Cyber Stallions by Jeff Bauer

Turbocharger or supercharger? It's a question almost as old as the Mustang itself. And while intelligent Mustang owners will recognized that each has its advantages, over the past few years, superchargers have begun to dominate as far as popularity is concerned. So Trent Kendall decided to create a home on the Internet for fans of that other form of forced induction. The result? Turbomustangs.com (www.turbomustangs.com), a self-styled "nondenominational home for all your turbocharged late model Mustang needs."

Kendall had already helped create a decent Mustang web site for his club, Arizona Mustangs (www.azmustangs.com) and figured he could do something similar for turbo owners. "I was researching the possibility of doing a turbocharger on my 5.0 and I couldn't find much info. I searched on major search engines as well as all the major Mustang sites. I came up with very little info, and it was scattered all around," Kendall said. "There really was no place for turbocharged Mustang owners to go for research or to see pictures of turbo Mustangs."

To rectify this situation, Kendall started modestly, by posting on his personal web pages a list of links to the few Mustang-specific turbo pages and sites he had comes across. From posting questions on a power adder forum on The Corral, he hooked up with a handful of other turbo Mustang owners. This lead him to compile a turbo Owners Lists, with details on each person's combination and contact info so people interested in running turbo setups could learn from each other. "The response I got was great," Kendall said. "So I added several sections, and it has grown from there into a full-blown web site."

With some help on the graphics from firends and a generous offer to host the site from fellow Arizona Mustang club member Nathan Staud, Kendall created Turbomustangs.com in October 2001. The Owners List was its original centerpieces, and remains so. On a recent visit, it included more than 50 turbo Stang owners, ranging from an '85 GT owner running junkyard twin turbos and a carb to someone with a '00 GT with a Turbo Driven Concepts (TDC) Stage II kit that dyno'd at 419 rear-wheel hp. The list consists of a table with each owner's name, email address, link to his web site where applicable, the year and model of his Stang, the turbo system he's running, its size, details on the rest of his combination, and performance. Owners with web sites are featured at the top of the list for easy access to their sites.

Turbomustang.com's Knowledge Base is essentially a FAQ. For those interested in learning about turbocharging in general, there are two simple diagrams from SN95 dot com, and a suggestion to check out some of the sites on the Links page (like the "How Stuff Works" article on turbocharging) or one of the two popular turbocharging books. For those considering a turbo for their own Mustang, there are questions that address which cam, heads, intake, and exhaust to run, common tuning problems, and a lot more. Therese's also a link to a chart comparing turbocharging to supercharging that Kendall put together when deciding which form of power adder to use on his own Mustang.

A separate section of the site covers turbo kits, with a listing of each manufacturer's contact info, the kits they offer, and pros and cons. "Even though I chose the Cartech kit for my own Mustang, I plan to keep the site unbiased," Kendall said. "It is disheartening to see owners of different turbo kits arguing with each other. We can all learn from each other in our quest for horsepower." Interestingly enough, this turbo kits section includes info on junkyard turbos, for those looking for a low-buck entry into the world of forced induction.

The Turbomustang.com message boards was launched in early 2002 thanks to the generosity of a fellow Mustang owner, Eric Eddy, who offered to host it on his own domain. The board is tightly focused, with a grand total of three forums: Tech, General Chat, and Classifieds. Even in the General forum, the conversations tend to stick to turbocharged Mustangs. The early May, the board had almost 200 registered users, and virtually none of the BS that can sometimes ruin an otherwise useful message board.

The Multimedia section contains far more photos than it does videos or sound-files, but what's there is worth viewing nonetheless. If the two videos of John Urist's turbo Outlaw Stang in action aren't enough to make you want a turbo of your own, nothing else will. If you've got sounds or images of your own turbo Stang, Turbomustangs.com would be happy to host them for you.

A Featured Car section adn an extensive Links page are also part of Turbomustangs.com. By the time you read this, Kendall will have added pages to document the installation of a single turbo kit own his own '91 GT, the success of which he attributes largely to his friends and family. "My friends have really been busting their butts on my car lately," he said. "I really ow them a lot. And I have the two greatest parents around."

For the future, Kendall plans to regularly update the site with new turbo companies, info, and links. Obviously, Turbomustangs.com is filling a niche: The site went from a few hundred visitors per month by the end of 2001` to several thousand per month by mid 2002. "I've received many emails from people thanking me for creating the site," he said. "It feels really great to create something that serves a purpose. It seems that for some reason, many Mustang owners are afraid of turbos. I hope to show them that installing and maintaining a turbo car is not much different from living with a supercharged or other high-horsepower Mustang.