The safe limit of your 4.6L 3v motor is 450rwhp and 6,000rpm’s. You’re flirting with danger running any more than that.

The GT450-M will support up to 36lb of boost which is about 1500rwhp.

Installing a GT450 kit is no harder to do than any other positive displacement blower kit. And easier than some. There is a little more “hot rodding” when installing a GT450 kit but nothing that is mentally challenging. Just a little more time consuming. That’s splitting hairs though. The instructions (which can be found on this site) are very thorough and everything is explained in detail. Installing blower kits is not “hard”. They’re time consuming because there is a lot to do. But they are not “my brain hurts” hard. Most people are capable of doing a blower install for their first big project.

It will take your average home mechanic 16-18hrs to install. Basically, a weekend.  If you’ve done blower kits before or are a little more advanced it takes about 10-12hrs. If you’re a “Pro” expect it to take you 9-10hrs.

Out there in internet land the stock 07-12 blowers (2.0L Eaton M122’s) are commonly referred to as “Heatons” because highly modded GT500’s that are still running M122’s have high intake air temperature (IAT) problems. The high IAT problem in this situation is because of many factors. Yes, the M122 is not as efficient at compressing air as let’s say a Twin Screw blower (a Whipple for example). But the M122 is not a horrible blower by any means. When the GT500 crowd goes looking for more power out of their stock M122 they start by speeding it up…….a lot. On a stock GT500 the M122 spins at 15,625rpm which is right in its “sweet spot” and it doesn’t make a ton of heat. When the GT500 guys go for big power out of the M122 they first bump it up using a smaller upper pulley to 18,750rpm, which is not in its sweet spot anymore. And it really starts to make some heat. The next step is to add a 10% overdrive lower pulley which spins the blower at 19,875rpm. Now they’re making a lot of heat. The next step after that is to run a 15% overdrive lower pulley which spins the blower at 20,325rpm. Which makes a TON of heat. And all of those blower speeds are based on them not spinning the motor past 6,250rpm. If they raise the motors rev limit (most do) the blower spins even faster. There are guys out there spinning their stock M122 at 23,000rpm!!!! Some of these guys are spinning their M122’s 50% over their “sweet spot”. It’s no surprise that they don’t perform very well and produce a lot of heat. Complaining about a blower spinning nearly 50% faster than its sweet spot and making a ton of heat is like spinning your motor to 9,000rpm and complaining when parts come flying out of it.

A GT450 kit making 450rwhp spins the M122 at 13,000rpm. Yes, at 450rwhp we are spinning the M122 slower than what a stock GT500 does (2,625prm slower). That makes for a very “happy” blower with low IAT’s and very little parasitic loss.

The M122 is not a “junk” blower. There are no junk blowers out there (that we know of). The problem people run into is they try and use the wrong blower for their goals. Different blower designs, sizes, etc do different things better than others. But it mostly comes down to size (displacement). If you try and get more power out of a blower than it was designed for it will give you problems, it really is that simple. The M122 is VERY “happy” making 450rwhp. And it remains happy all the way up to about 575rwhp. Someone could spend more money and run a 2.3L TVS, 2.3L Whipple, 2.3L Edelbrock, 2.8L Kenne Bell, etc. and at 450rwhp won’t see any performance advantage over the M122. So, who wins? The guy who spent less money and went with the M122? Of the guy who went with the other ones? We say the guy making the same 450hp with no sacrifices for less money…..wins.

There is a horsepower level where the M122 won’t be big enough and getting into something else is the smart move. But 95% of people never go for that kind of power. And for those that do at some point, they can put a 2.3L or 2.65L TVS on the GT450 manifold. No need to get a completely different kit.

You sure can. Positive displacement blowers don’t care much about what motor they are bolted to. Would a “blower” cam work better than a “naturally aspirated” cam? Yeah, just a touch. Nothing you could ever feel in the seat of you pants though. As far as things like ported heads, headers, exhaust, etc. they simply make the blowers job easier. So if you already have a bunch of bolt ons and you want to put a GT450 kit on it’s no problem at all. The only change you would want to make compared to someone without bolt ons is you may want to run a bigger upper pulley (slows the blower down) when running a stock shortblock. A bolt on motor will make 450rwhp easier than a stock one so you will want to run the blower a little slower to stay under that 450rwhp threshold. We can advise you on what pulley to run and you can change your pulley size when ordering at no charge.

You can upgrade to a Eaton 2.3L or 2.65L TVS with the GT450. The big TVS’s can be run up to about 1200rwhp on e85. If you’re looking for more blower than that you’re going “big time” anyway and should be looking at our 3V R-Spec kit. It was designed from the ground up to run huge blowers on the 4.6L 3v motors.

As far as the other big GT500 blowers go (2.8, 3.2, 3.6, 4.7L Kenne Bell’s and 2.9, 3.4, 4.0, 4.5L Whipples) the short answer is no. The big blowers will physically bolt up to the intake manifold but there will be a few issues getting it to work reliably.

First off is the drive belt situation. The 4.6L 3v motors have a 6 rib belt. All entry level blowers use that same 6 rib belt system. It’s adequate for most 3v applications but when things get turned up to “kill” the system needs to be converted to 8 rib. And even this will get you only so far. Stock GT500’s come with their own dedicated 10 rib belt for the blower and A/C compressor (they run a 6 rib belt for the other stuff). You need that 10 rib belt when playing with the big GT500 blowers. There is no easy way to convert the 4.6L 3v to a 10 rib belt to drive those big blowers. You could maybe possibly get away with running an 8 rib system on a big GT500 blower if you weren’t spinning it very hard, but it would be problematic, there would still be some fabrication necessary to make it all work and why put a big expensive GT500 blower on and not run it hard? That’s a colossal waste of money.

