Eaton has manufactured superchargers on the OEM level for a very, very long time. They have produced the power for some of the most iconic late-model muscle cars of this century, and really changed the Roots-style supercharger game with the Twin Vortices Series high-helix positive displacement superchargers.
The latest model of the supercharger features a 3.1-liter displacement (per revolution, hence “3100”) and is 15-percent larger than the previous iteration of the blower, the R2650, which has been used in the latest crop of OEM-supercharged muscle cars and with aftermarket supercharger companies alike.
“The cool backstory is that this is the first supercharger Eaton has launched, that isn’t the result of an OEM program,” says Jeff Saxton, program manager for Eaton. “Virtually everything up to and including the R2650 were all OEM programs at some point or another; the aftermarket basically benefitted from that product launch. The 3100 is the first one that ever originated with the aftermarket saying, ‘We want something new.’”
With Eaton’s customers asking for a larger rotor pack, the team happily obliged, designing the R3100 with the best features from the incredibly successful R2650 — like the high-helix four-lobe rotor design and coatings to minimize friction in the assembly — and scaled it up. The result is a supercharger capable of significant power increases both through the physical size increase of the unit, and increased efficiency through the use of coatings which create “near-zero” clearances.
Eaton’s supercharger partners will be releasing individual new products featuring the R3100 rotor pack starting early 2021, but as we’ve seen here at SEMA 360, there are some manufacturers who already have their product application and announcements ready to rock.