Part II: Installing The Supercharger
Paul Shaw Shares His Own Experiences
When I arrived in Vancouver in June, 2003, I located a Dinan installer, linked to AutoWest BMW. I simply presumed they’d be able to do the job. Wrong! Even though Dinan, California, makes superchargers for several bimmers, including 540i’s, Dinan outlets throughout North America are only installers. They don’t even have dynos and therefore can’t tune. They did offer me an option, however, and I thank them for at least trying. They proposed shipping my M5 to Florida by rail, have the SC installed and tuned by a BMW guru there, then shipped back. In other words, say goodbye to my M5 for several months so it could travel back East from where I’d just come!
A few weeks later, a local Porsche outfit told me about two performance gurus – Shawn Van Neer and Ryan Lore – who owned a shop called Kinetic Performance Motors in nearby Surrey. They seemed to have informed answers to all the messy questions I’d dug up from the forced induction literature – about the do’s and don’ts of supercharging. They also seemed committed to the notion that a car like mine should undergo minimal surgical intrusion, in the form of drill holes and cuts, so it could be restored to original condition should the SC fail. Furthermore, they admitted they didn’t know it all (who does) but had a network of experts who did. For example, when I told them Mark D’Sylva was a Canadian guru of E34M5s who burned chips for enhanced performance, they called him to discuss options. It was also comforting to see that their office was full of turbo and supercharger units being installed on a variety of different cars every day.
I procrastinated for 2 months, thinking about the pros and cons of putting my M5 under the wrench, before giving Shawn and Ryan the go-ahead. On November 15, my car was rolled onto their new Dyno Dynamics Dynamometer for baseline measurments. A stock E34M5 puts out about 249 rear wheel horsepower; mine with a Jim Conforti chip delivered 270 rear wheel HP at 4800 rpms. If the supercharger delivered anything less than these baseline figures, it would be time for me to commit ‘sepiku’.
Installation of the SC unit was expected to be relatively easy. Wrong. The 1” thick aluminum bracket turned out to be a bruiser that had to be shaved multiple times to squeeze in. The belts kept slipping off, resulting in the design of new pulleys and finely machined offset washers. The intercooler was a bit too big,requiring some minor surgery to make space under the radiator. Small cuts to the rebar were needed, invisible to anyone but an inquiring mechanic, and not enough to weaken the M5 in a front-end crash. Lots of juggling, trimming here and there, and finally, hurrah! the intercooler was in.
Installing oil lines from the pan to the SC was a challenge. Unlike other cars, where the pan just pops off, the E34M5 requires that the engine be unbolted and lifted to access the pan. That’s a chore. One alternative was to use a magnetic drill, which would capture the shavings, then insert the oil lines. But the pan was aluminum. The other alternative, which we used, was to drill with a grease rag constantly tugging away shavings, then swab the inside of the pan, then flush it twice to restore purity. Hurrah, Shawn and Ryan concluded it worked!
A host of additional tasks were also involved, like modifying the cooling fan, installing bigger injectors, dampening vibration noise of a second fuel pump. A major challenge throughout became findings space to squeeze it all in. Finally, the day came on December 19 when all the loose screws, bulbs, the bumper, the radiator etc. were put back into place. Hey, that looks more like my car!
At this point, both Shawn and Ryan assured me the installation had gone well and met their standards. They had also become a part of this project, even buying a digital camera so they could provide me with pictures as they went along. Now that’s service. And when they finally turned the key, Shawn informed me “The beast is alive!”
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