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Sport Compact Turbos & Blowers
by Joe Pettitt
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Lightweight and high-revving, sport compacts are today’s most
popular cars. They have developed a cult following among today’s
youth and are fueling a multi-million dollar industry in modification
parts and equipment.
While most owners of sport compacts can afford the simple bolt-
ons available, some owners want to take their modifications a step
further. There is intense competition to be the fastest, and quite
often the only way to win is to go to the next level – by installing a
supercharger/blower or turbocharger on your engine.
This book is an enthusiast’s guide to understanding and using
turbochargers and superchargers on sport compact cars. It
covers the basics of each system and compares their pros and
cons. Building and tuning small-displacement 4- and 6-cylinder
engines to maximize performance and reliability with forced
induction is also covered.
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Click below to view sample
pages from each chapter!
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Chap. 1 - Exotic or Practical
Chap. 2 - Supercharging
Chap. 3 - Roots Blowers
Chap. 4 - Centrifugal Blowers
Chap. 5 - Turbocharging
Chap. 6 - Turbos & Compacts
Chap. 7 - Tuning for Boost
Chap. 8 - Building Engines
Chap. 9 - History
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Softbound
8-1/2 x 11
128 pages
300 black & white photos
Item: SA89
Price: $18.95
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Click here to buy now!
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Superchargers and Turbochargers
Exotic or Practical?
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No single performance modification made to an internal combustion engine is more practical or
effective than the addition of a crankshaft or exhaust-driven supercharger.
The foregoing statement may sound like typical technological bragging or advertising hype to some
readers. Somebody’s always claiming that something is the best new high-performance trick, right?
But in the case of superchargers, you will get little argument from engineers, engine builders, or
racecar drivers. The supercharger’s effectiveness has been known almost since the engine was
invented.
If this is true, some skeptics may ask, then why don’t the Detroit auto manufacturers put blowers on
all cars? It is simply a matter of economics. Other, less-efficient methods of boosting engine output,
such as increasing displacement or raising the compression ratio, cost considerably less on a mass-
production basis. In addition, even though most superchargers have only one or two basic moving
parts, Detroit would view them as an extra mechanical component on the engine that would have to
be warranted and serviced.
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People used to think that blowers were temperamental or unreliable on street engines, but don’t
forget that most types were initially designed to run thousands of miles on fleet vehicles, such as
the ubiquitous GMC 71 series, as shown here on a 6-71 diesel.
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Despite such bottom-line thinking, however, a surprising number of production cars have come
equipped with superchargers in the past, both in the United States and in Europe. Often this was
done as a last resort to produce results to boost the performance of an undernourished or poorly
designed engine to keep up with the competition. Now that Detroit is finally learning that smaller,
more efficient cars are better, more and more manufacturers have been installing turbochargers on
the little motors to make them act bigger and stronger without using up a whole lot more fuel. Since
the late 1980s, several OEM applications of belt-driven, positive-displacement superchargers have
been seen as their efficiency levels have been significantly improved.
Don’t forget that the ubiquitous GMC supercharger – the big, impressive, whining, air-gulping
windmill that immediately comes to mind when the term “blower” is mentioned to any old-school hot-
rodder – is in fact a regular production item. They have been installed by General Motors on
millions of hard-working, cross-country-hauling diesel trucks, buses, and other forms of heavy
equipment since the 1950s. Although superchargers have almost always been considered an exotic
addition to production cars, they can and should be as practical, efficient, and reliable to run every
day on the street as any other working component of your engine. Superchargers and
turbochargers have not only been used regularly on diesel trucks for years, but also on aircraft
engines, diesel trains, stationary engines, boats, and many other applications.
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There are only two serious reasons that I can think of why all performance enthusiasts haven’t
installed superchargers on their engines: (1) ignorance – an ignorance bred and fostered by the
Detroit mentality of economics described above; and (2) cost. Both of these reasons may be
refuted by the same argument, however. Instead of bolting a blower onto our motor, tradition tells
us to bore and stroke, port and polish, change the cam, buy a new manifold, add bigger injectors
and pump up the fuel pressure, install headers, and so on. What many of us fail to realize, or have
never been taught, is that a properly installed and tuned supercharger can do the same job as all
of these other speed parts, and it can usually do it better. Although a complete supercharger kit
can be very expensive these days, the total cost should look less “exotic” when you compare it to
the accumulated prices of the several traditional performance parts or operations it can replace.
