Supercharger Kit Proline Motorsport

fezza555

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Hi all, been keeping tabs on proline motorsport developing a supercharger kit for the Clio. Wondering if anyone has had a kit fitted? Would be with a Rotrex C30 supercharger. If anyone has done this what are your thoughts and is it worth the ££? One of my bigger concerns was as this is a daily, will my MPG be in the teens.. Lol any thoughts are welcome.
 
I'll bite.
I was of the first people in the UK, possibly the first, to fit a Rotrex, back 10 years ago. It was fitted to a Mazda
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If the kit has been worked out properly they are nice things, the installation is potentially simple and I am sure you have read up on the performance differences of a supercharger vs. a turbo. Power delivery is more linear and the known quantity of air makes for easier mapping. You do however get parasitic losses over a turbo but I very much doubt that would affect your fuel economy over a turbo. The issue in how much fuel you use is how much you press the pedal. Use your cruse control and I doubt you would notice the difference. In practice however you are going to see an increase in fuel use, because you will use it more.

The $64,000 question is is it worth it? That very much depends on what you want and what you expect and obviously how much it costs. I assume you are looking a number of thousands of pounds.

These cars are very much in my view the last of the line of the traditional Hot Hatch. A hark back to the Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes mentality, made from recycled bean tins and cardboard, looked loud, was noisy and got airborne on bumps. When you could do a hundred on an empty motorway and smash down an A road overtaking Cortina's and Morris Ital's and very few people got upset. These days a GTi has adaptive cruse control, electric moving seats, brake assist, active damping, WiFi, launch control, lane assist and all the other cobblers.

These cars are still fantastic at blasting down back roads and A roads at smile inducing antisocial speed and in that it has plenty enough go. It is still however going to be a Clio, made of cheese and Gauloises wrappers and it is never going to be a Golf R even with 300 horses.
Personally, I think the joy is in the chassis and for that and the roads it loves, it has more than enough go. If you live in dual carriageway central and taking it to a 330D is your thing, then you might want to spend the money. But I would suggest that with the money you are likely to spend and the value of your car you could be in something that has it already.

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Hi all, been keeping tabs on proline motorsport developing a supercharger kit for the Clio. Wondering if anyone has had a kit fitted? Would be with a Rotrex C30 supercharger. If anyone has done this what are your thoughts and is it worth the ££? One of my bigger concerns was as this is a daily, will my MPG be in the teens.. Lol any thoughts are welcome.

A friend had a rotrex kit on a saxo vts nearly 15 years ago, and I almost bought the kit when he sold the car (to fit to my vts). It really transformed the car.
In terms of the clio, what is it you're looking for exactly? Is it more power or more torque? In terms of bhp per £ you'll be hard pressed to argue the case for a 'charger over a megane engine transplant. Just food for thought, but a rotrex supercharger alone costs around 2k, for which price you could buy a decent-milage megane 250 engine. In my opinion the megane conversion does everything a supercharger kit does, only better. You'll hear a lot of naysayers talking about "aw it takes away from the characteristics of the n/a engine" or "aw it's just loads of torque then change gear at 5k, may as well buy a tdi", both of which are, to be frank, bollocks. Mine revved to 7k, had 285lb/ft peak torque and at 6k was still pulling over 200 lb/ft, so still around 40 more than a mapped f4r and not far off a supercharger's peak output.
Oh, and on regular drives to work I was getting low 30s MPG wise.
Sorry if that's pissed on your bonfire a little but the supercharger kit just doesn't make financial sense to me.
 
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Really appreciate the replies chaps. For the most part 185Bhp is enough on a b road, the chassis is fantastic and you can use all the power. I love the Clio, but for the occasions I'm on a dual carriageway it lacks the 'shove' in the back of a full on performance car.

Having spoken with Mitch from Proline Motorsport a kit un-fitted will be around £3.5k TBC, which includes the C34 charger, pro alloy intercooler, pipework, blow off valve and a remap. Expensive, but looking at the price of the car + the charger kit and what else I could get for the money.. I say that its not bad value. Power will be around 301Bhp and 244lb.ft Torque.

@Sean197 yer I would completely agree that a turbo has more benefits in terms of torque and MPG. I guess I have a nagging feeling that I would like to maintain the standard engine just give it more power rather than put in a megane engine. If I had a ride out in one maybe I would change my mind?
 
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Really appreciate the replies chaps. For the most part 185Bhp is enough on a b road, the chassis is fantastic and you can use all the power. I love the Clio, but for the occasions I'm on a dual carriageway it lacks the 'shove' in the back of a full on performance car.

Having spoken with Mitch from Proline Motorsport a kit un-fitted will be around £3.5k TBC, which includes the C34 charger, pro alloy intercooler, pipework, blow off valve and a remap. Expensive, but looking at the price of the car + the charger kit and what else I could get for the money.. I say that its not bad value. Power will be around 301Bhp and 244lb.ft Torque.

