And this is from the "Slow-Cal" tank with the Eco-tec motor in it. They were kinda' protective of shots of the set up. They were not real happy that I was taking pix. Oh well.
Crazy thread! Having just moved out to my new place I ended up hauling my Iron Duke and my 4-53 in the same load. It was kinda like the Reeses Peanut Butter commercial where the egine hit the blower and the blower ended up with the engine?! Really got me thing for my Model A.
so basically you are just pumping compressed and cooled air in through the throttle body, not a fuel air mixture (i didnt see a intake on the supercharger) ?? btw, just in case you didn't know that is so wrong in so many ways!!!
Giving you an E for effort, you are definitely tryin' aren't you. I would like to point out some other things as food for thought though. First off, do understand that a flat banger does not need (nor appreciate) much porting done on the exhaust side. The ex. valve is already too big as it is. Your idea about polishing has some merit but remember that a blower acts as a scavenger too. I also like your idea that 6:1 is "mild" regarding flathead CR's. Definitely makes me wonder what is "middle of the road", and "hot"!! By you implying that the 36 inch tube will have gas mixture in it, I am assuming you are going to mount the fuel system before the blower, --and it will not be a blow-through design. To drive that system on the street (or at the track for that matter) you will need to be a Wizard that can predict the future!! ! You are gonna need to know ahead of time when you will need to pedal down and throttle up quite a few seconds before the actual time is needed when you are driving. Throttle response will be incredibly slow ...and when you let off of the throttle it will take forever to get the engine to use up the fuel/air in the 36" tube before the engine will slow down. Air is what controls the speed of an engine and not fuel. Also, the blower really shouldn't need a pop-off --but you may wanna install a burst panel in case you encounter a lean mixture pop back. You got one more thing that is gonna give you fits, and that is the reversion effect you will see when you have two cylinders feeding off of one port back-to-back. If you can fabricate a divider that will extend the port out just a tad bit, it will help tremendously. Generally speaking you need to calculate how much air/fuel you can pack into your cylinder, and then have a port that can hold that much. This is less critical at higher Cu' per minute applications (like at 5000 Rpms) but it is unlikely you will be encountering these situations ....well that is 'for long'!! Then it won't be the supercharger spitting it's guts!!! I guess my take on what you are saying is that you have forgotten the all important rule in this world. You don't get something for nothing! Basically what that means is that it will take horsepower to spin the blower to even make the 2-3 lbs of boost. How much Hp will it take to break even?? I can take and equal your CR in a naturally aspirated configuration and use that freed-up 5-10 horsepower to move my heap. I will say that I am indeed intrigued by your feelings that a cast-iron head is the only way to go. Maybe we can discuss that in another post like you suggested. You keep up the good work thinking though 'cause it's the thinking outside of the box that has made hot rodding good.
Right. There is a cone filter right behind the grille, that goes thru an air mass meter and into the bottom of the SC. Then from the top of the SC the compressed Hot air goes thru an intercooler and becomes cold compressed air. That goes thru the throttle body. It runs 13.5 psi at the manifold. I have a microswitch on the throttle body that turns off the clutch when I let off the gas. That was it idles exactly like it would without the blower. Also, I could turn off the blower when I didnt want it and drive like normal.
creativity, failure, and stuborness are great stories over a beer. no sweet talking my way out of this one...going to take some time.
how about a belt driven turbo? not a big punch but would add some power without a big strain on the engine. i have thought about one to help overcome the crappy intake flow. the exh. flows better than the intake. the exh. is really a nice port. with a very big sort side!. look up (i think) gatter super chargers they do the belt driven torbos, and will show you how to build one yourself. they would be cheap to build.
A belt driven turbo is a centrifugal supercharger. They do take less power than a roots type blower, but they still rob power. Since you have good exhaust flow, then go with a turbo. They are driven by the exhaust and take basically NO power to run.
Thats not what I've read and heard... The restriction a Turbo puts on the Exhaust side will rob power too. I guess I'll find out for sure when I have the Turbo on my English Ford ( Kent ) up and running...
i think a turbo on an A engine for the street is not all that good. too much HEAT. and they will not turn up much. the big plus about a belt driven turbo is you can build one for very little money. i would think about 3 or 4 hundred bucks total. lets face it you can not put a bunch of psi. into a 75 year old A. and get it to last! one pf the big downfalls to getting an A to make more power is the intake breathing. it does not flow well. the engine does have lots of low end torque. (long stroke). which does not nessaceriy need lots of intake flow. sooooooo then as you turn up the rpms and make more power. you need more flow and that is were the belt turbo come in . to overcome the lack of intake flow. and should be progressively without a lag hit. without all the heat. and not much psi. because it will not handle it. another thing to think about is detonation!!!you have a big unefficient camber that you can only put so much spark into! duel plug would help that.