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If you have any doubts whether
blowers work or not, take a look at
professional Top Fuel dragsters or
Funny Cars. These 470-inch,
5,000-plus-horsepower wonders make
more power per cubic inch than any
other type of motor, and they owe most
of it to the big, tight, Teflon-lined,
magnesium-case 10-71 to 14-71 GMC
Roots-style blowers.
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In the following pages, we’ll discuss some of the history and theory of supercharger and
turbocharger development, but we will be primarily interested in the several varieties of
superchargers, turbochargers, and complete kits currently available for street performance
engines. We’re going to look at how a given package can be tuned for maximum performance and
efficiency. We’ll also study the types of changes that should be made to a typical street motor (and
those that shouldn’t) before a supercharger or turbocharger is installed, as well as a rundown on
the best ancillary components for both the engine and the power adder (drive systems, linkage,
ignition systems, camshafts, exhaust system, water injection, and so on).
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What is a Supercharger?
If we are going to spend the rest of this book talking about superchargers, we had better start by
determining exactly what a supercharger, or blower, is. In the broadest sense, a supercharger is
anything that will force more air, or air/fuel mixture, into the cylinders than would be drawn into the
cylinders naturally by the suction of the pistons during the intake stroke. By this definition,
turbochargers are superchargers, and we will, for the sake of brevity, use the terms
interchangeably in the general discussion on performance dynamics. We’ll reserve the specific
usages of the terms when discussing issues influenced by the drive mechanism.
In short, superchargers pressurize the intake above the ambient air pressure. At sea level,
atmospheric pressure is approximately 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi) – air exerts this much
pressure naturally on everything near the surface of the earth (because of the air’s weight). When
an engine is normally or naturally aspirated, (not supercharged or turbocharged), it must rely on
this pressure to push the air into the intake, through the manifold, into the intake port, and then into
the cylinder as the piston “opens” the cylinder to maximum volume by moving downward on the
intake stroke.
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Because of restrictions and bends along the path – friction, turbulence, incomplete evacuation of
exhaust from the cylinder, and several other factors – the naturally aspirated cylinder is never able
to completely draw in a full charge of air/fuel mix. Let’s say the total volume of the cylinder is 40
cubic inches. If you turned the engine to bottom dead center on the intake stroke, by hand, and left
it there, the cylinder would fill with 40 cubic inches of air through the open intake valve. Atmospheric
pressure pushes the air in (which is exactly the same thing as saying the downward-moving piston
sucks the air in, whenever you create a space that has nothing in it – that is, create a vacuum –
atmospheric pressure will immediately push air into that space through any available opening. The
force pushing the air in will be approximately 14.7 psi at sea level, but less at higher altitudes.
However, when the engine is running at speed, atmospheric pressure is not great enough to push
40 cubic inches of fresh air/fuel mixture into the cylinder before the compression stroke begins.
What we are describing is the volumetric efficiency (VE) of the engine, which is a comparison of the
total amount of air/fuel charge a naturally aspirated engine could draw in (total cylinder volume), to
the amount (volume) that it actually does draw in under given operating conditions. Other factors
being equal, an engine’s power output is directly proportional to its volumetric efficiency, and the
vast majority of our traditional hop-up tricks are directed at increasing this figure: bigger
carburetors or throttle bodies, better intake manifolds, porting, polishing, bigger valves, better
camshaft design, exhaust scavenging, and so on.
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However, no naturally aspirated engine can attain 100% volumetric efficiency (except in rare cases
when a perfectly tuned, ram-induction intake manifold can accelerate the intake charge sufficiently
to completely fill the cylinders at a certain narrow span in the RPM range). By increasing throttle
body or carburetor and port sizes, streamlining passages, and evacuating exhaust, we can reduce
losses and increase the efficiency to a certain point. But as long as we are relying on atmospheric
pressure to push the air/fuel charge into the cylinder – if that remains a constant – we can very
rarely reach 100% efficiency. After you’ve done everything you can to help the engine draw as
much air into the cylinders as possible by normal suction, there remains only one way to get more
air/fuel charge in – and it’s a simple deduction: increase the pressure pushing the air into the motor
– i.e., force the air in. This is what a supercharger does.
So again, in the broadest sense, a supercharger is any device or means for increasing the cylinder
filling (volumetric efficiency) in an engine beyond that possible by the normal suction of the pistons;
that is, beyond that possible under the force of atmospheric pressure.
