If you grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, there were a few spots people would congregate with their cars. The weekends would flood Strats Diner on North Avenue, Streets of Woodfield in Schaumburg, and countless side roads and parking lots. The one steadfast image at all of these locations was the now iconic AMS Performance front mount intercooler. Setting up a grudge race with an AMS supported car was almost a sure loss on the street. Bear in mind, this is a company that’s kept its nose to the grindstone, turning out quality build after quality build for years. They have performance down to a science.
Now let’s push fast forward from their inception to present day, and focus in on their Alpha line for the R35 GTR chassis. The Alpha series is already dominating the streets/tracks across the nation, but AMS dropped an entire new lineup on the community, and it’s good…so good.
Taken directly from AMSPerformance.com:
“The new X kits are a total transformation from the widely popular AMS Performance ALPHA 10, 12 and 16 turbo kits. Quite literally every part of the kit is now improved. From the exhaust header to the intake to the downpipe, the kit was designed to pull more air in and get more air out making more horsepower than before. The process starts with our totally redesigned tubular exhaust manifold. Gone are the 1.5” internal diameter runners found on the ALPHA 10 and 12 kit. 2.0″ external diameter runners (1.7” internal) feed the new ALPHA X line turbo kits. They are not just larger but designed in way to feed the exhaust gasses as efficiently as possible to the new X line turbos.
“The new X line turbochargers don’t just make more power but do so with no loss in spool vs their standard ALPHA 10 and 12 counterpart. By implementing proven Garrett GTX based billet ball bearing turbos we have successfully delivered you more horsepower throughout the entire powerband! These turbos also are able to sustain higher boost levels. To further improve power output we designed new custom casted 4″ ALPHA compressor covers. The new cover increases the compressor inlet size from 3” to a full 4” cover. The compressor discharge is also not only larger at 2.5” vs 2” but the routing of that discharge was maximized with a super smooth radius to allow the best possible flow given the space constraints of the GT-R. This is then fed into our high velocity cast 2.5” to 3” lower intercooler pipe. This new pipe offers you a drastic improvement in airflow vs its predecessor and transitions with the highest efficiency into 3” intercooler piping.
“Preliminary testing of these new X turbos with our prototype kits without the benefits of the new compressor covers, 4″ intakes or larger downpipes have already shown a 100whp increase on the 10X vs the 10 and over 125whp increase on the 12X vs the 12. With the turbos alone we’ve seen 1200+WHP with the 10X and 1500+WHP for the 12X. All this is accomplished without sacrificing anything in terms of spool up time or power delivery.”
Now taking a step back, we can only appreciate the insane amount of testing and engineering involved to accomplish the mixture of power and drivability in this new system. Keep in mind, 1700hp capable, with your A/C keeping your feet chilly in the summer time. There are full blown race cars, hacked up and hanging single 100mm+ turbochargers off the longblocks producing less power, with sweaty feet all summer long. This is our tip of the hat to AMS Performance! We are a proud distributor and authorized installer of these products. We look forward to utilizing these systems to create Kentucky’s most feared street cars!