In a search to fine a fairly cheap way to add some horses to my 97 4.6L i found listings on ebay for universal turbos. Has anyone ever put something like this on? If so what works and what doesnt? I am open to any other ideas for horsepower too

 

A turbo itself is pretty much a 'universal' part. If you called up say Turbonetics, they'd ask you what vehicle/motor you have and what you're looking from it, then they'd set you up with an 'off-the-shelf' turbo that many other people have used on many different kinds of vehicles before you.
It's the plumbing that makes it a model-specific 'kit'. Your pipe routing is gonna be specific to your vehicle.

 

If you're talking about the little electric blower "turbos" that are on there don't waste your time. Most of these are just marine ventilation blowers and aren't going to get you much and if anything up in the higher rpms are going to be more of an obstruction than anything.

Thomas Knight was making some sort of electric supercharger a while back that was actually getting nice gains. I think it was pricey though, although cheaper than a convential turbo kit if I remember correctly.

 

There's a website gotpressure.com that specializes in turbo setup for Ford trucks. Some are pretty radical setups with some outrages numbers. Last time I looked, there were a lot on there that were experimenting with 67mm getrag turbos, single and dual setups. Lots of experience on that site.

 

http://ststurbo.com/
I've actually heard good things about these.

 

Have you looked at an ATI Procharger? They have ready made kits specific to your model and they are bolt on kits with very little or no modifications. You can't buy directly from them but you can locate a dealer on their site. All the kits usually come with all the necessary stuff including a tuner unless your looking for a "tuners" kit which comes with just the supercharger and the plumbing. Had one on my '09 5.4L Screw and that thing made 421rwhp and 435 ft/lbs of torque. That was a 50% increase from stock according to the dyno. Whole kit was bolt on and only took about 6 hours to put it on. Still have it. Took it off the truck when I traded it in. They weren't going to give me nothing for it so I said screw that. I'll see if I can find a pic with it in my truck and post it.