@Sean197 yer I would completely agree that a turbo has more benefits in terms of torque and MPG. I guess I have a nagging feeling that I would like to maintain the standard engine just give it more power rather than put in a megane engine. If I had a ride out in one maybe I would change my mind?
I might be able to help you with a ride out:thumb:
 
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Really appreciate the replies chaps. For the most part 185Bhp is enough on a b road, the chassis is fantastic and you can use all the power. I love the Clio, but for the occasions I'm on a dual carriageway it lacks the 'shove' in the back of a full on performance car.

Having spoken with Mitch from Proline Motorsport a kit un-fitted will be around £3.5k TBC, which includes the C34 charger, pro alloy intercooler, pipework, blow off valve and a remap. Expensive, but looking at the price of the car + the charger kit and what else I could get for the money.. I say that its not bad value. Power will be around 301Bhp and 244lb.ft Torque.

You'd need 630cc injectors too, standard clio injectors won't hit 300 bhp.
For that money you could buy a complete megane engine and 250 turbo, intercooler and pipework, and have it mapped with the 630cc injectors. You'd probably have money left to fit a walbro fuel pump. Not trying to change your mind, just making you aware of all the options.


USER=1918]@Sean197[/USER]
yer I would completely agree that a turbo has more benefits in terms of torque and MPG. I guess I have a nagging feeling that I would like to maintain the standard engine just give it more power rather than put in a megane engine. If I had a ride out in one maybe I would change my mind?

Yeah I've no doubt you'd love it. Bear in mind good engines can fetch £4-500 and gearboxes 3-400, and you'd also want to factor in at least a grand for an lsd to make the most of the extra power. Whichever way you go, it's not gonna be cheap!
 
This is all over social media now as Pro line have officially released the package however I can't help but think that I'm a bit disappointed.

There has been literally NO testing whatsoever so how do they claim that they can reliably upgrade the engine to 300bhp is beyond me. They have literally nothing to show, not even a demo running car. They don't offer any warranty (obviously) apart from the parts used (so if the engine goes bang after a week you are on your own). No stress testing, no mileage covered, no track days, no summer testing no nothing, on an engine which admittedly is naturally on its limits..So take your car to the continent in the summer or rock on a track day whilst 30C (like we had last year) and you are gambling..

All they supplied to promote the package is Callum's 8 months experience and graph since he was using "similar" parts. Am I on this boat alone? Am I the unreasonable one? I'm happy to be proven wrong.

Speaking of graphs, if the result is something similar to Callum's then it's not great. Up until 3.5k rpm - where these car suffer - the torque is identical to a cammed car so really no gains at all. After 3,5k rpm admittedly the magic happens however the Clio over 4k rpm is pretty quick anyway. So no extra torque low down, doubted reliability, single mpg figures when you are on it and all that for £4,5k incl mapping - maybe more if you opt for bigger injectors + LSD which is a must if you don't want to ruin the handling.

Is this really worth it? Thoughts?
 
This is all over social media now as Pro line have officially released the package however I can't help but think that I'm a bit disappointed.

There has been literally NO testing whatsoever so how do they claim that they can reliably upgrade the engine to 300bhp is beyond me. They have literally nothing to show, not even a demo running car. They don't offer any warranty (obviously) apart from the parts used (so if the engine goes bang after a week you are on your own). No stress testing, no mileage covered, no track days, no summer testing no nothing, on an engine which admittedly is naturally on its limits..So take your car to the continent in the summer or rock on a track day whilst 30C (like we had last year) and you are gambling..

All they supplied to promote the package is Callum's 8 months experience and graph since he was using "similar" parts. Am I on this boat alone? Am I the unreasonable one? I'm happy to be proven wrong.

Speaking of graphs, if the result is something similar to Callum's then it's not great. Up until 3.5k rpm - where these car suffer - the torque is identical to a cammed car so really no gains at all. After 3,5k rpm admittedly the magic happens however the Clio over 4k rpm is pretty quick anyway. So no extra torque low down, doubted reliability, single mpg figures when you are on it and all that for £4,5k incl mapping - maybe more if you opt for bigger injectors + LSD which is a must if you don't want to ruin the handling.

Is this really worth it? Thoughts?
For a track day car I’d say it’s worth it. Potentially an extra 100bhp for £4.5k is not too excessive imo.
It would really need to be a track car though as you clearly still have to wring it’s neck to get the best out of the thing! And doing that on English roads is not really on.

As regards to testing. There has been none. I went straight to a meg engine as I didn’t want to bolt a charger on to my high mileage engine with flimsy gearbox with no guarantees that it wouldn’t go bang first trackday!

For this reason that’s why I believe so few examples have been supercharged yet there are loads of meglio. Just my opinions
 
Cheers Ben, ti is always refreshing to see new tuning routes for the cars we love so let's get this out of the way.

