Electric Supercharging

You have no doubt seen the Ebay advertisements for electric superchargers, and have probably wondered whether they offer any gain?  

If anyone is interested, one supplier that is a possibility is www.pvtlogic.co.uk

Thanks to Matt Weston, we can show you the results of his research on an Audi, and presumably an enterprising engineer such as Matt will soon have something rigged up for the B Series!

By Matt Weston

As a college project, I decided I would attempt to prove or disprove the concept of the electric superchargers available reasonably cheaply. Some say they work, some say they don’t. I believed that they didn’t really work on most cars, but with small cc engines, some small gain may be had. 

Well here is my project as fitted on a 1983 Audi coupe GT FI.

Basically the design consists of a modified inlet duct, cut and fitted with a high speed ducted fan, similar to those used in model aircraft. A big difference in this set-up is the use of a 12 volt source. This could have been stepped down to the recommended level for the motor, but to maximise the power, I opted to fit a fuse in the power supply and run at 12 volts.

As can be seen from the pictures, the fan is operated by a switch on the throttle body. Basically the throttle body is earthed through the car, and a +ve feed is fitted into the body to make contact at wide open throttle.

The unit was fitted to the car, wired up, tried out then tested using a gtech performance meter, which seems to show accurate results for acceleration times and BHP at the wheels. Obviously the car was tested before and after. I was actually quite astonished by the results! Here they are in graphical form.

The average Peak BHP at the wheels had increased from 120 to around 127. Only a small increase, but with a little development, a lot more could probably be achieved.

Above are the results for the 0-60 times. Just over a second has been taken off this time! Reducing the time from the stock 8.8 seconds to about 7.7. Not Bad. 

After this moderate success, I am pondering on a twin fan system on an MGB between the SU carbs and manifold. Haven’t really thought much about it yet though, but soon.

TOP