First up this morning was the removal of unnecessary components and cleaning of the engine in anticipation of the supercharger installation. The engine is from a FY 2005 JDM RX-8 and has 33,000km on it. It has been in storage for almost 12 months so it was pretty dusty. A quick hit with citrus cleaner and a pressure washer was exactly what was required as I couldn't let the engine detract from the awesomeness that was about to be bolted to it.
Upper section of inlet manifold including throttle body removed.
Removal of the oil filler neck and vacuum reservoir assembly. The vacuum reservoir and components will be reinstated at a later date.
After all the orifices were suitably protected the engine got washed and came up looking like it was on the Mazda production line awaiting fitment.
Once dried, the gearbox was removed from the engine and placed upon the workbench. The supercharger mounting plate utilises a the alternator mounting bolts and most of the water pump bolts to lock it in position. So these standard fasteners (bolts and studs) were removed.
The first item of the supercharger kit to be installed was the two piece plenum and inlet tube. Here is the lower section of plenum with it's 'O'-rings fitted.
It mates with the surfaces as shown in the next photo.
With the lower section of plenum bolted in place you can really appreciate the dimensional accuracy of the kit as the port matching was perfect.
This is the upper section of plenum awaiting its 'O'-ring to be installed.
Then things got exciting and happened really quickly and I forgot to take stage photos!
Here is the belt/tensioner arrangement for the supercharger drive.
The factory ignition coils and bracket are retained and relocated further outboard by way of a bracket and two spacers.
The supercharger kit uses a layshaft to transfer the drive rotation from the front belt drive arrangement to the internal gearset at the rear of the compressor. Lubrication is provided via an oil line tapping from the oil filter outlet to the sealed supercharger drive gearset and returns to the sump via an oil filler neck adaptor. The supply line is the small gauge stainless wire braided hose. The return line is not shown.
I'll let the next group of photos speak for themselves.
I'm still to sit down and write-up a list of items that need to be addressed before the engine can head off to the engine dyno to be tuned. So I'm not sure when it will be despatched. Two obvious items that need to be designed and manufactured are the oil filter pedestal and the oil filler neck. The necessity to replace the oil filter pedestal is only an issue on this kit as the supercharger is larger than the supercharger being used on the road-going RX-8 kits.
Cheers,
Danny
You DID buy two!! I was joking 
. I recently acquired for work the current special service tool that Australian Mazda Dealers are using to measure rotary engine compression. The fact that there are effectively three combustion chambers being ignited per leading and trailing spark plugs means that a traditional compression testing tool will only measure the highest compression number of the three combustion chambers. The tool is basically a pressure sender that has been calibrated to work in a 0 - 200 psi range and works with datalogging software that you just install on any PC/laptop.
