turbo / supercharge / possible group buy?

[asteriskmonkey]

Hello everyone, like most ive developed a bad addiction to going fast in even shorted amounts of time, sheer for the joy of it.

Ive done some research on turbo kits and supercharger kits. ive come to the following conclusion.

Tts Stage 2 kit : £4150.00 +vat (looks a decent kit) comes in at 6500 usd.

Custom shop turbo (this is in austrailia) quoted around 10k, I dont know if this was just a fob off quote but that seemed a bit high.

These both seem quite steep at the end of the day, ive sourced the supercharge from the tts kit, its around 2100 usd, which leaves a heft 4400 usd for an intercooler / bits of piping. I dont want to discredit the tts stuff in anyway as im sure they went through a large number of iterations to get a bolt on kit happly working and this is probably a large factor in there pricing structure.

Feeling kinda shafter living in canada (price even higher than usd) Im looking for options.

I was thinking either a group by from tts if we could get a good deal, or having a kit fabricated locally here and and then copied as per needed for the members that where interested to differ the initial work.

Does this interest anyone or could anyone recommend anything, id love to see something in the 3000usd mark area, hell they make kits for cars for less.. turbo kits for cars are sub 1k..

 

[Phil R]

Here is a cheaper alternative...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U81_0waqEWA

 

[Oldschool]

You can build twin turbo setups for a v8 car for less than 10K. A turbo setup will be a cheaper DIY than a supercharger. You don't have to fab a custom mounting/block plate, the turbo itself will be less than the supercharger, etc. You could probably build the whole turbo setup for a rocket for under 1,000$. However there lies the problem. Plumbing in a turbo wont get you far unless you have a very good understanding of tuning the EFI system. You are talking hours upon hours of tuning the bike to get everything setup with factory drivibility. If you have access to a dyno you could probably get it setup pretty good in a couple days.

I would imagine no shop would build kits for less than 5K simply because of all the time they will have to invest in the jigs/custom parts/tuning/etc to be able to make them in a efficent manner.

These both seem quite steep at the end of the day, ive sourced the supercharge from the tts kit, its around 2100 usd, which leaves a heft 4400 usd for an intercooler / bits of piping. I dont want to discredit the tts stuff in anyway as im sure they went through a large number of iterations to get a bolt on kit happly working and this is probably a large factor in there pricing structure.
Try machining a custom mounting plate for the front of the engine. That alone is worth a bundle. And then I would imagine they supply a base tune, which likely took a lot of time and money to make. A lot more goes into supercharger kits than you might think.

 

[asteriskmonkey]

Absolutely not discounting anyone's prior work on the subject, my goal is simply to attain a more reasonably priced kit, literally id like to think a bike system would be inline with pricing of the similar car made ones.
yes there are bolt on kits for cars with the same rotex sc for 3k usd. not nearly 6.

 

[Neville Lush]

I don't know the folk in OZ you asked, but check the Aust $ against the US. There is a massive difference, eg $1000Aust is approx $730 US. One thing you may want to factor in is that when folk develop stuff like turbo/supercharger kits, they often want to get wages as well......

 

[asteriskmonkey]

Im all for wages but lets be fare, some of us arnt making 100's$ per hour, i dont mind trades charing fairly, and i understand business need to pay for there shop/emplyees, thats not the issue..
Shopping around (here in canada at least) Im hear cocky comments like just throw me your wallet etc.. which i find from a professional level a little disturbing. Im from a different industry perhaps this is the norm for auto tuners?

Neville, I respect your opinion in this field you know your stuff for sure without question, what is the amount of hours to fabricate piping/turbo for this sorta thing? Do people not touch this becuase its small runs / not worth there time?

I love the AUD to USD Conversion right now, im +1 for buying everything out of Australia currently

Id absolutely love to see more kits available for this bike, id offer up to participate as a part of a group buy or be the test pilot in making / refining a kit..

Re who quoted 10k for a turbo.. Marks Workshop in west Oz.

 

[scot in exile]

Im all for wages but lets be fare, some of us arnt making 100's$ per hour, i dont mind trades charing fairly, and i understand business need to pay for there shop/emplyees, thats not the issue..
Shopping around (here in canada at least) Im hear cocky comments like just throw me your wallet etc.. which i find from a professional level a little disturbing. Im from a different industry perhaps this is the norm for auto tuners?

Neville, I respect your opinion in this field you know your stuff for sure without question, what is the amount of hours to fabricate piping/turbo for this sorta thing? Do people not touch this becuase its small runs / not worth there time?

I love the AUD to USD Conversion right now, im +1 for buying everything out of Australia currently

Id absolutely love to see more kits available for this bike, id offer up to participate as a part of a group buy or be the test pilot in making / refining a kit..

