$50 Super Charger (the strange red button explained)

[JohnF]

... Power and power adders almost always follow certain laws of physics it is true and there is usually good math to show why. ...

LOL, I'm pretty certain that they always follow all laws of physics. But you are right, power adders exploit different means towards gain and there is math to show why.

Your explanation of the design vs use of these engines makes sense to me. The Kaw FD620D carb has a metered immersion tube that looks to be designed to get from low idle to high idle (WOT). Always thought it was a poor excuse for an accelerator pump. Now it makes sense.

Brushcutter, perhaps it would be better to search out a carburetors to test with too.

A small boost that creates a stronger signal is doing something. But at what cost?

[kghills]

It may be important to differentiate between driveability and measured performance. Typically you will use the engine dyno for measuring power. Like peak hp and torque. Single sweep, starting at a few thousand RPM and going to just over where peak HP is made. I consider this the performance of the engine. Driveability is a different animal to me and where we use the chassis dyno most. With an eddy current chassis dyno we can see what happens off idle, at speed, light load, heavy load, acceleration, deceleration any thing you like. This is where engines that have the exact same performance can differ immensely. Now lets say just for fun that most 4 stroke engines used for AATVs are really designed for things like lawn mowers and generators. Applications where they run at wide open throttle. Carbs, air box, intake all designed to run at WOT. My guess is what a person would "feel" has nothing to do with the actual HP or torque the engine is making especially given the loss through the drive. Now lets say just for fun that you place a small fan in the cold air intake of an engine designed to run at WOT. All of the sudden at the moment you open the throttle blade there is air flow past the venturi which gives a stronger signal for more fuel in a carb that has no accelerator pump. Walla, no hesitation. Now does this 18HP engine make more power? Probably not but it would sure "feel" more powerful.

I talk often with the engineers for various manufacturers and research engineers involved in engine development. Power and power adders almost always follow certain laws of physics it is true and there is usually good math to show why. As a regular guy working on engines I usually ask myself more simple questions like "if a small electric fan in a cold air intake made any kind of difference, why isn't it on every car I work on"? Soooo...I'll leave the rest in your hands.

Remember, gains will need to be pretty substantial when you loose about 50%

Keith.

[JohnF]

... You have to admit that an electric blower that takes no hp from the engine has to be an advantage...

Hey brushcutter, an observation from the sideline: It looks like you are wanting to do some science. Cool, I love science.

Something for nothing always sounds great but ideas claiming such will only get engineering folks to roll their eyes at you.

Conservation of energy - it's the law.

So let's say you have a 10 horsepower engine and you want to bolt on an electrical device that will add 1 horsepower. Horsepower is a unit of power (imperial) and watt is also a unit of power (SI) so we can convert how we think of engine power to how we think of electrical power very easily. 1 watt = .00134 HP so 10HP = 7463 watts and 11HP = 8209 watts. Your bolt on device need to net 746 watts. If we assume a perfect conversion (no losses), that the gain in the system is all from electricity, and that your device is 12V DC then we have to get 62 Amps of electrical current from somewhere.

I know that superchargers and turbochargers expect gains from the fact that cramming more fuel/air into combustion produces more watts. In superchargers, a device that takes watts directly from the engine, a balance is made; something like, take 1000 watts to produce 1200 watts for a gain of 200 watts. A turbo gets most of its energy of operation from the wasted energy that leaves the engine as exhaust heat. It sounds to me that your device is more the supercharger model and will get its energy of operation from the alternator (and therefore directly from the engine) rather than from somewhere else like a battery which would be more turbo like.

So, if we argue that this device is taking advantage of the same gains that superchargers are (and I think we are) then let's do some math. Now computing gains for superchargers is black magic to me because there are many variables involved that I don't want to mess up my simple black box example we are working on so I am going to be super generous with a number that I just pull out of the air. Let's say that your device will produce 3 units of power for every unit of power it consumes for a net gain of 2 units of power. Remember, I have no idea how realistic that is but it gives us something with which we can do math.

We want to net 746 watts. 746 / 2 = your device needs 373 watts = 31 amps of electrical current that have to come from somewhere.

I'm betting that the power to drive your device is coming directly from the engine.

But, what do you want to achieve?

This is the big question. Teeny gains are sought in high power games like drag racing and your device may be just the ticket. Be specific because in a vacuum an engineer is likely to choose the average case for the cases that the engineer designs to. The responses to your design may be biased by the average use case of AATVs. If you stated: I want to add 1HP to my engine for $50 and I don't care if the engine lasts only .25 seconds then I think you will get all kinds of different ideas. If your goal cannot be met then an engineer will tell you that too so you should be prepared to hear it.

