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By: Martin Ahlers - 9/2000

Kenne Bell SuperCharger Install

I’ll start this off by letting you know that this won’t be a step-by-step installation guide. If you want to install the Kenne Bell unit (and I think you’d definitely want to), they’ll send you a set of very complete instructions that’ll guide you through every step of the process in excruciating detail. Aside from a general overview of the important steps, what I will write about here are the things that Kenne Bell didn’t warn me about, or sent me off in a confusing direction. Had I known some of these things in advance, I wouldn’t have banged my head against the wall trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Supercharger installed in Martin's Grand Cherokee. Photo by: Martin Ahlers

As a bit of background, I have been involved with modifying cars for the past 20 years and I can’t think of a single car that I’ve ever owned that has stayed stock for more than a year after purchase. When I bought this Jeep, I chose it because the engine looked like it had great potential to be a real screamer with a minimum of work and hassle. To get the horsepower I was looking for (at least an extra 100 over stock) I considered a bunch of modifications. Those modifications included full exhaust system (including headers), less restrictive intake system, new cams, revised computer program, turbocharging and supercharging. About a week after I took possession of the car, I yanked out the exhaust system from the Y-Pipe back, and installed a 3” free-flowing system (including hi-flow cat and Flowmaster muffler) as recommended by the very knowledgeable Nick over at Multitronics in Arizona. That modification gave the Jeep added performance and a sound that was outstanding. To continue the modifications, I had to choose between two routes – normally aspirated and forced induction. If I chose to go with a revised computer program (like the Mopar Performance ECU), I could basically forget the idea of supercharging because all the systems out there require a stock computer. All the other modifications (cams, headers, etc.) complemented a supercharged system quite well, so I figured forced induction was the best route to take. The question was then – do I supercharge or do I turbocharge (actually it is called ‘turbo-supercharge’)? Turbocharging is a complete nightmare to implement, and it completely nixes the idea of installing headers later on, so supercharging was the answer. Of all the superchargers out there, the Kenne Bell system appeared to be the best engineered, most efficient, and coolest looking so I chose to pick one up as soon as one was available.

Overall, I love the improvement the Kenne Bell system made to my Grand Cherokee. It was a great car to start with, and now it is an absolute screamer. Best of all, if you stay out of boost, gas mileage isn’t hurt much at all. For example, before the install, I was averaging about 16 MPG with a 60/40 mix of highway/city. After the install, over a period of about 500 miles (and after allowing the car’s computer to adjust to the modifications) I’m getting an average of about 16.1 MPG with roughly the same mix of driving. The caveat there is that I was being EXTREMELY conservative in my driving style during that test period. Since, if something is going to go wrong with the system, it is probably going to happen during the first 500 miles. So, I drove like a granny while my confidence in the system (and my install) grew. Whenever I get into boost often, my average mileage drops to around 13 MPG or so.

Now, the part you’ve probably been waiting for. The next few pages highlight the installation process, and outline some of the areas that I ran into that caused me some grief.

Introduction    The Grunt Work    After the Grunt Work    Conclusion & Impressions