to come up with a solution. I've been a little slack updating this website but progress has been made behind the scenes in a number of areas. I will keep this update brief and go into more detail in later posts. Steering Rack OverhaulThe steering rack was in fairly good mechanical condition before the car came off the road so I didn't see any great need to replace it. It did however need a fresh coat of paint. Upon closer inspection it also needed at least one new rubber boot.
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