Re who quoted 10k for a turbo.. Marks Workshop in west Oz.

You are all for buying everything out of Australia well my good man I think Nolton has returned Hanso to the far off shores so buy him a ticket throw some tucker down his throat and he will work for you

 

[dougl]

Im all for wages but lets be fare, some of us arnt making 100's$ per hour, i dont mind trades charing fairly, and i understand business need to pay for there shop/emplyees, thats not the issue..
Shopping around (here in canada at least) Im hear cocky comments like just throw me your wallet etc.. which i find from a professional level a little disturbing. Im from a different industry perhaps this is the norm for auto tuners?

Neville, I respect your opinion in this field you know your stuff for sure without question, what is the amount of hours to fabricate piping/turbo for this sorta thing? Do people not touch this becuase its small runs / not worth there time?

I love the AUD to USD Conversion right now, im +1 for buying everything out of Australia currently

Id absolutely love to see more kits available for this bike, id offer up to participate as a part of a group buy or be the test pilot in making / refining a kit..

Re who quoted 10k for a turbo.. Marks Workshop in west Oz.

Here you go

http://www.boostisgood.com/RocketIII/index.htm

 

[Oldschool]

If you have the skills you could easily build a complete turbo kit that was top of the line for under 2K complete provided you have access to mandrel pipe bender/milling machine, are proficent in welding pipe, and you have the knowledge of how to setup the oiling system. Plus a few years of experiance tuning bike efi systems since there aren't going to be any maps that will dial the A/f in without a lot of work. Unfortunately most people don't have that so buying a kit is a must. You could do a nice setup that would work with just a harbor freight pipe bender and a cheap turbo for well under a grand but its not going to look that good.

A properly designed kit for say a honda civic takes less time to build than a rockets, thus lower cost. You don't have to fabricate your own turbo manifold if you don't want to on say a honda. The pipe bends you would need to do would be pretty easy. You wont have to spend a lot of time making it look like its not just tacked on. The parts between a R3 and say a honda will be similar, and the raw cost of the parts will be close. However comparing the rocket to a car isn't a fair comparison because a shop that built a *insert common car here" turbo kit probably makes thousands of them and they have to compete with other companies which brings the price down. The major turbo kit companies for cars have CNC mandrel benders, CNC lathes/milling machines, flow benches, in house dynos, etc and most will never build a turbo kit for cars that they wont sell a ton of. Setting up the CNC programming for a complete turbo setup on a rocket and the cost of developing a tune would cost more money than they would recover with 10 kits sold at 5K. So the big players are out for such kits, which leaves smaller shops that don't have as much overhead. They will gladly do one off turbo setups but your going to pay big bucks for it. I could easily see a shop charging 7K+ for a one off turbo kit for a rocket. Remember that even mass produced busa turbo kits cost 5K+ and they are making thousands of them a year.

Your not going to ride in and ride out of any shop with a properly designed turbo setup thats tuned correctly for any less than around 7K installed, 5K if you do all the work yourself. Your best bet would probably be to buy a used TTS supercharger and work with that. 3 to 4K you could easily be over 220hp at the tire. Or pull the head/cams and send it to lush/carpenter/etc and pay a few thousand and get close to 200hp at the tire. Horsepower costs money, how fast do you want to go?

Im hear cocky comments like just throw me your wallet etc.. which i find from a professional level a little disturbing

They are probably being serious. Go into a car tuning shop and ask them to fabricate a turbo setup for a nissan xterra, a 2014 chevy malibu, or some other fairly obscure/uncommon car that they have no experiance with. Your likely going to get the same response since they likely don't have much a idea what it will end up costing to do the setup. The last thing a shop wants to do is spend 2 months on a project that costs them money, blow up a customers bike and get sued, etc.

Ask bike shops how many 200hp bikes have they dyno tuned that weren't ****** rockets and your probably going to get a blank stare (hell every harley dealer in the whole state of wisconsin probably have never tuned a bike with that much power). The Rocket 3 is a obscure bike that very few people know anything about, thus the price goes up.

 

[Oldschool]

Also on a random note, think for a minute about how expensive bikes are. 16K for a new rocket is pretty ubsurd since you can buy a ford feista for that, which clearly has a lot more for your money. Then look at something like a harley street glide which will cost you atleast 23K out the door brand new. Thats focus ST money, or even used camaro SS money. On that note A set of bike tires costs 600 to 700 installed at most places, thats car tire money for 4 tires. Bikes are expensive, there is no getting around that. I am atleast happy the rocket starts out at a high enough place power wise that for just exhaust/fileters/tune you can make 150 hp at the tire reliably. Its not like taking a 24,000$ brand new harley and trying to get to 150hp out of it, you will have over 34K bytime your done.