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Given this broad definition, we could say that any sort of pump, fan, or wind-blowing device that can
force a greater volume of air through the intake system, and/or get a greater volume of air/fuel
charge into the cylinder, than is possible under atmospheric pressure, is a supercharger. Under
this definition, we might say that a tuned ram-induction intake manifold, or even a good air scoop
on a fast-moving racecar, is a sort of supercharging device. Likewise, it might be argued that
nitrous oxide injection is a form of supercharging. (Running your car on a cold night, or at low
altitude, produces the same effect in smaller proportion.) Mickey Thompson once even tried
feeding his funny car engine with very highly compressed air carried in on-board tanks – with some
success!
However, none of these methods is strictly considered supercharging. For the purposes of this
book, we will define a supercharger as a mechanical air pump (driven mechanically or by the
exhaust) capable of producing a positive boost pressure in the manifold of the engine at some point
in its operating range.
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Obviously, we have already discussed to some degree what a supercharger does. It pumps air, or
air/fuel mixture, into the engine at a rate faster than the engine can draw it in under atmospheric
pressure. Therefore, instead of loading the cylinder with a partial air/fuel charge before
compression and combustion, a boosted engine can fill its cylinders with a “super charge” that can
attain or actually exceed 100% volumetric efficiency.
As we stated, the supercharger can, therefore, do the job of several other traditional performance
modifications aimed at increasing the engine’s volumetric efficiency. If you are going to add a
supercharger to an engine for street use, you will very likely be able to pump in all the extra
performance you need without changing the throttle body or intake manifold (other than to accept
the blower), porting or polishing the heads, enlarging the valves, changing the camshaft, raising the
compression, or installing headers. (You’ll need to tune the fuel and ignition timing, however, but
more on that later.) If you are building an all-out race motor, or if the intake passages of your
engine are particularly restrictive, you will want to make sure that no one component in the intake or
exhaust systems “fights” the supercharger by overly constricting airflow either into or out of the
cylinders. Most modern engines are ripe for supercharging just the way they are.
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Since the blower pressurizes the entire intake manifold, there is less need to streamline, tune, or
otherwise enhance intake flow. In fact, the air/fuel mixture no longer really flows through the
manifold in a blown engine; instead, you might think of the manifold as a pressurized reservoir of
air/fuel mix ready to burst through the valve as soon as it opens. For modern port-injected engines,
the intake manifold is the same pressurized reservoir, minus the fuel. In fact, some supercharged
engines have problems keeping the intake valves shut and require stronger valvesprings to do so.
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Next
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This has been a sample page from
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Sport Compact Turbos & Blowers
by Joe Pettitt
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Lightweight and high-revving, sport compacts are today’s most
popular cars. They have developed a cult following among today’s
youth and are fueling a multi-million dollar industry in modification
parts and equipment.
While most owners of sport compacts can afford the simple bolt-
ons available, some owners want to take their modifications a step
further. There is intense competition to be the fastest, and quite
often the only way to win is to go to the next level – by installing a
supercharger/blower or turbocharger on your engine.
This book is an enthusiast’s guide to understanding and using
turbochargers and superchargers on sport compact cars. It
covers the basics of each system and compares their pros and
cons. Building and tuning small-displacement 4- and 6-cylinder
engines to maximize performance and reliability with forced
induction is also covered.
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|
Click below to view sample
pages from each chapter!
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|
Chap. 1 - Exotic or Practical
Chap. 2 - Supercharging
Chap. 3 - Roots Blowers
Chap. 4 - Centrifugal Blowers
Chap. 5 - Turbocharging
Chap. 6 - Turbos & Compacts
Chap. 7 - Tuning for Boost
Chap. 8 - Building Engines
Chap. 9 - History
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Softbound
8-1/2 x 11
128 pages
300 black & white photos
Item: SA89
Price: $18.95
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Click here to buy now!
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Other items you might be interested in
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How to Build Supercharged & Turbocharged Small-Block Fords
This is the only book on supercharging & turbocharging that strictly
covers small-block Fords, allowing for extraordinary detail! This book
discusses push rod small blocks and the modular engine family 4.6L
SOHC and DOHC. This book covers everything you need to know
about supercharging and turbocharging your small-block Ford.
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Price:
$Discontinued
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Engine Management: Advanced Tuning
Engine Management: Advanced Tuning explains how the EFI system
determines engine operation and how to change the controlling
parameters to optimize actual engine performance. This book takes
engine-tuning techniques to the next level. It is a must-have for tuners
and a valuable resource for anyone who wants to make horsepower
with a fuel-injected, electronically controlled engine.
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Price:
$22.95
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Shipping is combined and discounted for multiple item purchases!
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