This is not a good plan. How do I know? I drive one at least three times a week. You're spot on with the observation that there will be a lot of air between the throttle body and the intake!
The remote mount supercharger is cool, but the issue is the throttled volume, which is VERY large in this kind of setup. You won't loose much response, you won't loose any boost, but you WILL loose the ability to control the idle speed with anything other than a vague guess, and it will be very hard to get it to return to idle from any kind of RPM's. You can either run a dual-throttle setup, requiring syncronized throttles on the OE intake manifold and on the inlet of the supercharger, or you need to reduce the throttled volume to the minimum possible. Often times a single-throttle setup will stall at stoplights or when pushing the clutch in, or even coasting down the road.
You can determine for yourself how bad the idle will be, by unbolting the throttle body and adding in the length of pipe and the intercooler needed, and then attaching the throttle body to the inlet of the intercooler-rev it and see what happens. If you run a very small intercooler and very short pipes, you can make it work better, but it'll never really be "good" this way.
Also, Eaton blowers are M24, M45, M62, M90, M112, M122. I've never found an M24 for sale anywhere, but M45's can be had off Mercedes smaller Kompressor cars, as can M62's. These are both remote mount setups, but Mercedes took great pains to minimize all the throttled volume and even then they are marginally stable.
Other M62's can be found on first-gen 3800SC's, and on Nissan VG33ER-powered Xterras and Frontiers. M90's can be hand from Supercoupes (another marginally stable remote mount setup) and second-gen 3800SC's. M112s and M122s are from the bigger Ford V8s, and there are "H122" variants out there from the Ford GT.
Given that your engine is a small displacement volume, you will have a much harder time getting it to be stable. The Supercoup's 3.8L engine is really the best example of this kind of setup and you can see how they went to great pains to keep the volume low-you need to keep the total throttled volume equal to or less than the displacement volume of your engine. I would try to find a Mercedes CLK230 Kompressor and make sure my pipe lengths and intercooler are as small or smaller than that car-it's the only production car I know of that has successfully used a remote-mounted, air-to-air intercooled supercharger with the displacement in the same range as yours.
Best method for this (voice of experience here) is to mount the supercharger directly to the intake manifold, and use an air-to-water intercooler if you plan to run more than 8PSI of boost with an Eaton blower. It's just that much easier to make it run the way you want it to run. The only reason not to do it this way is if you just don't have the ability to cut and weld the intake manifold. If you can't do the intake fab, you're better off to try and mount a turbo to a short header, and go that way-it will be much easier to tune and easier to fabricate due to the all steel construction not requiring expensive welding gear-a cheap flux-core welder *can* do the job if you take your time and don't try to weld things that are too thick for it. Turbo headers don't *need* to be made from 1/4" thick pipe...even 14 gauge tubing is fine if you support the turbo properly with a brace to the block.
BTW, did you ever get the engine running properly before? I recall you had some fueling issues with this setup.
Bookmarks