I live in the Kansas City area and have a Mazda dealer within about a mile of my home. I stopped by the dealer this past Saturday and noticed a car on the showroom with a cover over it. It was obviously an RX8 so I asked the sales manager, who I have gotten to know a bit over the past year, why the car was covered. He told me that it was their project car that they are setting up with a ProCharger, body kit and other goodies.

In case you are not aware, the ProCharger is a centrifugal supercharger. I happen to know that Accessible Engineering Inc. (ATI), who develops intercooled ProCharger kits for many vehicles, is located just a few blocks away and asked if they were in on the project. The sales manager indicated thay they were and that his dealership had provided ATI with an RX8 for development purposes.

I was given a look under the cover and found a silver RX8 sitting on 19" Racing Heart wheeles with Pzeros. It looked awesome! The sales manager told me they had just received the MazdaSpeed body kit and were ready to install it.

He was throwing out some estimated HP numbers, for the ProCharger modification but I will not repeat them as they would have to be pure speculation. I later stopped by ATI and spoke to some of they guys in the shop. They claimed no knowledge of a ProCharger kit being developed for the RX8. It may be possible that someone is workng on this independently using components from ATI. Or perhaps this is just a side project they are doing but not developng a kit for resale at this time.

I hope to have a more extensive conversation with the dealership since they were quite busy on Saturday and it was difficult for me to get any time with the Sales Manager. Anyway, I will keep my eye on things here and keep you all updated.

 

Hey KCROTOR,
Was this SunFlower Madza?

 

Wow sounds interesting. Keep us informed.

 

Yes it was. Do you have more info?

 

No, I'm in OP area myself, so I was going to go by and take a look at it. I bought my RX-8 from indep mazda.

 

in loop

beers

 

huh? Waz e meene?

 

TTIWWOP!

 

hmmm.......nice to hear

 

That seems to be pretty common on this board. Why do people feel the need to post topics in two or three different forums?

 

or he could be shitting you..need some hard evidence!

 

Got a job offer out their but no nothing about the area.

you like it..

Misouri right...?

let me know b/c no one has been able to tell me anything about that city..

Living, nightlife, shopping, ect... oh and of course the car scene.:D

thanks,

Paul

 

I live on the Kansas Side. Send me your email address and I will be happy to discuss with you.

 

I stopped by the dealer again this Saturday. Not much better luck in getting time with the Sales Manager as they were very busy again. They did, however, have the car on display this time with the body kit installed.

I spoke with one of the guys from the service department that was hanging around there. He said they plan to have the ProCharger installation completed prior to the Kansas City Auto Show the first part of March so they can display the car there.

He also said they have an agreement with ProCharger to do installations as a dealer package and that the factory warranty would remain in place for this upgrade. Not sure yet about the price or performance of the package.

One other note - they had written on the windshield of the car "Jet Engines Don't Have Pistons Either".

 

wow...under warranty??? is this for real?

 

He said that as long as it was installed by them (the dealer) that the warranty would remain in tact. He said his dealership has an exclusive agreement to handle the upgrade in a 4 state area.

 

The warranty would have to be from that dealer as Mazda USA would have a fit if you tried to get them to fix the engine under warranty. Good luck with the ATI. I know they have a good reputation with the mustang crowd, but it seems that due to a poor FMU, and many, many improper tunes many of the 350Z's with the ATI kits were having issues (including a few blown engines).

 

Wish someone in FL would do that

 

What 4 states? Is ILLINOIS part of it? I'm game!

 

UPDATE: Well it seems that the dealer is serious about making this Prochager upgrade a reality. I have been told that the dealership has received approval from Mazda North America to move forward, within certain guidelines, in providing this system as a dealer package.

I confirmed that their is a third party involved that is doing the R&D using ATI supplied Procharger components. The racing shop that is putting this together has some prior experience with rotaries and now has an exclusive agreement with the dealership on this project. I plan to pay them a visit in the next week or so to see what details they can provide.

Working within the guidelines provided by Mazda, the initial performance target for this upgrade is 300hp. They think they may be able to accomplish this with about 3-4 lbs of boost. A three row front mounted intercooler and ECU reprogramming will also be part of the package. Primary concerns are the high compression ration of the Renesis engine and drivetrain longevity.

The appearance upgrades to the car have been completed and it was on display at the annual World of Wheeles in Kansas City this past weekend. The dealer indicated that the car was drawing a significant amount of interest and attention.

The next stop will be the Kansas City Internation Auto Show the first part of March. The plan is to have the Procharger installed for this show but not yet functional. After that, the completed project with functioning Procharger will make a trip to the Rotary Revolution event for display. This will also coincide with feature stories in Turbo and Tuner magazines.

The dealer plans to sell the car after the Rotary Revolution event and begin offering the upgrade to the public. Not sure about the dates but the price of the package is estimated to be around $ 3,800. The dealer install of the package may push the final cost to somewhere between $4,000 to $5,000.

 

the pricing you mentioned is fairly competitive. expect the blitz s/c to be no less than $4k. ssr eng. turbo has a tenative price of $5-7k.

 

Yes, but the big difference here is that YOU RETAIN THE FACTORY WARRANTY!

 

KCROTOR,

Appreciate your vigilance in seeing this tip through, good stuff. Also kudos for not getting into a pissing contest with the naysayers earlier in this thread. Some digitals of the car would be nice if you've got any.

 

Cool, keep us posted as now we are in the R&D stage of developing a Supercharger system as well :D

 

Yeah and I would like to find out if they are looking to offer this package to other dealers in other areas... like say Eastern Washington... The Idaho Panhandle would be nice... How can I get my dealer hooked up?