Sniv Speed Shop - Supercharger Upgrades, Custom Parts and Design

I made a post in one of the supercharger threads a few weeks back, but figured it's time to start a thread dedicated to cataloging the progress and changes to the 4Runner designs I do.



www.snivspeedshop.com

For some background, I have a supercharged 2008 Tundra and I live at ~5500ft elevation, which drastically impacts the supercharger performance. It's really a compounding effect, higher elevation reduces the base air pressure on the engine (the naturally aspirated power if you will) and then the boost the supercharger makes also decreases with elevation. You end up needing more boost to make up for the altitude losses, and you're making less boost overall, so your net "greater than sea level power" really gets affected. When I got my supercharger I bought the smallest pulley anyone offered, which was a marginal increase over stock, and at elevation I was lucky to get over 4psi with that pulley, where as a stock supercharger at sea level got 7psi---and if you lived or drove to higher altitudes, you might be lucky to make the horsepower of a naturally aspirated sea level truck.

I have an aerospace engineering background (and full time job) and decided to tackle making my own pulley--well designing and out sourcing the machining. Additionally, the issue with the Tundra (and likewise the 4Runner and some others) supercharger is the pulley is pressed on, so there's no way to quickly change the size. It's a half day ordeal to change the pulley once! More modern superchargers went away from this methodology and have a flange and bolt pattern the pulleys bolt to, and I wanted something similar for my Tundra so I came up with my modular hub design.



There was someone else (ViktorG on the Tundras.com forum) that had run a custom 2.0" pulley on his truck, so I knew the supercharger could handle that and I wanted to be able to at least match, if not exceed how small his went, so I designed the press on hub to be able to accommodate a 2.0" pulley (and a little bit smaller....). This was a drastic departure from the stock 2.45" pulley, and the market offerings of 2.3".

My modular hub is a bit different than other ones you might see on a factory setup, because the pulley on the Magnuson 1900 (and 1320 for the 4Runner) is so small, the hub has to be very small. Most hub/flange style mounts use an array of large bolts, but that flat out wouldn't fit with my setup, plus loading bolts in shear is generally frowned upon. To fix that, I added two shear lugs or "ears" that index into the pulley and transfer torque, allowing the bolts to be very small and just hold the pulley from sliding forward off the hub. I use 12x 4-40s so there is a lot of redundancy with the fasteners, if one or even half of them fail, the pulley and hub will function fine. The pulley hub also has a tapered front so if a really tight belt is being installed, it can be wrapped around the pulley and the pulley can be slid onto the hub easily and then bolted down instead of fighting the belt to slide over the ribs.

The hub is made from 304 stainless and is a press fit like the factory pulley, and then the slide on pulley itself is made from 7075-T6 aluminum--again advantageous from a weight perspective compared to legacy all steel press on pulleys (but lets be real, we're talking maybe 100 grams).

Here was my first pulley and hub, which I spent $900 on from Xometry! This was 2+ years ago and still on my Tundra.



I had no plans on selling this setup, I designed and had it made just to try and get my own truck to make somewhere close to sea level boosted power, but a handful of people on the Tundra forum asked if they could get one. Fast forward to today and I've sold dozens of the modular hubs, and they've been everywhere from Canada to Baja to the Middle East! They've taken the Tundra platform from being lucky to make 9psi to people making 15psi and crazy numbers, all while keeping the ability to swap out the pulley in a few minutes and reduce boost. I also ended up making pulley for the Magnuson 2650 for the Tundra that was recently released since no one was making pulleys for it either, again with the focus to offer the smallest possible pulley so people at high elevation can get some respectable power.



I have also designed and sold a variety of custom parts, such as throttle body adapters, custom intakes, supercharger adapter plates, etc. and my current "big project" is developing a big throttle body that uses factory electronics, 100% plug and play with no adapters or tweaking needed (currently waiting on the RevB prototype parts for that). Here's a few pictures of all this stuff.












But I digress, what do I have to offer the 4Runner community?


A few months ago someone with a 5th gen reached out asking if my modular hub would fit on his Magnuson 1320 supercharger, after talking a bit and getting some measurements I modified a hub I had slightly to get the pulley spacing correct and sent it out. It turned out the hub was almost the exact same, and the pulleys fit with the exception of the smaller sizes (2.1" and 2.0") could have interference. After some design revisions and ordering another batch with custom 4Runner hubs and some prototype 2.0" specialty pulleys, as of two weeks ago I was able to start distributing pulleys for 4Runner owners!







And today I ordered another batch of pulleys and hubs since I've had a surprising number of people buying them (by my standards).

For some numbers, the stock pulley is 2.35" and all my Tundra pulleys are interchangeable to keep price down, so that is 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 all fit. The 4Runner supercharger has this funky feature that flares out at the front, so the 2.0" Tundra pulley does not fit, but after some testing of the specialty 2.0" pulley for the 4Runner I have a design that can work around the tight fitment issues (last picture above).

The Tundra pulleys are 8-rib, so only the back 6 ribs get used for the 4Runner. The 2.0" 4Runner specific pulley has features to clear the 4Runner snout which makes it more complicated than the Tundra 2.0" needs to be, so since that pulley is specific to the 4Runner it has 6-ribs. The hubs are specific to the 4Runner, though the center bore, shear lugs, fasteners, etc. are all the same, only the pulley offset is slightly different.



