Ron Aschtgen has been in the business of making your ride go fast for over 25 years. He is the owner of Outlaw Motorsports in Riverside, California, and on top of tuning up off-road vehicles, Ron is also responsible for numerous fabrication and performance project vehicles; Pro Street, drag, and circle track car chassis fabrication; and building high-horsepower racing engines. When you want something more than a simple bolt-on kit, Outlaw Motorsports can custom-fabricate just about anything your heart desires. We ran into Ron at an off-road event and got a ride in his latest project vehicle: an '05 Ford F-150 SuperCrew 4x4. The truck rode superbly in the dirt, but it was what was under the hood that really kept us wanting more.
With Ron's background in high-performance engine construction, the stock 331ci 5.4-liter V8 Ford engine under the hood of his F-150 just wasn't going to cut it. The majority of us will swap on an intake system, exhaust, and maybe a set of headers and call it a day - not Ron. He wanted his truck to push over 500 hp to the wheels, and in order to make that happen he needed to do something creative.
How many F-150s do you see running around the streets of Southern California with a methanol injection setup? We only know of one off-hand. Ron swapped in a ProCharger P-1SC supercharger kit with methanol injection. Take a peek under the hood and you'll see the methanol fuel cell, intake tubes, and charger pulley system running at 11 psi. A ProCharger air-to-air intercooler was also installed to help lessen all that heat. To help keep air flowing smoothly through the truck, a set of JBA titanium-coated headers was installed along with a Spin Tech stainless steel exhaust system.
This intercooled ProCharger supercharger system enabled Ron to gain high-performance numbers without sacrificing daily driveability or gas mileage. Because air-to-air intercooling removes the heat which causes detonation, you can safely run far more engine-friendly intercooled boost with full timing and complete peace of mind. With air-to-air intercooling, there is no need for an ignition retard, overrich or auxiliary fuel injectors, or water injection. There is also no need to buy exhaust gas temperature gauges because intercooling means that exhaust and overall engine temperatures remain stable even during extreme towing, racing, and/or summer heat conditions, which is great for us off-road enthusiasts. Basically, the intercooler system rejects far more heat than it will receive from the highly efficient P-1SC ProCharger.
Sitting at a dead stop, the truck seems almost completely silent. But when the green light hits, the injection kit sends the engine into a whirlwind of power and sucks you back into your seat as if you're driving a much lower vehicle with number plaques on both doors - 515 hp and 525 lb-ft of torque to the wheels is no joke.
Climbing over a rock section, we noticed the front suspension was made up of a CST 8-inch suspension kit running 2.5-inch King coilover shocks with reservoirs. Ron upped the ante on the front and custom-made a set of lower control arms, leaving almost no Ford parts on the front suspension. The front suspension travel measures 11 inches, and a set of King hydraulic bumpstops and a set of limiting straps keep the truck from pushing any farther. If you're wondering where you can order your CST kit chrome-dipped, keep looking. Ron did this after receiving his kit looking for a little extra bling to add to his project.