zoasis

I contacted them 3 times.

First contact,

I wanted to know if they would like to use my car for testing since I was going to do extensive mods to compliment the supercharger. I figured since the one they were testing on didn't even have an upgraded exhaust, that they would want to take me up on the offer. Their reply was, "send us a letter and we'll get back to you". So, I took them up on their offer

The second contact I made was writing the letter, explaining all the mods that would compliment their supercharger kit. I also explained that I live just down the road from them so access would be unlimited and instantaneous. I left all my contact info for them, no reply whatsoever, not even a call to say they were not interested. So

I contacted them a third time to no avail. No calls back, no email back, no fax back.

I assume they must have not needed my car for testing, however, they should have called or at least emailed a reply. See, this seperates a good company from a company with poor quality customer service. If a company has nothing to gain from a customer, they should still reply to that customer instead of leaving them hanging, especially since I was offering my $40K(with mods that I was adding) modded 350Z for testing.

With customer service like this, I think I'll wait for Vortech or maybe Greddy.

Dr Bonz

iTrader: (1)

Exactly! It isn't the 3-4 bad rewiews that bother me as much as the LACK of service (real or perceived) to the customer!

Every product has it's lemons, but the companies that go the extra mile to MAKE IT RIGHT are the ones I like to deal with. It seems that maybe this is not one of those companies.

zland

Read Stangnet website for reviews. Seems that a lot of belts are being blown. Quite a difference between the reviews on this product vs Eibach springs for example on the same website. I will need a lot of reassuring before I go for this product.

Jeremy, you plan on carrying this product. Trust me, I want it if it is trouble free but I need a lot of positive feedback after reading the reviews on Stangnet for Mustangs. I am sure that if is dependable, not blowing belts, throwing bearings, etc. many Z owners will consider it but I am also sure that not too many people want to buy a product that has no or poor customer service, poor engineering etc. After all, we spent 30K + for our Z's. We do not need to buy problems. One post that stood out to me is the post from a mustang SC owner that said "released before they got the bugs out of it".

Most people posted are only mentioning 1/4 mile times. I want a car that drives well all the time.

I ended up purchasing HRE wheels rather than Iforged just because of many posts that stated poor customer service by Iforged. I hope ATI does not lose my business for the same reason.

Greddy, I hope you are reading this too. Build a poorly engineered product and add poor customer service and you will lose our business. I will give ATI the benifit of the doubt and wait for the release of the 350Z version of the SC but I have gone from being excited to being scared to buy it.

Jeff

Zrated

Yeah, there were a few that were eating belts I wonder how much it has to do with install, just making sure everything is aligned correctly, and if there is something that doesn't look quite right working it out. There alot of people who just don't pay attention to the details. I think the worst of it was the poor instructions for install and complaints about customer service.

On the other hand, people who had ones that were problem free were very happy, and almost everyone said it makes awesome power.

zland

Yes, you are right, installation could be the cause of belts being blown. I would make sure the installation was done by a qualified person. What we do not know is if installation wa the issue or not?

Other issues that concern me are customer service IE: no returned phone calls and 2-3 months to replace a SC under warranty. Mulitible people talked about bearings going out too. I wonder if that was related to belts breaking and misalignment?

Since they are now making SC for Civics and Acura's, has anyone seem a posting on any of their forums regarding how well they work? Only problem is they just got introduced on those cars. I think the SC on our Z would more close to the Honda SC in design than the mustang.

joeshow750

Customer service, hahaha, a lost art. Maybe we shoud come up with a "Buyer's Union." When a lot of Z owners start complaining about poor service, all Z owners boycott their company by not buying anything from them until the complaints are resolved...TEAMWORK.

CaneZMD

iTrader: (1)

Check out ClubSi.com. A guy over there has one and really likes it. They are getting 240-280 at 8-11 pounds of boost.

zland

CaneZMD:

I must be lame. I searched for procharger and supercharger at clubsi.com but only got post on Voprtech and Jachson SC's. Did I miss it somehow, pls paste post or something please. I am really interested in reviews on their products on a Japanese car.

Thanks, Jeff

350zdanny

I don't believe there is any chance they will bring 50% whp gains to the VQ35 engine. On the low end, assuming the average engine puts 240 hp to the wheels (a lil' high but good for the math). A 50% gain bumps that number up to 360 whp, and thats on the low end of their estimate! 70% gain puts the whp up at 408! That's 25 and 73 hp above the Greddy kit respectively.

Now I don't doubt that those numbers can be reached, but can they be reached safely with a bolt-on kit? And if so, why didn't Greddy hit those numbers? I'm sure Greddy put forth triple the R&D to develop their kit. They have to bring a safe kit to market if only to protect their good name in the industry. They realize that raising the boost into the 8-9 psi range is dangerous at the compression level of the VQ35.

Furthermore, when a company's customer service is suspect, why would anyone ever purchase a kit from them? I have had extremely positive experiences with Greddy and I know many others who have had the same positive experiences. Their service and quality are second to none.

For the extra grand or two, I'd sleep much better with a Greddy kit on my $35,000 car. Just my $0.02. I'm going high compression anyway.

Monkey Man

You are going high compression with the Greddy kit huh? Good luck with that.

Lets all just wait and be patient till we see some real world results. I heard nothing but bad things on message forums before I bought the Greddy kit for my Civic. I was overall pleased with the kit though, mainly because the shop that installed it, StreetSports, did an awesome job, which meant I had no issues down the road. People were making only 45whp more than stock on the Greddy kit. I was able to tune it up to 120whp, while only turning the boost up 3 psi. That was after some tweaking, and trying some tricks that others had found. It just takes some time to feel these things out. So, lets not jump to any conclusions about how great or how terrible this system maybe.

