The kit includes a new belt that is snaked into position and tightened up. | 
A rubber inlet tube connects the stock air box to the stock throttle body mounted next to the front of the blower. A little grease inside the tube makes installing it easier. |
Next in goes the intercooler's recovery tank that is mounted to the fan shroud with a few screws. | 
Some cooling lines run from the intercooler's recovery tank to the blower's intake manifold. Clean them up nice and neat with a few zip-ties and you're good. |
The hoses run to the front of the truck, after you've removed the grille, through a factory hole under the diver's headlight. | 
This liquid-to-air intercooler is Magnuson supplied in the kit. It adds a lot of power and reliability to the entire system and is easy to hook up. |
Now it's time to dive under the truck and mount the auxiliary electric fuel pump that's included with the kit. You can see it mounted above Simon's head as he's wiring the new connections. | 
Some of the factory fuses may have to be temporarily removed, depending on how your vehicle was factory equipped, in order to complete the next step. |
Since the Avalanche is totally computer-controlled, Magnuson supplies a new computer flash "programmer" to retune the engine for the blower. This step is a piece of cake. Finally, fill the intercooler's recovery tank and you're ready to rock! | |
Power to the People
Before installing the inter-cooled blower kit, Magnuson strapped our Avalanche down on their chassis dynamometer to see what kind of power it could crank out. We were quite impressed when the stock engine made over 260 hp at the tires. After the blower was bolted on the truck was tested again and it made almost 400 hp at the tires! That's almost a 50% increase in power, which is huge for this simple bolt-on.
Horsepower and Torque: 2003 GMC Avalanche AWD 5.3l v-8
Click here to see the overview chart. | |