Remove confirmation bias. You telling me that what you did felt like it worked doesn't tell me anything. Heck, I don't even trust me making such statements. Small variances in your engines performance are expected due variance in the environmental conditions so if you didn't record all of that then your timing data is worthless too. Actually, without the experimental protocol followed for your timings experiment no real scientist would take your trial data seriously.

So, my advice, since it looks like you seriously want to pursue this:

Get everyone to agree on a specific set of goals.
Calculate what it would take reach these goals.
Then research and experiment to find the cost/gain sweet spot.

For example:

I want to improve throttle response time. Throttle response time is affected by fluid losses in the intake system as well as inertia of the mass flow. I think I can overcome some of this by maintaining a higher energy state in the intake (boost) via a low cost electrical fan "supercharger". ...

Off the top of my head thoughts about your design:

Turbo lag is a reduction in throttle response due to having a turbo stuck in the middle of the intake system. The turbo itself adds a bunch of resistance that dissipates once the turbo "fan" spools to a higher RPM and once again gets ahead of the flow. Your supercharger will operate at only one RPM. I suspect gains at one engine RPM will show up as losses at another since your fan will not spool higher. I would look at experimenting with adding your fan to the side of the normal intake flow so it would not add resistance.

And hey, as a scientist I am accustomed to sticking my neck out and looking the fool. It's just part of the territory. Don't be afraid to say that I am all wet... I actually expect it here since supercharging engines is not my expertise.

[brushcutter]

What is the next step?

Hold it guys, I realized this morning that this thread has gotten headed in the opposite direction from where I hoped it would go. I knew there would be some debate about whether it would work or not, and that is where it got hung up like a hustler tub hump on a stump. That is not what I wanted. Fred, Keith, WFO and everybody who have replied, my apologies for getting caught up in arguing, it's time for a re-direct. I'm going to be out of pocket for a few hours this morning, but PLEASE let's think about this: Do you see an advantage to this idea if it could be made to work? If your answer is yes then let's do the 6X6 world thing and work together to see what WE CAN do to get it to work. Keith, if you were working on this what would be the next step? You have to admit that an electric blower that takes no hp from the engine has to be an advantage... sooo... help us out on this. Ok class listen up...

[brushcutter]

Hey Keith, glad you joined in, hadn't really intended to bring this thread back but here we are. In my case it would be very difficult to hook up to any dyno since I no longer own any of these machines, nor the components. The housing I used had 0.002" clearance between the OD of the blades and it's ID. There was always a stumble at initial acceleration, this was not the case if I powered up the fan then hit the throttle, so I have no doubt that something had changed. Also the measured distance from standstill to max rpm was shortened by some feet. We did 20 repetitions each with and without the fan being powered both sets of results were fairly consistent, I was surprised at that! Honestly I was quite skeptical of this whole thing when the guy who told me about it was actually doing it on an S-10 of all things and swore he could feel a difference, he had also tried on of the whirlygig things and said it was bs and that is what gave him the idea. I changed my mind when I immediately noticed the stumble was gone. We did timed tests and took all sorts of notes, and as I said they are probably still here, if they didn't get tossed like a lot of other stuff when I moved into the new shop. As I said I'm not going to bother looking for it, as I don't see where it will be of any benefit on my current project.

[kghills]

Soo... you're saying that this little 12volt fan produces enough volume/boost to blow air back out during the intake stroke? I never claimed that... Think about what you are saying...



For REAL??? so that be isn whut onna dem tangs be's lookin lak...

Well... snake oil huh... seems I was dissed and missed it. Was looking back over this thread and came across these little gems. There's always somebody who for reasons of their own feel compelled to whip it out and start a I-know-more-than-you peeing contest. I don't know your backgrounds so I will not make the same presumption you apparently made and therefore will presume that you guys have knowledge of blowers, turbos and their function. I never tested with a boost gage (although I did have access to one at the shop where I worked at the time) I saw no need to when I could plainly feel the difference when I was sitting in the machine with my hand on the throttle which is something you can't say. Next I'll say no one on this forum has to ever spend one penny of their $$ based on my statements, that is a matter of personal curiosity and choice. IOW if you like the idea and you want to try it for yourself then by all means do so, but don't do it just because I say so, further more don't NOT do it just because someone else disagrees.

