Small but Mighty: These New Blower Kits Offer Outsized HP Gains

Do you like mass quantities of street-legal horsepower that you can bolt to your engine in an afternoon? Aftermarket supercharger kits have been around for a while, and you probably know most of the big players in the market, like Procharger, TorqStorm, Vortech, Whipple, and Kenne-Bell. But there is a new player in the bolt-on smog-legal supercharger game (if you count four years of history in business as "new") and it's a name you may know, albeit for something completely different: Hamburger's Superchargers.

The Hamburger name has been synonymous with high-powered NASCAR and NHRA drag racing engines ever since founder Ed Hamburger created Hamburger Oil Pans in 1978. Even before then, Hamburger manufactured oil pans for Mopar under contract for Direct Connection, becoming one of the brand's biggest DC dealers in the process. After oil pans, Hamburger grew Street Legal Performance (SLP) in the 1980s and 1990s before spinning that operation off to AAM and Roush. These days, Ed and his son David have focused on Hamburger's Superchargers, a division of their Specialty Vehicle Engineering umbrella, that specializes in bolt-on street-legal supercharger kits for late-model Chevy, Ford, and Dodge products.

The move to design and sell smog-legal supercharger kits over the counter to the public, however, is a more recent development. Special Vehicle Engineering is a B2B venture that offers upgraded performance to new-car dealerships—the historic Yenko line of vehicles, including the 1,050-hp Yenko Stage 1 Camaro (shown above). Over its four-year life, SVE's Hamburger's Superchargers has maintained a quiet profile, doing little advertising and attending few tentpole shows and events which would ordinarily put them face-to-face with potential end-users (think LS Fest, Moparty, and Power Tour), so most of the folks who'd normally be interested just aren't familiar with them. (You can check out Hamburger's Superchargers limited 2023 event schedule here.) Nevertheless, Hamburger's Superchargers did exhibit a few of its wares at the highly visible SEMA show in Las Vegas, surprising many folks who weren't familiar with the brand, and this is what motivated us to introduce you to the brand's products here.

The core feature of a Hamburger's Supercharger kit is the compressor itself, although as you will see it's all the up-front engineering work and OE-level testing and smog certification that pushes these kits over the goal line. Addressing the compressor side of things, Ed Hamburger says, "Unlike other centrifugal blowers that use a gear drive, this blower uses a viscous planetary drive, so consequently there's no blower whine, but it also has a performance benefit because gears create friction, and friction limits the speed of the blower itself. Generally, a gear-drive blower will go up to 50,000 or 60,000 rpm, maximum. Our blower goes up to 90,000 rpm. This allows the blower output to be increased even though it's a relatively small blower by size."

As you compare the Hamburger's supercharger head unit with other centrifugal offerings, it's the compressor's small physical size that raises the most eyebrows. (Late-model Camaro application shown above.) "The fact that it's smaller gives you more low-end torque while still giving you the engine output of a larger displacement blower because of the speed of the blower. The larger of the two units—we have a 600-hp version, we have a 750-hp version—the 750-hp version flows about 1,060 cfm of air through the convolute. The smaller one is around 900 cfm. That's the limiting factor." By Hamburger's estimates, the company's compressor envelope is only around 20-percent larger than the typical alternator, making it easy to tuck into places that normally preclude a typical gear-driven unit.

Supporting the engineering remit to put out a minimum of 600 hp in its late-model V-8 vehicle applications requires an air-charge cooler, and here Hamburger Superchargers designs each intercooler for the need of the package based on the space and horsepower rating of the blower kit. "They fit the car properly—it's not one size fits all," says Hamburger. "We measure the envelope where it needs to go with the right fin location and cooling properties to optimize the hose locations." In the photo shown above is Hamburger Supercharger's upcoming kit for the LA-series small-block Chrysler in Mopar A-Bodies, which we'll talk about in a moment. But first, we need to talk about fuel.