Second problem is that the blower offset front to rear is a little different on the GT450 so rear elbow/inlet will poke through the faux firewall a little.

Long story short is that if you’re looking at going “big time” with a 3v (over 1000rwhp) you want to be looking at a kit designed specifically for those goals. Our 3v R-Spec kit. There is a lot more to running huge blowers than “will it fit”. They need all sorts of supporting systems to work properly.

The short answer is none. You can bolt a GT450 kit on your car and run it as is with no problems. Lots of people do this. Of course, “need” and “want” are two complexly different things. Supporting mods that you “want” are pretty much endless. The kits have a lot of these as options. And we can supply anything else your heart desires. Our sister business Department Of Parts carries nearly everything.

Any tuner that can tune a Mustang can tune a GT450 kit. Most tuners will find that the GT450 kits are easier to tune than some others because it uses stock Ford parts for all of the tuning related items (injectors, mass air sensor, intake air temp sensor, etc)

You can get your car tuned at your local dyno facility or you can have it remote tuned. The simple explanation of remote tuning is that you do driving tests for the tuner. You then email them your logs (the data your tuning device sees), they make changes, then email you back an updated tune. You repeat this process a few times until your car is tuned properly. Remote tuning works very well and 9 times out of 10 it is what we do ourselves. A great tuner for the 3v is Manuel Pazo from Tudyno. He is who we use for 3v tuning. He can be contacted at manual@tudyno.com. You can also find him on Facebook.

To be perfectly honest the number one reason is it’s a PITA and tuning is not what we do. If we wanted to offer tunes there would be a infrastructure put in place to support that and we simply aren’t big enough to add a “department” for tuning.

Additionally, we are not fans of supplied or “canned” tunes for blown cars. Even if we purchased a blower kit from another company we wouldn’t run the supplied tune. Supplied tunes are very, very safe. And that means they are down on power and run very soft. Supplied tunes need to be that way because every car is a little different. If they were to supply a dialed in tune it’s possible that someone will put it in a car with some other mods other than the blower and it will not be safe anymore. Canned tunes are pig rich and don’t have much timing. They run like crap.

You really, really want a custom tune for your car. The number one reason is so you can be 100% sure you are tuned safe. The number two reason is you want your car to make all the power it can make and run well. Tuning is incredibly easy in this day and age. There are dyno shops on every corner and if you don’t want to do that there are a couple of tuners that do remote tuning which is a great option.

The short answer is no. It’s not because they couldn’t be made to be 50 state legal. It’s just that we don’t deal in large enough volume to be able to afford to get the kits certified. But…….

This is all in theory of course, we would never condone doing something illegal…….We aren’t in a state with emission testing so all of this is what we have head or been told. We don’t have any first hand knowledge.

There are a lot of people running GT450 kits in states with emission testing. What state you live in would determine how easy it is to get your car to pass the emission test. If your state simply tests the emissions at the tailpipe they are pretty easy to pass. Most good tuners can write you a tune to get past the sniff test. If your state has a visual inspection, it will be tougher. The good news is that the GT450 uses stock Ford parts so when you pop the hood your average person is going to think it’s stock even though they are looking at a supercharger.

You best bet when dealing with emission compliance is to get in touch with your local hot rod community and see what they’re doing. People get past emission every day in every state with aftermarket parts. The trick is figuring out what you need to do.

Yes. The only difference between a manual and auto trans supercharger kit is the tune. Your tuner will be the one who “makes it for an auto”.

Some shops won’t want to install your GT450 kit. Not all, but some.
Your shop doesn’t want to install your GT450 kit because of one simple reason, money. We are not saying that they’re wrong for basing it on money. Making money is what they’re supposed to be doing after all.

When your shop puts a blower on your car they are usually selling you that blower, which they make money on. They make money because they are set up with one or a few blower manufacturers (or distributors) and they get their kits at a lower price than you do. We have already priced our kits as low as they can go and that is the price we give our customers. We didn’t pad the price so we can afford to sell the kits to shops for less than we do our customers.
Most shops bill by the hour ($100/hr for example). And they pay their employees by the billed hour. If the shop charges you 12hrs to put a blower on and it takes them 14hrs they “lost money”. And the employee isn’t going to be too happy because they just got paid for 12hrs but it took them 14. If a shop sticks with one or two different blower kits and only installs those they can get really fast at them and make more money. They will still charge for 12hrs, but if they can do the job in 8hrs because they have done so many of them they are very happy. There is nothing wrong with this at all, it’s smart. But if they’re only installing a certain kit and doing it faster than 12hrs every time they are going to be less thrilled about tackling a different kit and maybe seeing their work time balloon to 12hrs+. It’s not that your shop doesn’t want to install a GT450 kit. They just don’t want to install a different kit then they’re used to.
Your shop makes money when they sell you the blower and they can make more money per hour if they get fast at a certain kit(s). That is why some shops won’t want to put your GT450 kit on. There is nothing at all wrong with this. They should be doing everything they can to maximize profit and stay in business.

Yes you can. But it depends on what shape the motor is in. And that mostly boils down to cylinder sealing. If you’re at all concerned about running a blower on a high mileage do a compression test. And if you’re really worried do a leakdown test. If the numbers are good you can put a blower on.

We sold our first GT450 kit 1/7/12. There are over 500 GT450 kits out there (as of 12/19) in the world now. It has been completely tested and proven.