The background of CAPA (Centrifugal Air Pumps Australia) and its proprietor - Tony Rullo.
"Our business started about eight years ago when we went into the marketplace developing our own products - supercharger kits, mainly. As we grew, we also diversified into other areas that include naturally aspirated vehicles - we do things like fuel systems, computers and electronics for Gen 3s and a lot of other cars.
"The Commodore's local and export success has been very good for us as a company. I know that many of the overseas consumers that have bought Commodore-based cars are enthusiasts wanting to go into modification. Four years ago we started an export program and we now export as much as we sell domestically - and, with our recently introduced range of complete car packages, we'll be exporting even more. What would happen is one of our dealers in Saudi Arabia would purchase a supercharger kit for a Commodore and then express interest in a body kit, suspension, wheels and all of the other things that were readily available here. That happened so often we began looking at a reliable network of component suppliers and creating our own vehicle packages.
"So we now have a series of CAPA Special Vehicles. Depending on the exact configuration the customer wants, we take a SV8, SS, Calais or Monaro as a base we give it a complete engine, suspension, brake, steering, interior and body upgrade package. The whole vehicle is engineered to a level where it will compete against the top BMW and Mercedes sports saloons and the absolute top of the range version is now 700 horsepower; I know lot of people are making 700 horsepower engines out there, but a lot of them don't do many miles as well... Our tuning is different to suit overseas markets and we over-engineer them for durability - we can only assume the cars will be raced at club days and things like that. I mean, we go to lengths like electric oil coolers for the gearbox and differential, power steering coolers, 8-litre sumps, undertrays, surge tanks, full-length HPC'd exhaust system and things like that. It has everything that a factory package would need to be properly engineered and reliable at the power output.
"The main focus of our business has been Commodore up until now because Ford really haven't had a product out there that's been mainstream. Today, though, I think we'll see Ford get some more market share with their new and better products."
Obviously blowers are your 'bread and butter' - do you sell only brand new units?
"Well, no, we were lucky enough to secure a deal with Vortech in the 'States where we're able to introduce second-hand blowers into the local marketplace. Many people in the US want to move up to, say, the new V2 blower with helical gears so they trade-in their existing model. A lot of those blowers come here and, of course, they're typically the older, straight-cut gear style units. Depending on the drive mechanism, those blowers are a little bit noisier at idle but once the load is taken up on the gears, they definitely quieten down.
"We find the Japanese import blowers fill a void for a lot of home dabblers, but there are a lot of people that own larger capacity, older engines - or four-wheel-drives - that don't have a kit engineered for them and a Japanese blower won't suit. A guy with, say, a XF Ford Falcon can get a kit put together for a couple of thousand dollars; you can put the carby to the intake pipe of the Vortech and as soon as you've made a bracket arrangement and pulley you can drive the car. It can be a very effective way to go for many people - those second-hand blowers we have are $1690 and have a 3-month warranty. Our new and reconditioned blowers - which we also do - have a 12-month warranty.
"There's continuous development in the blower industry. Vortech over the next 18 months will be releasing a new line of compressors that will become more compact and impeller speeds will be increased slightly - great for more compact engine bays. Sealed units are also becoming a more mainstream product and we will be releasing our own version of that in a Vortech blower before the end of the year - we'll slowly be changing over to them. I believe they'll make installation quicker and easier, there are fewer parts, it's cheaper and lighter and it gives more installation flexibility. There will also be no transfer of supercharger heat into the engine oil - that has to be a benefit as well."
CAPA is also developing a range of products and power-up kits for the BA Ford XR6 Turbo - tell us how that's going.
"We've been working on that vehicle for some time and we've developed three different power levels - our website (www.capa.com.au) is always being updated and all the details will be posted there.
"We took temperature control as a major priority in our kits and we work
with the standard management system using a piggy-back computer. We stayed away from replacing any of the factory system because that way all the standard safety functions remain in service - oil temperature shutdown, knock sensing and all the rest. The downside of our kits, I suppose, is the extra cost of what we class are important components - the oil cooler we use is worth $700, for example. If you
could do without it that would be great, but we really need to protect the consumer and ourselves. We've seen oil temperatures of over 120 degrees Celsius during testing and, with the cooler, we've managed to stabilise it to around 80. You've got to be careful because what engine will survive long-term with oil temperatures in excess of 120 degrees?
"I can't stress enough that you must always remember that once your engine's oil is contaminated it will break down - in extreme power situations we recommend oil and filter changes every 2000 kilometres. We've seen significant oil discolouration on engines - 700 horsepower engines - that have done less than 2 hours on an engine dyno.