Traditional blower kits have relied on a combination of bigger injectors, bigger fuel pumps, add-on regulators, and larger fuel lines to increase fuel delivery to feed the extra atmosphere, but the trade-off in terms of component cost and installation hassle has long been a sticking point for those wanting to step up. In most of the Stage 1 kits in the Hamburger's Superchargers lineup, a Kenne-Bell Boost-a-Pump system takes the place of all those components. We've reported at length on the merits of the Boost-a-Pump, but in a nutshell, it increases the power to the stock pump from a nominal 12.4 volts to as much as 21 volts, commensurately increasing the fuel delivery of the car's OE fuel system with a far less invasive wiring operation than a complete refitting of the fuel system. The Boost-a-Pump increases voltage proportionally to boost, which means a stock fuel pump operates at its normal voltage 99 percent of the time. In instances where the Boost-a-Pump can't cover the need (such as in Hamburger's Stage 2 GM kits), an LT4-style pump is indicated, along with the recommendation of its installation by an ASE-certified mechanic.

Based on a quick internet price-check, the typical Hamburger's Superchargers kit costs between $6,500 and $9,800, ($6,595 for the 5.7L Hemi kit shown above) depending on the bill of materials for a particular kit. That price falls somewhere in the middle of the price range among competing kits from arguably more widely established brands, but we think that based on other factors like packaging simplicity and installation difficulty, the cost is worth it. In the future, we might confer a higher value proposition to Hamburger's Supercharger kits if or when the company can sort out and document its claims of 50-state legality. (Since first reporting on Hamburger's 5.7-liter Dodge Hemi kit, above, as being "CARB-pending" in July 2021, the company has yet to secure the needed CARB exemption order from the state of California that makes it truly smog-legal at your local smog station.) If you've ever tried getting a modified car smogged, you already know the trouble that kind of ambiguity can cause. Actual smog certification is an area where Hamburger's Superchargers has some opportunity for improvement, but otherwise doesn't affect the product's quality or performance.

Currently, Hamburger's Superchargers offers a variety of kits for most of the major late-model performance offerings from Ford (Mustang Coyote shown above), Chevy, and Dodge, plus much of the Jeep, Ram, and GM truck lines. Though a prominent banner on Hamburger's landing page professes "Emission-Legal in All 50 States," you'll want to check the fine print for your specific kit, as many California Air Resources Board exemptions are pending or yet to be filed. Additionally, some kits are awaiting ECM calibration work and are offered for the time being only in "tuner" form, so check the situation that applies to your car in your state. With that said, click on your favorite kit below to discover all the details and cost.

One of the biggest benefits of a bolt-on supercharger kit is the relative ease of installation compared with a higher-compression stroker engine build or turbo-system fabrication. Installation time typically takes place over the course of a weekend, but because of the fuel system aspect previously mentioned, the Hamburger's kit are notably easier because they were designed for simple installation by dealership mechanics on a tight clock. One caveat is that you'll need to remove the front fascia to install elements of the kit such as the intercooler and blower brackets—an installation operation shared with some of Hamburger's rivals. Hamburger's states it takes less than a day for an experienced mechanic, but acknowledges that it could take several days for a novice. One aspect you'll need to anticipate is that there is a minimum of 48 hours turnaround time for your ECM to be reprogrammed by Hamburger's (again, very similar to some competitors). This requires removal of the ECM beforehand so that you can ship it in the postage-paid box (included) to Hamburger's New Jersey facility for the reflash.

If you're a Mopar fan you'll be happy to hear that Hamburger's Superchargers is returning to its roots in the Mopar world. At SEMA, Hamburger's also displayed a 1971 Dodge Demon equipped with a new supercharger kit designed for small-block Chryslers in compact A-Bodies. This kit is beginning production soon and Ed Hamburger says to be on the lookout for supercharger kits for Mopar B- and E-Body applications with both small-block and big-block Chrysler V-8s—including Hemis. To kick off the program, Hamburger's dug deep into its Mopar Direct Connection vault to revive the Mike Farrell-driven Super Stock K-class automatic NHRA race car campaigned by Ed Hamburger along with teammates Bachelder and Chipman during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The '71 Demon evokes Ed Hamburger's early days of selling parts, when the LA-series small-block Chrysler market was hot and Hamburger's Parts were "for 360s and 340s only." Once the A-Body blower kit is available, Hamburger says it will cost $7,000 and include a calibrated blow-through carburetor from Pro Systems, a MagnaFuel fuel system, and Hamburger's proprietary compressor, intercooler, and all plumbing.