Mustang Geek main man Wes Duenkel loved the raw power and sound of the Vortech supercharger on his 2018 Mustang GT, but he was constantly fighting one major problem: the boost delivery wasn’t as predictable as he hoped. This made the car difficult to drive smoothly, especially when trying to roll into the throttle. After years of failed tuning, he finally found a unique hardware solution from a company called SmoothBoost.
The core issue, as Duenkel demonstrated with datalogs, wasn’t the Vortech itself but the car’s factory electronic throttle body. He showed how the throttle plate (the white trace) would snap wide open when his foot (the red trace) was only at 60-70 percent pedal. On a boosted car, this action instantly closes the supercharger’s bypass valve, cramming full boost into the engine whether the driver wanted it or not. This effectively turned the bypass valve into an on-off switch.
His solution was a new bypass system that would reference the throttle pedal position instead of manifold vacuum. A Google search led him to the SmoothBoost controller, a kit designed for centrifugal superchargers that includes its own throttle body and weld-on adapter. Not comfortable welding the aluminum himself, Duenkel turned to Coffey Fabrication and Race Prep in Nashville, Tennessee, to weld the adapter to the Vortech’s discharge tube. He then wired the new controller by tapping into the throttle pedal’s signal, completely separating the boost control from the engine’s throttle body.
After installation, the system worked, but the SmoothBoost controller was still set to close the bypass (deliver full boost) at around 70 percent throttle. He wanted the boost to come in more progressively, all the way to 100 percent pedal. To achieve this, Duenkel installed a 500k potentiometer between the pedal and the controller. This clever tweak allowed him to fine-tune the signal, effectively mapping the bypass valve’s closure to match his pedal’s full range of motion.
The result was a night-and-day difference. The 2018 Mustang GT, which was once jerky and difficult, now drives much better with linear boost delivery. The power ramped up smoothly in relation to his foot, just as he had always wanted. For anyone else fighting a similar issue, this SmoothBoost controller proved to be the key to taming the beast and making the supercharged car more fun to drive fast.
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