Who says everyone is spending that kind of money?
I can't speak for anyone else so I'll just state why I haven't until recently: because Mopar set-ups are extremely hard to find and very expensive when located.
I got the supercharger posted above on the Dart back in the fall of 1997 (maybe it was 1998?) from a guy I know (Cheech) that bought it new. He had it on a 2wd Chevy Blazer that he lowered and turned into a hot rod. He wasn't that impressed with the supercharger kit and wanted a tunnel ram 2 x 4-bbl. set-up. We made a deal to trade even up, so I called saved up $675.00 called Summit Racing and ordered a brand new small block Chevy tunnel ram 2 x 4-bbl. kit and got the small block Chevy blower set-up. At the time we had a 1970 Charger 4-speed that we had transplanted a 354 HEMI into.
We strapped the supercharger onto it's stock 4-bbl. iron intake manifold via an angled plate and cut the serpentine ring off a pulley we got from a junk engine somewhere and welded it to the outside of the HEMIs stock crank pulley/balancer. Topped it off with the same Holley 750 cfm double pumper we already had on the car just had to lengthen the fuel hose and get the throttle cable correct. Wow, what a difference! We ran it for a week like that testing it out and then ended up pulling the drivetrain out of the car and selling the body of the Charger.
The supercharger went into hibernation and we began picking up superchargers and complete SBC set-ups for next to nothing when the deals were out there amassing quite the collection.
In early 2004 (maybe 2003?) we purchased a 1963 Ford F-100 hot rod truck for $1,000.00 that was a driver and someone had stuffed a Camaro coil spring disk brake front sub-frame under along with a high nickel content 350 engine.
After getting a few things corrected with the truck we decided to bring the supercharger set-up out of retirement and put it to good use. Being a GM powerplant kind of made it a no brainer as we had the entire set-up (correct supercharger intake manifold, correct lower pulley, correct sized belt for the application, ...). We ran the truck hard for a couple years and I drag raced it fairly often for a street vehicle. In the fall of 2005 after hot lapping it for 8 runs it finally spun a bearing. We pulled the drivetrain out, removed the supercharger set-up and put it up stairs in dads shop, and scrapped the rest of the GM stuff. Don't worry when work resumed on the hot rod truck the first thing done was a new 1989 roller cam 360 and T/F-727 between the front frame rails.
Anyways on December 26th 2005 dads shop burned down to the ground.
This small block Chevy B&M supercharger was one of the very few things inside the 60' x 80' that was able to be recovered in core condition. In mid 2006 we sent the supercharger in and had it completely rebuilt with new strips in the rotors. I don't recall the cost but it was only $200-300.00. It has sat in the closet until the fall of 2008 when we put together a 1972 Dodge Dart with a 360 and a T/F-727 on the super cheap. We purchased a $75.00 Holley Street Master 4-bbl. aluminum single plane intake manifold that was nice and low profile and had the carburetor pad milled flat which only cost a few bucks. Then we bought a 5/8" thick aluminum plate for $45.00 and turned it into a 4-bbl. to supercharger adapter plate. Basically it bolts the the four carburetor bolts in the intake manifold and the supercharger just bolts to the plate. Three is a gasket between the plate and intake and one between supercharger and plate, obviously. The 750 cfm double pumper carburetor we were using was destroyed in the fire so I put the only good carburetor I had at the time on the car. It was brand new out of the box Holley Street Avenger 770 cfm with vacuum secondaries that I purchased for another project. There was a few bugs to work out in our original serp. belt system as the original tensioner just wasn't working anymore, probably due to the fire. The tensioner would oscillate enough for the belt to loosen just enough to walk around on the pulleys which would cause the belts to shred themselves when it tightened up under acceleration. I also added an idler for more "belt wrap" around the crank & power steering pulley, however bracket kept bending when the throttle was heavily used. It was also "designed" with enough space to bypass the p/s & idler pulleys with a shorter belt that goes directly from the supercharger pulley down to the crank pulley. This adds little extra "belt wrap" around the supercharger pulley for use at the track under hard repetitive maximum performance runs
It was late and the year so the was removed another small old 4-bbl. carb. was installed to keep the car movable and the car was put away for the winter. We didn't get working on the Dart until late in the summer in 2009 but made good headway once we did. We slapped the supercharger back on the car, used an extra tensioner off a mid 90's pickup we had lying around and got everything working great. No more serp. belt issues. We drove the car for the rest of the fall then swapped the supercharger back to a carb. and put the car away for winte. In the spring of 2010 with everything basically figured out we bolted the supercharger back on and got it running better than ever. A couple months later I picked up a brand new in the box Holley 4779S 750 cfm double pumper from a guy an hour down the road after seeing his listing on eBay. I was able to strike a good deal for $250.00 and he agreed to end the auction. The car runs absolutely awesome now. (see photo of engine compartment at this time in one of my above posts)
It just keeps getting better and better. A couple days ago I purchased a billet 750 cfm baseplate from Quick Fuel Technology ($210.00 shipped) so the power valve will start to work correctly and there will be no worries of a lean condition in the upper RPMs, especially since I plan on upping the boost and actually getting it to a point where it can be tuned for more performance right away next spring. 2011 will be an interesting year now that I actually got a few of these performance Mopars licensed for use.
A great car considering I only have ~$5k total from start to finish into it. that includes everything from the new tires/new front disk & rear drum brakes, all tune-up parts, the supercharger set-up, new Holley carb & parts, new Hooker headers & 3" dual exhaust with flowmaster mufflers, new aluminum radiator, Accel Super Coil, SpeedPro '340' type camshaft w/ 114 degree, double roller timing set, driveshaft loop, an original A-Body 8-3/4" rear axle with clutch type sure-grip & 3.91:1 gears, though it does have aftermarket big bolt pattern axles & 3" Moroso wheels studs - I also still have the originals small bolt pattern pieces, not to mention the car is in great shape and has a mint 1971 grille in it...
