supercharger

Just don't bother......... As everyone else has said. You need very deep pockets and pretty much all of the cars that have ever ran very high BHP engines have never really lasted very long without any issues. The St200 engine swap is the cheapest option without all the hassles but then you will only ever get 220BHP with mods and remap.
 
I'll chip in further... power is great - however you do get used to it very quickly. Once the novelty has worn off, you'll realise you've spent £10k on a car you can't sell unless you dismantle it again. That money, objectively speaking, could have bought you something which delivered equal or better performance out of the box, depreciation proof or even appreciating, and can be sold for what you paid for it if you decide you want your money back.
 
This is a very good point Jamie has brought up. I have spent about 10K on my car all in. Now I know it is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. So in real terms I will have to break it when the day comes to get rid. No matter how much you spend on the car, it is only worth the book value. So if you are after massive power you are better off buying a Scooby or an Evo.
 
Peter Froud said:
This is a very good point Jamie has brought up. I have spent about 10K on my car all in. Now I know it is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. So in real terms I will have to break it when the day comes to get rid. No matter how much you spend on the car, it is only worth the book value. So if you are after massive power you are better off buying a Scooby or an Evo.
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Jamie I think would disagree and point you sharply in the direction of his signature pic :)
 
spjmorris said:
Jamie I think would disagree and point you sharply in the direction of his signature pic :)
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For the money in standard form it is hard to find a car that goes as well and handles as well as either of these 2 cars. Any muppet can drive them and it takes no skill at all. What Jamie drives is a different kettle of fish all together.
 
Very true. I suppose to put it in to context, even an ST220 engine in a Cougar will produce at best a slightly-above-average performer in today's environment.

I firmly believe that the Cougar is best maintained to a high standard but if you want a car that will make you think "wow" when you floor it, you really need north of 300bhp/tonne.

Of course a Cougar could be made to perform with enough cash injected, but to actually feel like a fast car you need a lot of grunt. If it doesn't feel really fast when you've finished, then what was the point. Peter there has spent a lot on his car. Ok it's not to everyones' tastes but that is irrelevent as the expense is obvious. Just spending that making a Cougar perform like a current premium brand diesel saloon car which you could lease for £400/month seems a bit pointless to me really.

Even Thundercat 'only' achieved a 0-60 time in the 5.0secs ballpark and Rob's Snowcat would have been similar. That's a good improvement on a Cougar, but you could buy the same age of 4.0litre XKR on eBay for £6k and it'll do 0-60 in about 5 secs too and save you a lot of hassle*

* many other cars will too for that money:
Impreza
Evo
Chimaera 400
MR2 Turbo
S-Type R
E39 M5
etc
etc
 
Peter Froud said:
For the money in standard form it is hard to find a car that goes as well and handles as well as either of these 2 cars. Any muppet can drive them and it takes no skill at all. What Jamie drives is a different kettle of fish all together.
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The Impreza and Evo are unquestionably far more accessible power. Mine is a bloody handful and really just for entertainment. Check out the end of this for wet traction...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqxfkQ125d0

Mine wouldn't see which way an Evo went.

It's also expensive to run. Servicing is every 6k and every second service requires valve clearances adjusted, which means camshafts out. A 12k service costs around £700. They don't tend to break down and leave you stranded often, but they do develop 'niggles' constantly which needs a steady stream of cash.

I recently bought new discs and pads all round. The front discs are 330mm and the rears are Cerbera-only items with drum handbrakes. The front calipers are 4-pot AP Racing and the rears are 2-pot AP Racing. We got a group-buy on machining discs to save money. Pads came from Carbonlorraine who's owner is a Cerbera (with Chevrolet LS engine conversion) owner and all in the discs and pads cost just shy of £1k. Total maintenance bill for year 1 has been £4,500ish including insurance but excluding fuel although tbh fuel is a fairly reasonable 15mpg when thrashing it and 25mpg when cruising steadily. A £70 tank lasts around 220 miles typically.

It's not cheap to run. Having said that, I can still sell it for what I paid for it, so it's only costing me the running costs. Not that I want to sell it, because for some reason I really like it. There are much cheaper ways to go fast though.
 
Yep agree here and there is a Boxster down the road near where i work which has fallen from 5K a couple of months ago to today i saw its down the £3999, yeah ok its only a 2.7 but still if your after "cheap" performance its a no brainer really
 
all great points im gonna leave the idea of trying to go for big power in this car just do the normal st bits etc and looks
thanks all
 
Look at it this way the only boosted Duratec V6 with twin turbos was in a Noble M12 (before they swapped to the ST220/jag V6) and it had a dry sump and forged pistons to lower compression and cost about £70k lol to buy the car so I'm guessing at least half of that is for the engine work, ok it is quick (about 170mph) but I doubt you'd get same performance in the cougar as it's heavier. A Zetec turbo shouldn't be that hard to do, the concept has been around for years with the ZVH kicking it all off (basicaly a cvh top on a stronger zetec bottom IIRC) this progressed to full on zetec turbo conversions shortly afterwards.
Only other things you could concider are seperate induction trumpets and throttle bodies (one per cylinder) or a progressive nitrous oxide kit
 
I'd say that the biggest thing to remember is that the car you're starting from is an old lady now. If you wanted to go "big power", you'd better be damned sure that the rest of the car is solid as a rock before you do anything else. And that could mean a grand's worth of suspension and brakes for a start.
 
My advice from doing it... dont. It breaks, it makes the car horrid to drive in anything but a straight line and it murders expensive wishbones and gearboxes. Buy something thats already fast.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
 
bobster1982 said:
My advice from doing it... dont. It breaks, it makes the car horrid to drive in anything but a straight line and it murders expensive wishbones and gearboxes. Buy something thats already fast.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
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Yup the standard car ain't exactly good on its suspension as it is thanks to a slightly wacky design so eats the drop links already. Personally after incuring almost 12 points in a row thanks to the cougars performance, my right foot and not keeping an eye out for speed cameras, I think the standard V6 is plenty quick as it is ;)
 
What do you buy that's gonna be drivable all year and give you a smile on your face too?
I like the idea of a jag xk8 but I think it would be too costly to maintain and for some times of the year undrivable due to the weather (could be wrong) so I look at 4x4 technology for all year driving, that leaves me with either jap stuff like Subaru or Audi and I know how many friends I'd lose straight away buying one of them (even though I've wanted a Quattro since the 1980's) so what do you do.... Oh yeah lease a SUV lol and buy something else for the weekend ;)
 
Thankfully my Cougar 2.0 Zetec Turbo 4x4 will be a weekend toy NOT a daily driver but then I will have thrown over a grand at the brakes and suspension by the time I have finished.

I am under no illusion that this project will cost me big bucks and I could have bought something newer and faster for the less money but where is the fun and originality in that.

By the time I have finished she will be a total one-off and it's not often you can say that I have the only 'something' in the world.
 
The 4x4 thing is nonsense IMHO. 70% of winter driving is down to care and attention. The remaining 30% is down to having appropriate winter tyres. You find more SUVs and Audi Quattros in ditches every winter than anything else - because AWD got the inept driver to the scene of where they found they couldn't stop or steer any better than anyone else.

All high performance cars are capable of costing a lot to own if you keep them long enough. High performance means higher stressed parts, given that just making things beefier offsets any extra power you add. Something's got to give - and if you want high performance you need to make peace with the reality that things wear out. Any high performance car will make £150 Cougar wishbones look positively cheap.
 
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