I could not find anything on this, so I wanted to ask people who would know. Has anyone ever been able to make a Graham Supercharge work on a Flathead. I see these things selling on ebay as a flathead supercharge (selling for way to much). I know how they work, but doubt that the normal builder could make it work or make it worth doing. Is it worth doing? Or is this just someone trying to get more $$ for a white elephant.
Just looking for info. I don't want to do it. I just wondered why people are buying them online. I would think the project would be a pain in @$$ and not offer much results.
The graham blowers go from anywhere between 200-800 dollars depending on completeness and condition. My understanding is that if the lower gears are gone the blower is more or less junk so you had best get a decent one. They run at about 6 times engine speed and I want to say the boost is around 5lbs. I've always thought that twin graham blowers mounted back to back on a Packard straight 8 would be really cool. The only machine work would be needed on the front blower to put a coupling out the back of the drive for the second one. The graham six is about 216 cubes and the big Packard around 357 so it might work out o.k.
But it would need to mount on the side of the motor right? How would you mount it where it was clean? Also would that be good boost?
You would need to mount it off to the side with probably some custom headers to get around it. One on each side of the motor blowing into a edmunds dual intake would be pretty cool. They brought the graham 6 from 90hp up to 124 so I imagine it should add some ooomphh, depending on how many cubes the flathead is. You could gear it up a bit for more boost with different pulley size on the front of the motor but I don't know how fast it can spin before it goes *boom*.
I know a guy who mounted two of them on a Continantal six. Said it ran pretty good. And RRP001 The 54 Ford was an overhead valve V8. "L" head refers to a flathead, both valves in block. You are thinking of an "F" head used by Willys fours and sixs but never a Ford factory production engine.
They are a bit wierd in the part of the power train is a set of bevel gears to turn the power 90 degrees from the jack shaft. Having looked as the Specs on the Graham Paige site, it looks like the unblown 6 put out about 90 HP and the blown one 125. So that is a pretty substantial gain for a low compression engine. Wonder if you could make up a drive shaft from a small shaft driven MC. The 6 cylinder engine used by G-P was purchased from continental.
Well the assets of Graham Paige were purchased by Chrylser after it's demise, so the Graham and Dodge/Plymouth are cousins of sorts. Before they became part of Chryslers, the Dodge Brothers also helped Graham Paige recaptilize during the depression. Looks like the grar box was mounted so it is in line with the oil pressure relieve valve. Wonder if it was a direct feed looks like some oil plumbing of the lower back of the housing, Also looke like some coolant was circulated through the housing. Since this was a suck through design with the carb sitting on top of the blower housing, the coolant probably kept the intake charge at a reasonable temp as well as cooling the turbin bearings. From a graham site: At a running speed of' 23,000 rpm, or 5.75 times engine speed, the Graham supercharger was slow compared to the 50,000 rpm range of racing cars. But because of the speed at which it did rotate, the blower wheel acted as an atomizer, mixing and breaking up particles of fuel and distributing them homogeneously in the intake mixture. The end result was a boost in Graham horsepower from 95 to 135, and a twenty percent increase in torque, which peaked at 210 foot pounds, 2400 rpm and 45 mph, allowing excellent mid-range acceleration. Top speed exceeded 90 mph, and Britain's The Autocar reported achieving 60 mph from a standing start in just 15.8 seconds. Engine performance, said the magazine, "is extremely good, especially considering that the engine is not a monster unit. [The Graham] is not in the least noticeable as being a supercharged car in the sense to which we are accustomed on some machines. Anyone driving this Graham without knowledge of the design would find nothing in the car's behavior, no added noise, no fussiness of the engine-to denote any difference whatsoever from the general run of similar machines. Nor, as another practical point, does oil have to be added to the fuel."
Check the pic. there is a line running from the cylinder head to the base of the carb mount and then the hole that is plugged under the word Supercharger looks like a plugged return. There is that tube sticking up from behind the genny that is probably the rest of the plumbing, bet it goes to the water pump. Maybe the flow was from the pump through the blower and out the top back to the head.
Your right. that line is to warm the carburator. Never understood how that would work since by the time the water was warm enough to help the motor is warmed up. Anyway, there is coolent running into the carb mount. Guess if you plumbed it for ice water it would work sorta like an intercooler. More of a before cooler.
Well, compressed air gets hot, so pumping 160 to 180 degree water through there probably does actually cool the charge. The comment in the old british magazine about putting oil in the gasoline got me thinking. That must have been to lubricate the blower. I always used to think those old racing cars had loose tolerences as they were always blowing smoke. I've seen pictures of the blower Bentley's foggin mosquitos. Guess it musta been the castor oil in the gas to keep the compressors lubed. the old Grand Prix Mercedes and Auto Unions belched a fair bit of smoke also.
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