What a great read this thread has been.
By way of introduction, my name is Rob Hayden and I started the Australian Lexus Soarer Club back in 1997. I was also instrumental in assisting Bill and Steve in the UK to kick off the TIFF.
I run a Soarer UZZ32 with a genuine Japanese C's supercharger kit.
C's use a Magnuson M90 and a cast manifold of their own design. They also remanufacture the front water bridge to run the top radiator pipe out over the distributor cover on the 1UZFE and then bend it towards the radiator.
From my understanding of things, they made the frist kits to suit the LS400 (Celsior UCF10/11) and the Crown Majestic which both ran the 1UZFE back in the early 90's.
The kits sold well even at $15 500 AUD complete with C's changeover ECU, but the Soarer owners wanted a bit of the action also. The original kit didn't fit under the hood of a Soarer so C's went back to the drawing board and redid the manifold to drop it further between the heads.
They use a flat base with a 'box' cut into it to clear the starter motor. It's a complete cast and is very well done. It has tubes in it which enables the M90 to be bolted invisably from underneath, so during assembly you simply bolt the blower to the manifold, then lower the whole thing onto your engine, do up the manifold and you are done.
The kit produces 7.5lbs of boost and will run with standard ECU although the C's one is a lot smarter. It actually uses a small MAP sensor attached to positive pressure on the rear of the manifold. It takes this signal into the ECU and then uses it to control the bypass valve. This means that the perfect smooth shifts that happen as your factory ECU drops the engine momentarily to allow the shift, also drops the by pass valve. The effect is seemless perfect gear changes and off throttle response. Nice touch.
At present I've been fortunate enough to pick up a pristine LS400 and have an Eaton M90 from a USA Ford I believe. I would like to fit it to the LS400 but have been looking long and hard for a suitable manifold for it. Joel may just be the answer.
Unfortunately Joel's profile does not show where he is, but if you read this, could you drop me a line to
[email protected] please.
If I can understand how to post images, I'll put some up of the Supercharged UZZ32 and the unit off the car as well so you can all see the manifold.