I was looking around on Ebay Motors for a cheap supercharger for my car and I ran across an electric supercharger.
From the looks of it, it appears to be an inclosed fan that connects to the car’s battery. I can’t imagine this being able to push much air into the engine.
Will this electric supercharger provide any performance gains and if so, will the gains actually be noticeable? I don’t want to throw away money on a product that does absolutly nothing.
Do you have a link by chance?
I can’t imagine how effective it would be either. Is it just a single speed or does it vary by RPM as well?
Here’s the link from Ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2415267669&category=33741
That link is busted.
Here`s a better one. It says anywhere from 5-20% boost in HP. Up to 30 horses.
Relatively cheap too. About 15$.
Sorry, that`s 15$ for the instructions and about 60$ for the parts. You have to supply/find the parts.
STOP!!! Don’t bid!
I am having trouble coming up with a comparison of something non-automotive, in terms of a giant scam preying on people that are a little uninformed.
I guess you could equate this with the most heinous, obviously junk, law-suit riddled product that you may see @ 3AM on an informercial. This is the “Xtra-Ab-Blaster-Mo’-Flex-Hollywood-Weight-Loss” for your car.
It will not produce enough pressure (or “boost”) to be effective.
It may indeed flow 300 some-odd CFM when not connected to an engine, but electric fans (and that’s basically what this is) are notoriously bad at pushing air against resistance. Therefore with this, your engine will never exceed 100% volumetric efficiency (in reality, it will probably see only a couple percent higher than stock), which is the basic definition of a “supercharger.” Being unable to produce boost kinda makes this an expensive lesson in buying parts for a car you’re not completely educated about. Sorry if that comes off as offensive, but most people that effectively modify cars spend years researching, reading, and trial-ing and error-ing.
Try a search on any reputable DOMESTIC car related message board. May I recommend www.thirdgen.org?
Don’t waste your money.
This was discussed on another board. It’s a fraud. You have a better chance of sucking in the SC and blowing up your engine than getting any power from it.
Plus, the thing does not change with the RPMs. You need the most air flow at higher RPMs (obviously) and this would not help in the higher RPM ranges, except to maybe reduce the friction of the intake air supply while not causing a noticeable difference in performance. There is no cheap or easy way to get horsepower out of an engine. This method is only tapping whats available and not creating any new power, like squeezing the engine or installing a new cam or turbo or supercharger would do. And it probably doesn`t do much in that regard anyway.
Are you sure about that? Maybe I read your post wrong, but turbo chargers and super chargers (the real ones) actually do a lot in regard to engine performance.
My leaf blower example probably wouldn’t work though.:smack:
-They do indeed. If they’re actual turbochargers and/or superchargers, and not glorified chipset fans.
I recall one tidbit mentioning how a properly-set-up Roots-type positive displacement supercharger (the big ribbed aluminum thing sticking through the hood that’s the very stereotype image of an old hot rod) requiring anywhere from 15 to 35 horsepower to drive, depending on pulley ratios and engine RPM.
Centrifugal- yeah, I know, but that’s what they call 'em- type superchargers (which are just belt-driven turbochargers) take somewhat less, but I doubt it’s less than about 10hp, and might have a turbine speed of 50,000 rpm (some turbochargers go to 100,000 rpm, depending on engine speed and load.)
These little electrics fall into the same category as underchassis neon lights, carbon-fiber-look shift knobs, and “V-Tec” sticker kits; IE, worthless.
JC Whitney sold a few kits for a while. I knew two friends who bought them, over my protests that they wouldn’t work.
They were essentially little fans with 0.25-hp motors - they looked exactly like surplus cockpit heater fans with a different ducting. They had no effect whatsoever, other than to cause one car to run worse than it ever had before. And to deprive two people of $100 each.
Of course, this was followed by the magnetic fuel line treatments, the “spiral gas econo-mizer”, the platinum catalyst gas tank treatment, etc, etc.
A few years back in an automotive magazine (Motor Trend or Car And Driver) they had a prototype electric supercharger; essentially, an electric motor driving a centrifugal type supercharger.
This was to eliminate the lag of a turbo, and the non-linear boost of a belt-driven centrifugal blower.
Here’s a story about a real electric supercharger.
http://waw.wardsauto.com/ar/auto_visteon_eyes_electric/
The electric motor is 2 kW (3 hp), and it’s meant to be used on small, four cylinder engines.
And here’s a review of the other kind:
http://www.vintagebus.com/howto/e-ram/
A 2-3 hp increase is reported.
Sure, you read that wrong.
I was giving methods of increasing performance - higher compression (squeezing), bigger cam (more intake/exhaust flow),
and turbos, superchargers (forcing air into engine), as examples of real ways to increase or create horsepower.
Sorry for the confusion.
A limiting factor of an engine is it’s displacement size. Most of the cylinder before firing contains air. Air has only so much O2 in it, which limits the amount of gasoline you can put in (and have burn). If you tried to put more gasoline into the cylinder, some would burn until the O2 was depleated.
In order to get more gasoline into the cylinder, you need more O2, which can be done by compressing the air going into the cylinder, usually done with a turbo or supercharger.
Now for some highly simplified mathematics: The ideal gas law is PV=nRT, or pressure * volume = number of moles of gas * a constant * temperature. At full extension, the volume of the cylinder will remain esentially constant. The constant will also remain constant:) . Temperature of air will increase as the air is compressed, but we’ll assume there’s a perfect intercooler that will drop the temp back to ambient. Therefore if you want to burn 1.5 times as much gasoline as you do in a naturally aspirated engine, you need to compress the air to about 1.5 times normal pressure – up to 7 psig (this does not take into account the extra volume of the gasoline).
There are no strict definitions, but in general there are three kinds of air movers (although some manufacturers name thier products more by the mechanism than by the compression it can achieve):
An electric fan is, well, a fan. They are nice for blowing a cool breeze on you at night, but it sure is not going to squeeze much extra air into a cylinder.
Someone who understands cars better than I would be able to address this better than I can, but I think that the throttle will allow a maximum amount of gasoline into the engine (to avoid spewing unburned gasoline into the catlytic converter). If the little fan actually did work, that’s only half the equasion. The throttle (not designed with turbo in its future), will only allow enough gas for a naturally aspirated engine, so you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the extra O2 in the cylinders.
I believe Audi is working on an electric turbocharger, or at least a high-torque electric motor to go between the hemispheres of the turbocharger to remove any trace of lag. I wish I could remember which turbo company had actually built a motor with enough torque to be feasible, but I haven’t heard anything about it for like two years.
Tim