Now since you guys very apparently don't know much about my background allow me to explain; engine builder/engine final prep/engine machine work/ tool and die machinist... I was the guy that our fuel, engine, axle, dyno(transmission and engine), transmission/transfer and finally FUEL shops all came to when they needed tooling built to do their work, or ran into a problem that they had to resolve. So I'll keep this simple and not get to technical and we'll only deal with the subject at hand. How many turbos or blowers have you guys ever torn down and rebuilt? How many have you built tooling for so they could be torn down then rebuilt? Would you know which end of a Detroit blower roller is the front? Have you ever done machine work to convert low output fuel pumps to high output, or built fixtures to do the conversion? I well understand the tolerances and clearances involved in both blowers and turbos, Ever seen what a blue paper shop towel will do to a turbo when sucked into it? Ever seen a cat turbo so hot you can see turbulence ripples on it, do you know the various causes of this? Our dyno guy used to say "I got it so hot you could see through it." Do you know what an incorrect roller end clearance will cause a Detroit blower to do and how to recognize this BEFORE it does it? To all of the above I have and more. You do understand that when your intake valve is closed no amount of boost or pressure is going to force air into the cylinder? You do understand that anything that helps move air through the carburetor and intake manifold into the cylinder -even if that is no more than rounding a few sharp corners- will increase performance, correct? And yet you say that an inline electric fan forcing air (however little that may be) through these will do absolutely nothing? Think about what you are saying...

Now that we all know that the other guy knows a little about this subject let me say this: you will never smoke all six tires with a flat head 18 hp briggs and any "blower" you want to put on it, agreed? I never made a claim that this rig would do anything other than give a noticeable gain in response and a quicker from "idle to wfo" time. We ain't trying nor claiming to pull no 7 second quarters here understand, we just want to help an old tired 18 hp flat head briggs climb up a creek bank a little better, see? Agree or not this rig did do that! I no longer own it, and probably if I dug deep into my note case, I could still dig up all the time records I made of it climbing hills, creek banks and dragging a tractor tire. But I wont bother... I no longer own the blown 950, nor any of the parts snake oil

Well, after reading this I guess it is fair to say I have a bit more experience than you on this subject so I will add my opinion based on what I have seen. Normal intake will cause draw or a slight drop in atmospheric pressure in the air cleaner. A little fan may help flow but will not cause boost like the other power adders you are comparing it to that would actually cause positive pressure in the intake and push air into the cylinders. Could you feel a difference? My guess would be no and certinally not under load given the small amount of difference it would make and how much poer is lost going to the wheel. Not much different than those little twirling gizmos con men try to sell. It's easy enough to throw on a chassis dyno to test if you want, or at least it is for me on mine.

Keith.

[wfo]

dyno_filtered_sm.jpgblower.jpg
this is what you can get from al hodge....probably will be my next engine when i scatter the one i have now

[fmints]

I like it Bushcutter, easy on the pockets yet very effective, and I dont care what anyone says or thinks,,, an idea that is thought of, deserves to be listened to at the minimum!! Your $50 super charger will help the engine run at a more consistant rate, ensuring that you get the most bang out of every stroke of your engine. Along with the forced air, I bet the air temperatures probably dropped a few degrees also with the speed that the air is traveling. Cold air is an engines best friend, unless the engine is a cold diesel! Im surprised I haven't seen any threads bout shooting a 1/2 pound or so of Nitrous to the twins, or has there?????

[brushcutter]

Hey Drew, don't really mean to rant and had I seen those replies way back when I would have replied in kind at that time. To answer your question I was replying to snowman's winch thread on here, explaining how much work I had in my old 950 and wondering about it's disposition and wound up on this old thread and found those. And since they kinda took it on themselves to "school" me then I think they need to know that I know a little bit about these things, inside and out-literally.

Stonewall, I never did try the bilge blower, I wish I had but had started saving to build my shop and didn't buy so much as a cheese burger out of the fund from Jan '10 till it was finished, 22 months, wound up selling both my machines to top off the cash pool to build it. Moved into the new shop in October of '11 completely paid for with cash. It's about priorities and although I miss my 950 I love the new shop.

Now, lets talk about the bilge blower first let's be clear: I'm not trying to get you to spend any $$ here...ok. There was absolutely no gain until I got the over sized filter, which btw gives a significant gain by itself. The fan is not going to do what a supercharger does, it is however going to maximize the amount of air your cylinder will draw during it's intake stroke. If you were to run a "real" super charger you would have to re-jet your carb to keep from leaning out. I think of this mod more along the lines of cowl induction without the speed, kind of an electric ram air induction. When you think of that way it makes a little more sense.

[Stonewall]

Wow, I completely missed this thread....This is a fantastic idea!!! A year or so ago I had a little thread on putting a small turbo on a V-twin, but that idea never got off the ground because it was over my head. Sorry that it takes a rant to revive this thread, but I'm glad you did! I'm all for continued discussion of low-cost forced induction on a 6 wheeler... Did you ever try one of the bilge blowers?

[amphibious drew]

Wow what happened to resurrect a 2+ year old thread.

[brushcutter]

Snake oil!!! so is HHO...
Show me a boost gauge inline between the "hair dryer supercharger" and the carburetor.
Prove there is actually boost under acceleration........ there won't be because the air can escape back out the way it came..... If you have ever looked at a real supercharger you would understand. and turbos run at 100,000rpm + and have minute clearances between the impeller and wall so air can't go back out the way it came... sorry its an old thread but don't want to see folks wasting their $$

Soo... you're saying that this little 12volt fan produces enough volume/boost to blow air back out during the intake stroke? I never claimed that... Think about what you are saying...

look close at the engine on the right...thats a supercharger

For REAL??? so that be isn whut onna dem tangs be's lookin lak...

Well... snake oil huh... seems I was dissed and missed it. Was looking back over this thread and came across these little gems. There's always somebody who for reasons of their own feel compelled to whip it out and start a I-know-more-than-you peeing contest. I don't know your backgrounds so I will not make the same presumption you apparently made and therefore will presume that you guys have knowledge of blowers, turbos and their function. I never tested with a boost gage (although I did have access to one at the shop where I worked at the time) I saw no need to when I could plainly feel the difference when I was sitting in the machine with my hand on the throttle which is something you can't say. Next I'll say no one on this forum has to ever spend one penny of their $$ based on my statements, that is a matter of personal curiosity and choice. IOW if you like the idea and you want to try it for yourself then by all means do so, but don't do it just because I say so, further more don't NOT do it just because someone else disagrees.

Now since you guys very apparently don't know much about my background allow me to explain; engine builder/engine final prep/engine machine work/ tool and die machinist... I was the guy that our fuel, engine, axle, dyno(transmission and engine), transmission/transfer and finally FUEL shops all came to when they needed tooling built to do their work, or ran into a problem that they had to resolve. So I'll keep this simple and not get to technical and we'll only deal with the subject at hand. How many turbos or blowers have you guys ever torn down and rebuilt? How many have you built tooling for so they could be torn down then rebuilt? Would you know which end of a Detroit blower roller is the front? Have you ever done machine work to convert low output fuel pumps to high output, or built fixtures to do the conversion? I well understand the tolerances and clearances involved in both blowers and turbos, Ever seen what a blue paper shop towel will do to a turbo when sucked into it? Ever seen a cat turbo so hot you can see turbulence ripples on it, do you know the various causes of this? Our dyno guy used to say "I got it so hot you could see through it." Do you know what an incorrect roller end clearance will cause a Detroit blower to do and how to recognize this BEFORE it does it? To all of the above I have and more. You do understand that when your intake valve is closed no amount of boost or pressure is going to force air into the cylinder? You do understand that anything that helps move air through the carburetor and intake manifold into the cylinder -even if that is no more than rounding a few sharp corners- will increase performance, correct? And yet you say that an inline electric fan forcing air (however little that may be) through these will do absolutely nothing? Think about what you are saying...

Now that we all know that the other guy knows a little about this subject let me say this: you will never smoke all six tires with a flat head 18 hp briggs and any "blower" you want to put on it, agreed? I never made a claim that this rig would do anything other than give a noticeable gain in response and a quicker from "idle to wfo" time. We ain't trying nor claiming to pull no 7 second quarters here understand, we just want to help an old tired 18 hp flat head briggs climb up a creek bank a little better, see? Agree or not this rig did do that! I no longer own it, and probably if I dug deep into my note case, I could still dig up all the time records I made of it climbing hills, creek banks and dragging a tractor tire. But I wont bother... I no longer own the blown 950, nor any of the parts snake oil

[Roger S]

I think Marc's smog pump is the only real idea so far, they have worked on smaller engines, I doubt they'd feed a v twin.

[wfo]

look close at the engine on the right...thats a supercharger

[soutthpaw]

Snake oil!!! so is HHO...
Show me a boost gauge inline between the "hair dryer supercharger" and the carburetor. Prove there is actually boost under acceleration........ there won't be because the air can escape back out the way it came..... If you have ever looked at a real supercharger you would understand. and turbos run at 100,000rpm + and have minute clearances between the impeller and wall so air can't go back out the way it came... sorry its an old thread but don't want to see folks wasting their $$