David here from Thomas Knight. First, thanks for the interest in our products. But I have to say that I was very disappointed to come to a new board and find so much misinformation. Allow me to clarify a few things:
The setup you are looking at is
my Ford Ranger, and it seems you missed a crucial detail when you visited that page. As clearly written above the images (with emphasis added):
"We are still
tuning this stock Ranger after
expiramenting with different fuel management setups... We will increase the psi after...
several other mods"
In other words, this is a vehicle still in R&D. About 50% of the pieces that appear in those shots have since been changed out as we refine the design. Do you think it would be practical for us to use custom, polished, Mandrel-bent pipes every time we make a change to a test vehicle? If so, you have never done real R&D work...
Second, you aren't even criticizing one of our products, because
we don't offer any intake pieces in our ESC™ kit! It is truly a universal system adaptible to any small-engine vehicle, so only the blower and basic electrical components are included.
You are responsible for the cold-air setup. And FYI, those pieces are
all metal, and the "dryer hose" was standard flexi-hose bought at an autoparts store.
Finally, it's funny that on a site with as many different kits, images, and dynos as ours (
http://www.boosthead.com), you point to the absolute least impressive page you can find to make your case. That's sad.
But don't take my word for it. This same "i heard thomas knight's kits suck" crap was happening on another Mazda board until somebody actually went through the trouble to do some
research on our products (instead of regurgitating somebody else's second-hand opinions). Then he posted pics of some of our work. Why don't you check out what he had to say:
http://www.mazdamp3.com/vbb225/showthread.php?s=6712cd266517072b607a60eaba0bcb97&threadid=36931&perpage=15&pagenumber=3
And without getting into details about the rumours spread by prolific smack-talkers from a certain popular Probe forum who haven't gotten over our declining a certain mass-buy proposition a few years ago, I'll say this: we have been in business since 1976. Companies that sell inferior products do not survive for 28 years. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of kits we have sold, you may find negative posts from half a dozen people who either mistakenly bought a poor copy of one of our kits off of eBay (we had a real problem with this a few years ago), or were offered an
unfinished turbo kit at a substantial discount because they didn't have enough money for the complete works and we're nice guys (a mistake we made once and will
never make again).
The rest is nothing more than unfounded hearsay from a friend of a friend of a friend of that guy whose roomate's cousin's boyfriend once worked at a Burger King where maybe,
just maybe, Thomas Knight bought a large Diet Coke.
If you look at the high-quality studio pics of the ESC™, you'll see that the core is an Eaton roots-type blower driven by three custom-wound electric motors (those are not ordinary starter motors - each produces upwards of 6-8hp instantly) on a CNC aluminum billet. All of the highest quality and construction. All 100% guaranteed against defects in craftsmanship or materials, as plainly stated in our warranty.
That having been said, thanks again for your interest in our products, and if you would like to turn this into a more technical, less gossippy thread, I'll be happy to refer it to Thomas Knight himself. We understand your skepticism given the bad reputation eBay scammers have given Electric Supercharger technology, but we would appreciate more scientific, quantifiable, objective criticisms.
... I wouldn't do it with my current budget, but if I had tons of money, I'd probably do it just to have something a little different.
they claim 75 HP at the wheels and it comes with their own manifold and everything. the pics look cool too.