I've now sent these out to people all across the country from Oregon to Florida. Today I ordered another batch of everything, including more of the 2.0" pulleys. Prior to today there were only two prototypes out there, one in Colorado and one that I'm waiting for results from Florida.

The guy in Colorado said the 2.0" increased his boost by 3-4psi. The guy in Florida is a tuner with OTT and that setup will probably be the most powerful 4.0L 4Runner out there, and I'm interested to hear what power and supporting mods are needed down there.


I'll take a break from my novel for now. But I wanted to get this thread going since I have a similar one on Tundras.com (https://www.tundras.com/threads/sniv-speed-shop-custom-parts-and-design.114871/) just to document improvements, issues, etc. of the process. Sniv Speed Shop doesn't make much money, it's really a hobby and way to share some of the designs I come up with and work with others to help develop the platform and push it further.




If you have any questions or ideas, let me know, or you can email me at snivspeedshop@gmail.com, and I'll update this thread as I learn and develop more for the 4Runner!

 

I ended up selling a lot more 4Runner pullies than I expected, so placed another order with the machine shop and it showed up today!



The 2.0" pulleys were also successful in testing, and I decided there should be enough material to move them from 304 stainless to 7075 aluminum like the other pulleys. So this batch of parts included the first 2.0" aluminum pulleys!



I now have a pretty big assortment stocked up, including a bunch of 2.2" pulleys which I had failed to order the first time around and quite a few people wanted since the 2.2" is the natural first step down from a stock pulley (2.35").

 

When we were running the German made OEM looking pulley on the TRD S/C (maggy) back in the day, we had to slightly grind the snout on the S/C to be able to run the small pulley. There were guys running 12-14psi out of the TRD S/C with the smallest pulley, seems like the X-Runner guys were the ones pushing the limits. X-Runnerunderground was the place to be for the modded guys. I had one of the small pulleys, just before you had to grind the snout and i was at 5psi stock, and 9psi with the pulley. With all the supporting mods like intake, long tubes, exhaust, i made 335whp i believe IIRC (this was in 2008) and i ran a bunch of 1/4 mile times and was really low on the list of fastest 1GR-FE 1/4 mile times. I had a pre-runner double cab and in full weight trim went 13.3-13.4 second 1/4 mile times. I dropped the spare, tailgate, and tool box and went a 13.1 @ 103mph in December 2008.
I have noticed the new Maggy setup for the current 4.0 1GR-FE is almost identical, however the tuning Magnuson uses in their reflash is FAR more lazy than the TRD Reflash back in 2008. The boost is the same, 5psi, but the ECU tuning is far far more lazy. With a smaller pulley and an OTT tune, things should be tons stronger and faster.

 

There's a guy in Florida, RC Tuning, who bought one of my first 2.0" prototypes and I think he works with OTT. He got the pulley a month ago and last I reached out he hadn't had time to install it, but he'd probably end up with the fastest 4Runner if he could get it to work. Like you said, my initial boost predications are around 12psi with the 2.0" at sea level. I'm very curious to see how much power he'll be able to make and what support he'll need to do to handle that much boost.

 

I had to do a larger intercooler water tank, the water tank holds about 12-14 ounces, and after one short pass the IAT are quite high. The higher boost on the maggy makes a lotta heat. I built a big tank that held about a gallon of water, and the rest of the system held about a gallon as well. The two gallons of water helped IAT stay lower longer, but the aftercooler in the intake was simply too small to adequately cool the air going into the engine. Its been long ago but i remember running IAT sensors everywhere and i "think" we were getting about -75degree swing thru the aftercooler but i think i recall the hot side of the aftercooler was maybe 235, and the cool side was 160ish? After a few runs you would get up to 180degrees and the ECU would pull power.

Thats where the limit was for anyone, the IAT was the major stopping point. The aftercooler cant cool the IAT adequately, so your IAT would get too high and the ECU pull power *OR* you detonate and blow the rods out the side of the block. The 1GR-FE uses powdered metal rods and they will take absolutely 0% of detonation under boost otherwise they peek-a-boo the block. Thats what happened to at least a dozen guys pushing the limits. When you are running that much cylinder pressure from boost, detonation kicks the rod and breaks it and you window the block. Thats the main reason i didnt go to the smallest pulley. Down here at sea level, i wouldnt recommend pushing the limits without GREAT tuning. After all we were running the TRD reflash and X-one ECU for tuning, pretty much all of us pushing the limits were.

 

Forgot, the guys running the 12-14 were running the smallest upper available, and a larger lower. There were only a hand full of the larger lowers made and i think someone did a group buy to get someone to make them. Pretty sure they were made for the guys really trying to push the limits.
Pretty much all of us that were going for max hp and power had the pulleys, intake, exhaust, cams / cam gears, colder thermostat, long tubes, full exhaust, and X-one ECU. I think one or two people went with a micro or megasquirt maybe but the APR X-one was a real nice ECU to tune with. I has all those above and ported and polished my lower intake and had a big sheet metal intercooler reservoir for more capacity. I think back then the fastest 4th gen 4R was similar build to mine and he was somewhere around 13.9s 1/4 mile? There was a list on XRunderground of all the 1/4 mile times, posted across any forum with an actual slip on every vehicle running the 1GR-FE. There were one or two S/C 4R on the list but they were 4th gen which is a bit lighter than the newer 5th gen.

 

Looks like quality stuff! If I had a Magnuson I'd be looking into this as well as fuel system upgrades to support it.