How do you plan to build a belt driven charger for a few hundred. I am curious because I amy do something like that on my 51. Right now the plan is a turbo, but the lag is an issue. Thats why I had a blower on my old car.
you go to the junk yard and find a turbo??? off of something. about 1 to 2 hundred bucks. maybe less. take it apart junk the exhaust side and put a pully on it and make some brakets and plumb it!!! bamb you got it.
I am building a T speedster with a 41 Willys Banger It will have the stock motor when it comes out but the following season I am going to see if I can adapt a mini cooper s Eaton blower to it should wake the old girl up they seem to go for around £100 on egay. I am only about 20 miles from you in Purley on Thames. Rich
Thats basically what I was thinking too. You would still need to run an oil line to the turbo/SC. On all turbos there is an oil line that lubes the bearings. It is pressureized from the pump and then generally has a gravity drain. Its VERY important. On some turbos there is also a water cooling system that gets plumed in with your radiator. The only issue I see is getting the proper sized pulley for whatever boost you want to run, and getting it balanced. Personally I think it would be easier to run a turbo, as a turbo. But you have a cool idea, thats for sure!
A lot of the British cars had superchargers available as period accessories. Here's some photos of my 1949 MG TC taken this weekend at Cruising the Coast down in Mississippi. It has a 4 cylinder, 1250cc engine - the supercharger is a Rootes type, Marshall-Nordec. I'm only running 4 pounds of boost - (one) because it's more show than go and (two) because crankshafts in these engines are weak (and new ones are expensive).
Oh, and here's some pictures of it the next day after it became part of a 4 car sandwich started by an idiot in a brand new (no plates) Ford Mustang. We'd watched him doing donuts in a parking lot just before he got in back of the car behind us - two minutes later we were part of a giant traffic jam.
Turbos routinly spin at 60,000 RPM, some as high as 120,000 RPM. to get that kind of RPM out if the turbine with a belt, you need to gear up the impeller like on a centrifugal supercharger. Most centrafugal superchargers I've used use a 3:1 impeller/pully ratio.
I'm running a Pepco blower on my Ford model B in the Bellytank. Pepco's were made in the 50's and were pretty small. They made different sizes, mines a total of 14 inches long. I guess they were popular on sleeper VW's.
I've been thinkning abou this a bit. What I want to do is putting a roots type blower on a lfathead B banger. If we leave the questions about it holding up for the power, babbit vs inserts, compression ratio and so on for a while I have other thoughts. Generally speaking a roots blower don't like anything less than 5-6 cylinders because of the pulasting pressure in the intake manifold. This makes the blower even less efficient and also put a lot of strain on the blower it self and the belt drive. This could maybe be reduced with a faily large plenum in the intake manifold, I'd say at least 1.5 times one cylinders volume. Thats about 70-80 cubic inches in this case, which might start to influence the throttle respons a bit to much. I'm talkning about a draw through setup here. Would the short cam duration and the large cylinders magnify this problem? Of course the engine is operated at low rpms and with very low delivery ratio so the pulsating in the intake might even be lover than a smaller engine running higher rpms for the same power. Then we have the cam. A blower cam for a low rpm engnine with the intake an exhaust valve placed like they are in a sidevalve engine. I'm suspecting that you would want as short overlap period as you can possible get. That would mean short durations since we don't want to open the exhaust to early and don't want late closing of the intake to risk any reverse flow in the ports. Or should one try the Miller cycle with very late intake closing? And BTW an old timer told me that A and B bangers should have a 30 degree seat angle on the intake valve for best flow. Any thoughts on that? OK this relpy has no clear questions and defenitly no answers, just another log on the fire. But any thoughts and comments? What do you have to say about this? Shall I ditch the whole idea? Am I missing something? Regards, Magnus
FOR OPENERS : I KNOW THIS IS AN "ANCIENT-THREAD"!!! In the late '80's in one of the 'touring conversions for Model 'A''s magazines there was a report by someone who had adapted a Corvair turbo(I TOLD you it was from the '80's!!) to his otherwise stock looking 'A'. He claimed the relief valve was set at to 3psi, & that it easily kept up with contemporary traffic, with the added benefit of gaining between 2 & 4 mpg in the process. It just shows that there's nothing new ; it's just being re-discovered by a new crowd(& maybe a little more 'Hi-Tech'?) I agree that turbos have become very reasonably priced(especially at the "U-Pull" yards), &, if properly done, are probably the cheapest "power-Booster" available, if not "Period-Correct" for the HAMB. A big plus for Model 'A' motors is that having all the ports on the same side does make the plumbing a lot easier!! Not a 'rant', just some observations.
An old Judson Supercharger for one of the larger 6cyl motors would be 'period correct' & would be 'different'!
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