The Valeo Clutch kit is a pretty good bang for the buck. ModMini talks about it in one of his vids as it handled his 240 WHP without problems. If you think you need the 295 lbs of torque that the Stage 2 can take on your Gen1, then go for it. Its only money.

On the supercharger, what is your budget and how long you plan on keeping the car? Me, I would check to see how much oil remains. If you are really low then chances are the seals are going, if the oil level is good then change it and put it back on (you already have the thing off so doing the oil change is not that much more money).

 

 

The JCW is a very good exhaust. The thing with exhausts and engine mods is making sure the engine is tuned to take advantage of what you have. IMO the tune should be done with a dyno or with logs such as the route that ByteTronik takes. A canned tune can adjust injectors and a little bit for a cam but you need A/F info to get more and then EGTs would even be better.

Modding a car is like buying a boat, both are holes that you throw money down into. In that aspect I am stupid as I continue to tweak my car.

 

 

The supercharger is pretty much bulletproof (there are very few working parts). When I bought my 2004 MC40 with 125,000 miles, it had never been touched. When I pulled the SC, one of the oil reservoirs (smaller of the two) was completely empty (but emitting no worrisome sound). How long it was empty who knows? I would be more concerned if it was the gear side reservoir that was empty so I just swapped out the oil and reinstalled it - runs fine. SCs are like cars -- you can spend just about any amount of money for a new one. Even a rebuilt model can set you back a coupla thousand. Just like cars of your youth, you're going to get more performance bang for the buck via head/cam/exhaust mods.

 

The fun began today, I had to force myself to start because it was mid 30's this morning. This is going to take me a while to complete as I'm having parts powder coated along the way and the parts list keeps growing. This is the first time I've taken it apart, I hope I don't have any extra bolts leftover when I've re-assembled it, lol.

 

Ha! Be sure to bag & tag. I used Ziplock freezer bags and a Sharpie to ensure that I knew what/where all the bits were. I have to admit I ended up with one small screw that I could never figure out.

 

for sure, grabbed the box of zip locks from the kitchen and before I could get out the door, my wife is telling me to buy more, lol

 

Are there any tutorials out there on how to replace the timing chain?

 

I was able to pull the super charger off today and drain the oil. I got about 90oz out of the pulley side and not much out of the water pump side. I also dropped off the intercooler tubes and clamps at the powder coat shop, I'm going to have them coated gloss black and the clamps orange.







I didn't have any problems with the water pump, but I'm going to replace it too while I'm at it since it's the original one with 117K. I've only driven it about few thousand miles and the only think I've had work on was the suspension and hubs, but while I'm in service mode I'd like to knock out a few things. I've been trying to find a video on changing the timing chain, but not really anything floating around that I found. Heck I'm not even sure if I should attempt to tackle it as it hasn't been a problem yet. I was thinking of just taking the cover off and seeing how the timing chain guides look because from what I understand the fixed guide is the one that breaks.

How many miles do fuel injectors last? should I think about changing them too? I have the JCW package on my 04, can I tell what size injectors I have by visually looking at them?

Sucks not being able to drive it, and this may sound crazy, but I'm rather enjoying my time working on it. Besides fixing up my diesel a little, I haven't really worked on a vehicle where I disassembled it this much since my 69 Bronco.