Rarely seen outside the assembly,...
Rarely seen outside the assembly, the intake runners measure 12 inches in length to preserve torque while off-boost and help build top-end power when pressurized. The runners are cast aluminum, with a surprisingly smooth finish inside and out. Techco says the interior path of the actual runner does not follow the exterior curve, resulting in a longer runner.
Techco elected to have its compressor discharge upward, same as these same engineers did when they designed the Saleen screw superchargers years ago. But instead of having the discharge air blow through a flat panel charge cooler (intercooler), the charge cooler was split into two separate halves. These two heat exchangers are then tilted up to form an "A." So arranged the numerous cooling fins act as flow straighteners, helping to organize and turn the discharge air into the intake runners. And those runners are 12 inches long, preserving torque-producing intake tuning.
Fundamental to the charge-cooler efficiency is they are the largest coolers on the market today. They simply offer more cooling area than other charge coolers.
What's more, Techco runs the cooling water through each charge cooler once. Almost all other charge coolers are two-pass designs where the coolant enters at the front of one half of the cooler, runs to the back, turns 180 degrees and heads back to the front through the second half where it is routed to radiator at the front of the car. That means the cooling water is heated twice as much as in the Techco design, where the coolant runs in the front and out the back of each cooler. All told, the innovative Techco A-Frame charge cooler looks like a superior air chiller.
Inspect the Techco blower and you'll quickly realize the intake runners are separate castings from the supercharger's extruded housing and A-Frame sections. Unbolt the intake runners and you're left with an 8 1/8-inch tall, relatively narrow supercharger and A-Frame charge cooler assembly that easily adapts to almost any V engine and sneaks under nearly any hood.
Furthermore, the drive-belt arrangement is fairly independent of the host engine. Combine that with the easily adapted core blower section and it's plain Techco can rapidly adapt its 3.0-liter supercharger to almost any domestic performance engine.
This modularity is of little direct benefit to us end users, but does pay an indirect benefit of making the blower system a viable business opportunity for Techco. In fact, the initial application of the new supercharger was on the Dodge Challenger and Charger musclecars, with the Mustang GT version we're looking at here. Next up is a Corvette fitment, and we're guessing a GT500 application is not far behind that. Given the incredibly rapid prototyping and tuning capability at Techco, they'll soon be able to amortize the supercharger's cost over a wide range of cars, meaning we Mustang fans won't be carrying the whole supercharger bill for several years.
Because of challenges in the complex charge-cooling systems on the Saleen S7 and Mustangs, Techco did not overlook the coolant flow in the Reverse Revolution's charge-air cooling system. They knew considerable air is trapped in the labyrinth of cooling passages during the initial fill and takes forever to purge.
"We worked on getting all the air out and having good water flow," said Tally. "We tried a bunch of clear hose, water meters (during development testing)... we tried for the most clear water as possible... like the S7 cooling system, we made it bleed all the time."
Air trapped in the corners of the Saleen Mustang charge cooler was a particular concern, so the A-Frame charge coolers are fitted with bleed holes, and the system is plumbed to bleed constantly into the reservoir. This keeps a solid water flow in the heat exchangers, where it counts.
Techco elected to CNC its own fittings in the water system, rather than buying off-the-shelf. The reason is to preserve large, smooth transitions through the fittings; that's rarely done in commercial plumbing hardware. The fittings are built to AN standards, so racers and marine customers can easily thread in AN fittings and hoses if desired.
 We'll admit to failing to...  We'll admit to failing to put a tape measure across the Reverse Revolution blower's oval inlet, but it's plenty large. At the supercharger end it's a round 3½ inches, same as the blower inlet diameter. |  Techco's initial blower concept...  Techco's initial blower concept was something easily adaptable to many different engines. Hence the bolt-on intake runner concept, illustrated here by removing the runners. The resulting blower/charge cooler combination is just 8-inches tall thanks partially to thin, light, and strong aluminum extrusions for the blower and A-frame bodies. Both are hardened to T6 standards. |  Without the intake runners...  Without the intake runners in place, it's easy to see how the charge cooler cores guard the entrance to each runner. This utilizes the core's many fins as flow straighteners, helping to organize the airflow as it enters the runner. It's difficult to see here, but each runner is sealed to the A-frame housing by an O-ring. |
 Techco rotors start as aluminum...  Techco rotors start as aluminum billets to which the drive snouts are pressed and bolted to. Next these cylinders will be whittled into shape in a machining center, then anodized for hardness and finally coated for both durability and to set the final rotor-to-rotor clearance. |  Extensive in-house CNC capability...  Extensive in-house CNC capability means Techco performs almost all machining on its blower's drivetrain parts. These are just some of the "jewelry" in one blower. The geartrain is pretty loud on the early production blowers we heard, sounding gravely at idle and whining under load. Techco says its Saleen experience taught them customers prefer some noise from a supercharger, so while on-going refinements in gear pitch and finish will reduce noise, the goal is not a silent supercharger. Furthermore, the gear architecture was selected first for durability and secondarily for noise. |  Seen from the rear, a finished...  Seen from the rear, a finished rotor set shows the male/female shapes indicative of a twin-screw design. The blower drive starts at the female rotor's snout, passes through the female rotor (on the right), then through the gears on the outside end of the rear bulkhead, followed by the male rotor at left. What's missing here is the gear at the end of the female rotor; it meshes with the gear already in place on the male rotor. The female gear is larger than the male because the rotor speeds are not equal: The male rotor turns 60 percent faster. Twin-screw rotor speeds are quoted for the female rotor. The Techco blower is designed for a sustained 15,000 rpm, with rare bursts to 18,000 or even 20,000 rpm. The highly stressed rotor bearings are the rpm limit. |
 Looking at the front of the...  Looking at the front of the rotor pack, the female is at left and both rotors are wearing their bearings. Techco staff says they looked at other twin-screw rotors before designing theirs, and actually "dumbed down" the rotor profiles already on the market so they would be easier to produce. In fact, it seems the Techco rotors came out fine from a performance standpoint. Also, the Techco rotors turn in the opposite direction from other twin-screws due to the front air entry. |  Because the bearings live...  Because the bearings live between the high-pressure blower internals and the outside world, they need good seals. We pulled this pair out of the freezer for their portrait. The double-lipped seals are kept frozen to aid their installation. | |