Electrical Supercharger

[Frederic Breitwieser]

Howdy Steve,

The problem I see with electric blowers is the amount of electricity 
necessary to make the motor turn in comparison to what would be required 
off the crank in HP.  Not sure of the math offhand, however I've been lead 
to believe that it takes more "amps" than "HP" to arrive at the typical 
6-7psi required for a supercharger, at least in the volume necessary that 
the engine takes it in.

Also, alternators fail, which is one of the reasons why every engine I've 
built or had built over the years, always has a mechanical water pump and 
oil pump, so a fuse or alternator can fry at high speed, and the engine is 
not destroyed.  I've had electric oil pumps in conjunction with the 
mechanical one, for pre-start lubrication which I am a firm believer in. 
 Most of the engine damage (scraping) is done upon start up, where all of 
the oil is in the oil pan, and at high RPMs, where the oil is cavitated and 
praying all over the inside of the valve covers.

In regards to supercharging, we did a neat thing on a friend's car, using a 
modified air-conditioning clutch, to kick the supercharger (paxton in this 
case) and an off depending on the application.  The only problem I found 
was switching it on at very high RPMs, the Paxton's bearings would slam to 
the engine's RPM, and probably not a good thing for the bearings.  So far 
its lasted about 3 years.

Me, I'm just a skeptic :)

Fred

On Thursday, May 08, 1997 10:56 PM, Steve Meade [SMTP:smeade at deltanet.com] 
wrote:
>
> 	I noticed a while back (over a year ago) there was a discussion about
> electrically powered superchargers. I was wondering if anyone actually
> followed through on plans and tried it. To me, there are several
> advantages
> to electrical power over the traditional crankshaft power: