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© 2001 Brian F. Schreurs
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The supercharger kit provided all of the parts necessary for the installation, but in the process of installing the oil drain line you'll most likely destroy a bunch of those annoying plastic push pins. You can buy 'em by the bag at Lowe's on the cheap. And if you still have the stock oil pressure sender, you'll likely end up breaking it; have a spare handy (Niehoff #FF135E).

From the Vortech kit, you'll be using the 1/4" NPT brass nipple, 1/4" NPT brass tee, 1/4" NPT to -4AN brass adaptor, 1/4" NPT brass 45-deg. angle, and oil feed line with 1/2" flex loom.

You'll also need a couple of special tools. One is a 5/8" drift punch; this is really hard to find, but Snap-On carries it for about $35. The other is a 3/8" NPT tap, which sounds like it shouldn't be hard to get, but it is. We found one at Ferguson Enterprises, a plumbing and contracting supply store, although we later saw one at a NAPA. Once you've got that, you'll find that no tap wrench in the universe fits on it; instead, buy an 11/16" 12-point, 3/8"-drive socket and a 3/8"-drive socket T-handle. That's a lot better than trying to turn it with a box wrench. We also found a 3-lb. hammer worked best for the punches.

Jack the car up and drain the oil.

Start by locating the oil pressure sender. In our case, we'd been here before, installing an oil pressure gauge. So we knew where it was and how to deal with the stock sender, which we ended up just breaking off. If you still have the stock configuration, refer to that article for disassembly instructions. This article will proceed with our custom setup.

The sender, or in our case the stainless steel braided oil line where the sender used to be, is located on the driver-side of the engine block, near the front, hiding behind a wire harness. It's actually easier to see from underneath. Remove the oil filter (and oil cooler lines, if you've been modding your car like ours) for better access.

From underneath, you'll observe that there is a wiring harness right in front of the oil sender port. This will get in the way, so you might as well move it now. The post that the harness is attached to is 1/2", and the stud under that is 15mm. The oil sender line, at least on our modified car, is 7/16". Disconnect the line going into the block (or the sender if your car is still stock).

The assembled oil line. We weren't able to get a good photo of this thing installed; it's too crowded in there.

To hook up the oil inlet line, use the plumbing parts provided by Vortech. Do not use any sealer on the threads. They never adequately explain why, but they'll void the warranty if they find out about it; this thing cost enough that it's worth a couple of minor leaks to make sure they get to buy us a new one if it blows up. The correct order for the pieces are: engine; 1/4" NPT male-male brass nipple; 1/4" NPT female-female-female brass tee; across from the nipple, 1/4" NPT 45-deg. male-female brass elbow; perpendicular to the nipple, a 1/4" NPT to -4AN male-male adapter. This assembly can be installed as a unit into the oil pressure port.

After tightening down the assembly, the tee should be at about 10 o'clock, as looking at it from the driver-side fender. The 45-deg. angle should also fit sorta upwardsish, keeping in mind that the oil pressure line (or sender) must attach here and clear other obstacles. In fact, now that we mention it, go ahead and install the pressure line. Then reattach the stud for the wiring harness and the harness itself.

Attach the oil feed line and route it in the general direction of where the supercharger will go, keeping it clear of objects and the path of the serpentine belt. Basically, get the line over the engine and across the top. At this point the Vortech instructions tell you to install the 1/2" flex loom over the oil line, but in our kit the loom was already preinstalled.

Install a new oil filter and re-route the oil cooler lines, if so equipped. We weren't sure the oil feed line and oil cooler lines could peacefully coexist, but with a big struggle and some bloodletting, we managed. So you can too ya big crybaby!

The target is marked...

The weapon is marked...

OUCH! That had to hurt!

Tapping the hole.

One threaded oil return line hole! It better work!

Now that the supercharger can get oil, you need to set up a means for the oil to leave. This is Vortech's Step 3, and it is accomplished by banging a hole into your oil pan.

(Pause to let the shrieks of horror die down)

Come on, give it a rest. It's not like your car is something special with an exotic oil pan made of unobtanium. If you take your time and follow our instructions, you'll have a nice hole in there with no harm done. It'll work fine.

The only thing is, Vortech is a little misleading about how easy it is to access the area of the pan where the hole needs to go. In fact, they say nothing about clearance issues. But don't worry, we're here for you.

The coordinates for the hole is: passenger-side, 1-1/4" below the lip of the oil pan, 1/2" rearward from the first pan-to-block bolt. Take a piece of masking tape and mark the spot for reference. Notice any clearance problems with a wiring harness and the transmission cooler lines? We thought you would.

The harness and lines are held up by a 1/2" bolt and a 5/8" bolt. Disconnect them and hold them away from the work area by zip-tying them to whatever comes handy. That seems to be the extent of the clearance issues until you realize that the 5/8" drift punch is 12" long -- smacking straight into the anti-sway bar. Pop the flimsy mud shields off (more mud shield fasteners are available at Lowe's, and don't worry, you'll break a couple) and detach the anti-sway bar. It has two frame brackets, each held by a pair of 5/8" bolts, and the end link on the passenger-side needs to come off, also 5/8". With all of that disconnected, the anti-sway bar will swivel out of the way.

After that it's pretty straightforward, basically the way Vortech describes it. Remove the paint where the hole is going to go, and use a center punch to dimple the sheetmetal. The punch isn't going to want to actually penetrate the metal, so use a masonry nail to start the hole. Then switch back to the center punch to widen the hole out to the diameter of the punch.

When that punch is maxed out, switch to a 3/16" drift punch and widen the hole until it is big enough for the 5/8" drift punch that you paid a king's ransom for. Now, the clincher is that you don't want the hole to go out to 5/8" -- you only want to see 9/16". What to do? Simple really: grab a 9/16" open wrench, slide it along the shaft of the punch, and when it stops, that's close enough. Mark it with masking tape.

Once the hole is the proper size, check to see whether the 3/8" NPT tap will fit in it. Ours wouldn't fit, so we actually had to widen the hole a little more -- the wrench trick isn't perfect. The tap should have a tight fit, not even able to fully engage, but it should at least be able to get started.

Tapping the hole correctly is critical. Vortech doesn't really have any suggestions for turning the tap, which should come as little surprise since no one makes a tap handle that big. Some suggest using a pipe wrench or other imprecise method, but we don't work that way. Since it's so important for the tap to go in straight, we found a way to make our own T-handle. Turns out an 11/16" 12-point socket fits the end of the tap perfectly. With a socket on there, it's a simple matter to track down a socket T-handle. Problem solved.

Grease the tap thoroughly so that it will catch any metal flakes. Turn the tap about a half-turn, then back it out a quarter-turn. This breaks up the chips. Vortech wants you to thread the hole about 1/4" deep and that seems reasonable to us as well.

Clean the threaded area and apply a small amount of silicone sealer. Screw in the brass nipple-to-3/8" brass fitting, but there's no need to be Hercules about it -- take your time. Apply more sealant. Attach the oil drain hose to the nipple side.

It'd be a good idea to pour some oil through the engine to flush out little metal flakes.

That's it for this step! Now you're ready for Vortech's Step 4, the fuel management unit installation.