SCing would appeal to some people (horses for courses and all that) but I was just questioning the package and final result, not the route as such.

I'm not disrespecting ProLine's workmanship but I can't get my head around it. You can't really claim that you can do it reliably without even having a car ready. At least K-Tec - a company I do not like due to personal experiences - had a car and clocked tons of mileage but they still don't advertise it on their website or officially sell it as they understand the shortcomings.

It is just a genuine comment to trigger discussion, I'm not really looking to do anything else to the engine, I always though that if I wanted something quicker I'd buy another car:smile:
 
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This is all over social media now as Pro line have officially released the package however I can't help but think that I'm a bit disappointed.

There has been literally NO testing whatsoever so how do they claim that they can reliably upgrade the engine to 300bhp is beyond me. They have literally nothing to show, not even a demo running car. They don't offer any warranty (obviously) apart from the parts used (so if the engine goes bang after a week you are on your own). No stress testing, no mileage covered, no track days, no summer testing no nothing, on an engine which admittedly is naturally on its limits..So take your car to the continent in the summer or rock on a track day whilst 30C (like we had last year) and you are gambling..

All they supplied to promote the package is Callum's 8 months experience and graph since he was using "similar" parts. Am I on this boat alone? Am I the unreasonable one? I'm happy to be proven wrong.

Speaking of graphs, if the result is something similar to Callum's then it's not great. Up until 3.5k rpm - where these car suffer - the torque is identical to a cammed car so really no gains at all. After 3,5k rpm admittedly the magic happens however the Clio over 4k rpm is pretty quick anyway. So no extra torque low down, doubted reliability, single mpg figures when you are on it and all that for £4,5k incl mapping - maybe more if you opt for bigger injectors + LSD which is a must if you don't want to ruin the handling.

Is this really worth it? Thoughts?

That is a very valid point actually, I’ve been following their updates and for whatever reason (maybe caught up in the hype or something) I’d not even considered that there was no testing of the actual kit they’re selling when fitted. I’m sure the parts themselves will be fine as they’re mostly off the shelf items which have been tried and tested but like you say how a 10 year old Clio engine will cope might be another matter.

I’m certainly not in the market at the moment but it’s something I might consider in the future. But probably only if the car becomes a pure toy rather than having to do the odd bit of commenting as it does now.

Hopefully people will get the kit, run it regularly and report back on how everything is, I’d guess Pro Line will want to show that everything’s fine with the kit so will probably make a big thing of any positive reports. We all also know what forums and Facebook are like - any negatives and people will be complaining to anyone who’ll listen.
 
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This is all over social media now as Pro line have officially released the package however I can't help but think that I'm a bit disappointed.

There has been literally NO testing whatsoever so how do they claim that they can reliably upgrade the engine to 300bhp is beyond me. They have literally nothing to show, not even a demo running car. They don't offer any warranty (obviously) apart from the parts used (so if the engine goes bang after a week you are on your own). No stress testing, no mileage covered, no track days, no summer testing no nothing, on an engine which admittedly is naturally on its limits..So take your car to the continent in the summer or rock on a track day whilst 30C (like we had last year) and you are gambling..

All they supplied to promote the package is Callum's 8 months experience and graph since he was using "similar" parts. Am I on this boat alone? Am I the unreasonable one? I'm happy to be proven wrong.

Speaking of graphs, if the result is something similar to Callum's then it's not great. Up until 3.5k rpm - where these car suffer - the torque is identical to a cammed car so really no gains at all. After 3,5k rpm admittedly the magic happens however the Clio over 4k rpm is pretty quick anyway. So no extra torque low down, doubted reliability, single mpg figures when you are on it and all that for £4,5k incl mapping - maybe more if you opt for bigger injectors + LSD which is a must if you don't want to ruin the handling.

Is this really worth it? Thoughts?

Yer really valid points, I was seriously considering this as it is a "bolt on" kit. If I wanted to sell the car in the future the kit could be removed and sold on to re-coup some of the cost. The fact there hasn't been any proper testing, I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing it's not proven and could quite easily blow up. According to Callum just cruising it would average 16Mpg, which is terrible, all in with a LSD to put the power down your looking at 5.5k! Ouch
 
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So I'm not the only one then, phew, I thought I was going crazy:smile:

Do you not think adding 50% more power to any stock engine is endangering reliability?

Absolutely Nick, and my point is exactly that. How can an established to the field mechanic claim that they can "reliably" do it on a stock high compression engine...
 
I don't think there will be many that go against the consensus that there are better ways to spend 5k. Longevity is hard to predict as there aren't many MK3s running this setup and I don't think it'll become more prevalent either as time goes on.

Yes forged engines are an option but if I were spending that much, i'd just buy a MK3 Megane RS as a second car.
 

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