I have to respond to a few items from this post:

First, there is a comment about the SC voiding the warranty. I personally talked to the service manager at Grubbs about this. If you have an intake and exhaust on your can then the only parts that aren't covered are the intake and exhaust. Putting the SC on your car DOES NOT void the warranty. It does mean though if you put a supercharger on the car and blow the diff or tranny and when they tear down, it is obviously due to abuse; then yes you are responsible. If you have the SC on the car and you have a common electrical or mechical problem, there is no issue. Grubbs believes in following what the law is intended.

Next, about Rod Millen owning Stillen. Well, Rod Millen DOES NOT OWN STILLEN. I felt like slapping some people when I read this a couple of times. STILLEN is short for STeve mILLEN, not Rod Millen. Rod Millen sells parts primarily for Toyotas. His produces very good quality parts and is well known to be reliable in Supra and MR2 circles. Steve Millen has a bunch of incompetant people who delivery incomplete and poorly finished parts. Just hop on the Maxima, SE-R or 300ZX boards to get some history. With Z's, there are a lot of problems with their body kits and it is impossible to get warranty problems taken care on. Every Maxima SC kit that goes out the door has production problems. The only things that seem to work right for Stillen are what is actually produced by JWT(Jim Wolf Technologies). All their intake kits and ECU upgrades are actually from JWT.

Last, intercooler with the Stilllen SC. This is right now an impossibility. The SC kit replaces the intake manifold with another that has the SC integral to it. Due to the SC's height, a different hood or a modified hood is required for installation. In order to integrate an intercooler, a different manifold would need to be manufactured to place an intercooler under the supercharger on the discharge side sandwiched with the intake. Saleen is the only one to ever do this arrangement. They make a kit that for Mustangs that has an air-to-water intercooler sandwiched between the SC and intake. Tehy use a remote water reservoir and a pump to circulate fluid to cool the intercooler. For our cars, this would add about 3" more to the height of the SC/intake assembly if it were to be done on this kit. How would you like to have a 4-5" bubble on your hood just to clear the SC? Not very realistic, especially when the ATI kit already has it with the requirement of any hood mods.

04' G35 Coupe(on order)
6-sp Diamond Graphite/Willow w/Premium

 

The powertrain warranty is like an extended warranty you buy from a dealer. This is not through Stillen, but through Dell Financial Group. Stillen is just a selling dealer like automobile dealerships are for extended warranties. This is an option that you pay extra for. It is not included with the cost of the kit. It only covers the engine and no other part of the major drivetrain(clutch, diff, etc.). It is also only good if you do no changes to the kit and follow the instructions that come with the kit exactly. This means, if you ever put in lower than 91 octane gas, change pulleys, do an ECU upgrade or even run different plugs then the warranty is useless. Get a copy of it an read the details before deciding on this. If they say it is abuse, you are screwed no matter what. ...and also forget about installing it yourself, the installation has to be ceritifed. If they say there was a problem with the install and you did it yourself, you are screwed.

The ATI kit also comes with a 3-yr warranty on the kit, is 49-state legal and CARB approval is pending. Sorry Cali guys, those of us that aren't in your neck of the woods don't care about the last one anyways. [img]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/img] For those idiots out there that think the ATI doesn't make torque, they need to learn how to read a dyno graph! It is about 15% higher than a stock car at 2500 rpms. The ATI makes more torque everywhere from 3300 rpms to redline over Stillen. At 4500 rpms, the ATI makes almost 50 ft-lbs more torque than Stillen. At 6000 rpms it is over 60 ft-lbs ahead. This you can definitely feel in the small of your back. As far as the low end goes, at 2500 rpms the ATI is only 7 ft-lbs behind the Stillen. How many times have you raced people with the limit than you have to shift by 3300 rpms? Let's see: none! This tranlates into the ATI being about 3 hp behind the Stillen at 2500 rpms, but it is 70 hp ahead at 6000 rpms. Keep also in mind this is comparing actual wheel numbers to actual wheel numbers between the 2 kits. For the rated power and torque differences, multiple times 1.15. In a race between the 2, if a Stillen car is allowed to shift where ever he wants(most likely close to redline to maximize power); an ATI car will still easily walk him short-shifting at 5500 rpms. One kit will make your car still slower than a stock Corvette coupe or convertible. The other puts you in Z06 territory. Which would you rather have?



04' G35 Coupe(on order)
6-sp Diamond Graphite/Willow w/Premium

 

Both ATI and Stillen will pass smog. Both are going through approval right now. Neither have the certification today, but both can pass the test. Why? Neither effects the emissions equipment of the car and when you are at constant throttle or light acceleration, there is no boost and hence no fuel enrichment. The certification process never looks at WOT, so it is no different than if the car was never boosted in the first place. Unfortumately, it takes about 6 months to go through CARB approval. Most companies file the paperwork before the finished product is out to expedite the process.

It is important to note some of the siginificant differences between the 2 kits. The roots blower in the Stillen kit only has 60% efficiciency while the centrifugal in the ATI kit has 77% efficiency. Regardless of intercoolers, the centrifugal will always make more power for the same amount of boost over a roots. Stillen rates their kit at 354 hp bolt-on for a Z or a 67 hp increase. It increases to 370 hp or an 83 hp increase when adding a cat-back in addition. Because the difference in HP between the Z and G is in the intake and exhaust, I would expect the numbers to be the same for Z's and G's with both of these mods. This follows what their dyno sheets show. The ATI is rated as a 50-60% increase bolt-on. This is a 140-154 hp increase in power without an exhaust or over double the increase of the Stillen kit. This also follows their dyno sheets. Plus even though the ATI kit runs 1.3 psi higher boost pressure, it is actually safer on the engine since the discharge temperature out of the intercooler is over 100 degrees lower than what the roots blower puts out. It has a far lower possibility of detonation.

04' G35 Coupe(on order)
6-sp Diamond Graphite/Willow w/Premium