"We're now converting our development XR6 Turbo to a water-to-air intercooler - we've seen as high as 4 psi lost through the standard intercooler at one stage where we were making about 250kW at the wheels. The intercooler upgrade that will come in some of our XR6 Turbo kits is a water-to-air arrangement based on a Vortech kit. What we did, though, is use our own condenser that is larger than the conventional Vortech one; we're not using a separate reservoir, but we're cycling the water through the two exchangers on a continual basis. We've also seen some improvements in heat exchange using Redline's water wetter - but you also need some form of corrosive protection as well.
"Another important aim was to remove some of the restriction at the front of the car, in order to get cooling to the engine. We're quite confident it will make 300kW at the wheels with engine reliability - at that power, though, we really need to look at the life expectancy of the driveline.
We did some testing a year ago and found Redline gear oils are well worth the money - I remember in the diff of a Commodore we were maintaining a fluid temperature about 20 degrees less than we were seeing with another fluid. I know diff temperatures in modified Commodores get up to around 140 degrees Celsius during high-speed work - it's roasting.
"We also found the Falcon Turbo ute suffers from rear leaf spring twist and the vehicle will dance under load in certain conditions, so we put together an anti-tramp system where we basically lock the front of the leaf spring together. That really settles the back-end and helps with traction."
And tell us about the other Ford product you're developing - a supercharger kit for the Falcon DOHC 5.4 V8.
"Well, the 5.4-litre, DOHC V8 has been around in America for a while - it's used in their Navigator 4WD - and is quite a stable, strong engine. Unfortunately, though, we didn't get the variable valve timing that there is on the Navigator.
"In America there's an Eaton positive displacement blower kit, which they use in the Lightning truck and Mustang but bonnet clearance is a bit of an issue in the BA Falcon. The biggest issue, though, is the cost of the kit and the performance increase it gives.
To us, the 5.4 already has great bottom-end torque and we decided that the Vortech centrifugal blower was the best compromise - so we now sell a non-intercooled bolt-on kit to suit for under $7000. It performs really well (it scorches in under 5-seconds 0 - 100), torque comes on nicely and not one thing has broken on that test vehicle so far. It's very smooth power - not many other cars with 400kW drive quite so progressively. We're really hanging out to release the intercooled version, though, because at the moment we're making 400kW with just 7 psi boost - with an intercooler we'll go over 10 or 11 psi and I'm quietly confident of around 500kW...
"The boost limit with or without an intercooler is different for all cars - combustion chamber design and efficiency of the engine are all very different. When we develop a kit we'll go as far as the engine will sustain, usually in terms of detonation, and then come back from there - the threshold we found on the 5.4 XR8 non-intercooled was about 10 psi."
What is your opinion of the new Ford Australia 6s and V8s?
"The new Ford engines are great. Their six-cylinder has always been very good, though - back in the EF days and through to AU we could make 300-odd kilowatts out of them reliably. The Windsor V8 has, of course, been around for a long time and has never been really efficient in making power - it was never as good as the Holden V8, for example. On the other hand, it has had a lot of aftermarket parts developed for it and you can build a decent engine out of them.
"The new [to Australia] V8 engine is fantastic - it's technology at its best. It has a steel crank and quite a vicious stroke but it's quite strong internally - in America they've used standard cranks and blocks for over 1000 horsepower with good reliability. It's very smooth and apparently reliable but, if I had to criticise it, I would like to have seen it a bit more compact and a bit lighter. Apart from that, though, I think it's a car to be very happy with. The inlet manifold - which I believe is exclusive to Australia - is very, very good and whoever designed that should get a big pat on the back. Certainly, the 290kW GT version has a lot more mid-range torque than the GM competitor and the pricing is very good; our Vortech kit fits straight on that engine too."
So where to from here for CAPA and aftermarket tuning in general?
"Product development has always been a big part of the business and I think it really will continue to be. We will also be looking more at non forced induction upgrades in the future as well, I think.
"Another thing for us to do is increase supercharger acceptance and put together warranty packages that will cover blowers fitted to new vehicles; we get a lot of enquiries about blower kits from dealer networks, but they tend not to want to carry the risk. So I think we'll address that issue ourselves and the result will be great.
"Then there are emissions - the tighter the laws get, the better for us I think. In Australia we're a few years behind California emission standards and the guys over there are really doing it tough. Their engines are running closed-loop at full throttle - and they really are doing that.
"Everyone here seems scared of the new generation engine management systems but, really, it's a big benefit - it's all there to safeguard the engine, and the more safeguards the better."
Contact:
CAPA (Centrifugal Air Pumps Australia)
+ 61 8 8582 3499
http://www.capa.com.au/
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