-Jeremy

mcduck

I agree, Jeremy. Maybe Procharger has some customer relation issues... what company doesn't. I bet you could find complaints about poor customer service for any company by searching the web a little.

What I'm interested in is the product quality. We may be able to infer a little from ProCharger's and GReddy's prior offerings, but this is a new product for them (and for others). I think we shouldn't jump to conclusions just yet.

StreetSports (and maybe others) are going to try-out some of these products to see just how good they are and what they're shortcomings are. Unless you just gotta have "the first turbo-charged 350Z on the block", I think we should just wait and see what shops like theirs discover.

After they have had a few weeks to try it out, you can then make an informed decision on whether you want it on your car or not.

It sounds like both ProCharger and GReddy kits will be available by mid-summer. Personally, I will probably wait until the end of summer just to have some time to see how folks rate these new kits.

350zdanny

I hope you don't mean that.

I'm not really jumping to conclusions I don't think. I'm just pointing out that 7-9 psi (<--- i'm estimating here) is a little high for an engine with 10.3:1 compression.

I think if they are trying to get that type of performance gain, they should sell it in stages or something, maybe. But kit aside, I'm always skeptical about a purchase when the customer service isn't there. But I do hope all goes well with your car.


-danny

max2000jp

8-9 PSI isnt dangerous on a VQ. The 3.0 and 3.5 should theoretically have the same strength, and there are quite a few Maxima owners running boost. IIRC MardiGrasMax is running 15 psi and ran a 11.9 on his 3.0 VQ.

webcarconnection

Hey guys!

I have Procharger in my last car (97 Camaro SS) and let me tell you it was a powerfull Bolt-on, give the car 175 whp w only 9 lbs of boost, it was a P600B series w a Air to Air Intercooler. the kit only cost $3,098.00 w/o shipping (3 years Warranty) and came with all the hardwear that you need (inline fuel pump, fuel regulator 12/1, pipes, intercooler, ect.) The Lt1 engine is a 10.5:1 and I boost up to 12 lbs w no problem, I just change the Injectors to 30 lbs.
The procharger is a good product and the most important thing is that make real HP.

350zdanny

Well to each his own. I personally would not be putting on a kit that runs 8-9 psi without first lowering the compression. I'm sure the Procharger kit will be very popular since its cheaper and ships with an intercooler apparently. I'm also sure that the kit is not as bad as some describe, and on the same token I'm sure it won't be as good as webcarconnection describes.

That said I'm still in Greddy's corner until proven otherwise. It's just the way I am. Obviously I wish Jeremy the best of luck with his car and I hope the Procharger kit really does what he's looking for it to do.

CaneZMD

iTrader: (1)

Alright Zland, Search in the Got Boost forum for "procharger". (Don't forget to change the drop down to search the whole last year or so.)
The guys screen name is ghostsi.

"The procharger kit was straight forward. Install was not as difficult. There is some minor shaving but that is pretty much it.

So far the car feels very strong. Funny, cuz the car feels like it wantw to rev past 8K . Can somebody say Hondata!!!! Gas milage is good, avg about 24-27 to the gallon. THe last couple of days i have been very heavy footed. I stil have to install some guages... to monitor the vitals"

AND

"At 10 psi the car made about 268 give or take a couple horses.
The si clearly made more then what Procharger claimed at 10 PSI., even at an untuned stage.

All i can say is Hondata Rocks!!!!!

I think the 280.4 is at 11-12 psi not too sure, but i will confirm!!!

FYI, the car started w/ 133hp and 99 tq base run, with some simple bolt(ie. header, exhaust, etc.) on mods and some tuning i had a net gain 136 hp and and 81 ft/lb of torqe"


Pricing is also very good, it only runs about 3100-3500 from the prices I've seen on the net. That include the intercooler and all necessary hardware. I'm willing to give it a try. It basically doubled the SI's HP at 10 psi. If we only got 50% at 5-6 psi that would be about 430 hp (crank)(290 * 1.5). That's about the same as the greddy which would cost about double with the IC for parts and would also have a much more difficult install. I just feel that if your only gonna boost to 5.6 psi, maybe you don't need a 8-10k twin turbo install. (Just my opinion)

zland

Thanks for post. I hope to read of more evaluations an hopefully some of them will state how long it has been on the car to measure duribility of motor after install and also durability of belts and bearings after installation.

Jeff

Del350

The numbers can be reached by higher psi's. GReddy's kit was at 5.6, the procharger will probobly be higher than that. The reason greddy is going low is to obtaqin carb certification. I think that once the greddy kit comes out it will be hard to find anyone running only 5.6 psi.

350zdanny

I understand that Procharger makes more power by upping the psi, and I think that its better to have a CARB certified product and do what you want with it after it has gone through a lot of testing.

I also agree with you that once the Greddy has been on the market for a little while, everyone will probably dial in double the boost, but I would still lower the compression to 8.5 and deal with the loss of low end throttle response for a more reliable high boost application.

On a side note, James Chen's entry for USCC 2003 happens to be a Z putting 550 hp to the wheels with JE pistons, Mavrik rods, t3/t4 hybrids, and an HKS intercooler. I can't wait for the USCC article because Chen's entry will obviously be in the competition. It's the only 350. I wish I knew what controller he was using.

webcarconnection

I'm just telling my personal experiense with Procharger. it doesn't mean that its is gonna be the same with the Z.
I can tell you one thing.... The pistons of the Z are much stronger that the LT1 (Camaro SS) and I can say that is not gonna be any problem running w 8-9 PSI in the Z, as long that you have a good 2 or 3 core front intercooler and a good volume of Gas.