History Looking for information on Marshman SuperCharger Flathead Intake.

Recently I was given the chance to purchase a pile of old Flathead stuff from an estate and I was lucky enough to score an early Hilborn-Travers intake (#46!) which I’m trying to get the original sales receipt for.

The mystery intake I got was an semi-complete, unmachined Marshman Supercharger Intake “Model F”.

I’ve heard some folklore that a local racer and his dad that ran a local dirt track may have dabbled in speed equipment but there’s no history I can find printed or online that proves it. This intake has apparently been passed around since the 50’s through a few collectors hands locally but no one has any back story on how it came apart or what all was to a Marshman Supercharger. I am really fascinated with taking this old stuff and trying to put it back to use on a car when possible and I feel this could be worth the effort if more could be found out about it, but maybe it’s just an expensive wall hanger! Any help or information would be appreciated!

Below is a blurb about the Marshman father-son combo from the 3-wide website.

“Sanatoga Speedway was built in 1937. In 1951, George Marshman took over the promotion of events. I worked for Marshman Enterprises for several years, living at Sanatoga Speedway and later at Hatfield Speedway.

At Sanatoga the Pottstown Stock Car Racing Club was the sanctioning body, and ran at other tracks. Sanatoga was a one-fifth mile flat asphalt surface. Grandstands circled the track with the exception of the backstretch. The Pit gate entry to the track was at the third turn. Judges stand and starting gate were in the middle of the front straightaway. Most stock car races were run on Saturday nights, except early and late in the season. We also ran TQ midgets, held a model airplane show, wrestling match, and numerous Destruction Derbies. George originated the Destruction Derby.

George Boone, Jocko Rutter, and Gerald Foley were part of the track crew. Young Bobby Marshman worked at the track during the summer and had a sno-cone and novelty stand at Sanatoga. Bobby later owned the former Weidner #99 sprint car powered by a Ford six cylinder engine and with this car he finished ninth in U.R.C. point standings in his first year of racing.

Bobby ran four times in the Indy 500. He died of injuries on 3 December 1964 as a result of a crash in the # 51 Lotus Ford Indy car during tire tests. He was 28 years old. George Marshman built and drove race cars for many years. In 1949 he won the Eastern AAA midget championship driving Art Gottiers Offy. He retired after the 1950 season to promote events at Sanatoga, later including Philadelphia Municipal Stadium Speedway and Hatfield. “




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Looks very interesting. It looks like it was designed to use a 32 post style generator and stock style mechanical fuel pump.


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Looks like it might have actually been a supercharger. Think vane type like Judson. does the end cap have a recess for a bearing that could have supported rotating parts?. do you have the other end?

 

That’s what I was thinking too. If you look closely inside of the intake in the one pic you can see a recess for a bearing in the backside. I need to look at a Judson charger closer to see how the vanes were on those. Would be cool to try and put this together. I think the front nose cone was lost along the way but it was a 3 piece cast design so you could potentially make the front nose cone.


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If is is a vane type blower the rotating bits will not be centered in the housing but will be offset to one side. If you google vane type supercharger you should find some illustrations. Judson, though an American company, catered mainly to foreign car owners. I think they did make one for the Corvair though. Yours certainly predates anything they made by at least a decade.

 

Very interesting. Never heard of a Judson supercharger. I have a lot of experience with rotary vane type refrigerant compressors as a company I used to work for manufactured them. Having a rotor that long would have been very challenging to support and keep keep concentric. Also there is the issue of friction and lubrication. I found this article on vane type super chargers to be quite interesting. Good luck.

http://hpwizard.com/vane-supercharger.html

 

Have you contacted the people over at EMMR?

 

If it was intended to be a single rotor(as it appears to be), I’m guessing it would have had some serious distribution problems, tending to favor one bank more than the other.
Interesting piece of hot rod history.


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Very interesting supercharger here. One can only guess as to what type of front piece was intended for use on this casting. Since none of the holes appear to have never been machined, I'm wondering if this is the prototype and probably the only Marshman supercharger that was ever cast. The front piece may have never existed at all, as it appears to have never been mounted on the front. I'm wondering if the front nose piece design proved to be too difficult to produce and the entire project ended up on a shelf somewhere.

This supercharger casting looks to be quite early, possibly in the mid to late 1940's and would predate most of the supercharger designs from this time period. George Marshman likely ended up being too busy promoting his racing venues and this supercharger project ended up just collecting dust.

 

I was able to manipulate the contrast to show more detail. It does appear to be offset to the left, clockwise rotation, with the most compression at 9 O:clock, likely when the tail end of the compressed segment is just passing the dump ports at the bottom and the top segment is expanding with a positive pull to atmosphere.

 

So, do you think the front cover was just a bearing housing, with an open belt pulley on the front? Or maybe it was an enclosed gear housing with 90 degree gears to transfer from an upright shaft (maybe driven off the front of the cam with a magneto drive incorporated)? Or maybe an enclosed housing around a chain drive?

Which are you going to build, Iron Trap?

 

I’d be calling the speedway museum in lincoln if they don’t already have one they probably know about them I would think.

either way excited to see what info is dug up!

 

As @quickchangeV8 mentioned, I'm guessing this never got past the prototyping stage as it appears none of the intake mounting holes were drilled out. Very hard to tell, but the depth of the recessed bearing doesn't seem to be sufficient to support a decent bearing capable of supporting the rotor at speed. As others have mentioned, distribution of the air appears to be far from ideal.
Having said all that, that is a super interesting piece of hot rodding history. Today, it would be fairly easy to have a 3D piece drawn for the front, and at least have it 3D printed, and perhaps even cast.

 

I will be at the Speedway museum on the 28th and will ask around about this, they have a lot of parts that are not on display.

 

I'd love to hear more if they do have one, but I've heard rumors here locally as well this was the only one ever cast but hard to say. It's neat to own it, but I'd love to know more and a neat "someday" project to think about putting into use.

Thanks for all of the discussion guys, I figured everyone here would enjoy seeing it and discussing!

 

Matt,
If you ever need any custom foundry/cnc machine work done on them, let me know. I would love to help you out on a project like this. If you would like to discuss it, just shoot me a pm

 

Wow thanks! I’d imagine if we could get a photo or drawings a front cover could be made to make it more complete. Especially since it’s just a bolt on separate cast piece. If we get anywhere with additional information I’ll get in touch!


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Do you think it may be similar to a judson supercharger?

 

I really do think that it is a similar design. I wonder if maybe they were working with Judson to make this as Judson was fairly local to me. I've never had a Judson apart, does it use a steel liner inside the "bore" or the vanes go against the aluminum case? I suppose you could copy that design to make this one work with some experienced machining.. definitely above my pay grade!

 

I'm not sure if they have any sort of steel sleeve or not. I've never seen a judson disassembled in person either, I stole the picture above from online.

 

The Judson case is cast iron (AKA "Detroit wonder metal"). The rotor is aluminum. The vanes are a phenolic (like reinforced bakelite) material. They used an upstream lubricator to dispense a little oil to minimize vane wear.

 

Norman superchargers here in Australia produced vane type superchargers, alloy with a cast iron liner in various lengths. That was probably the intention with this casting.

 

It would be interesting to know how close the internal dimensions are to a Judson. Maybe an attempt to make a bolt on Judson for the flathead that stalled for whatever reason(s)?

Ed

 

I agree on the wear surfaces being cast iron as that is what our compressors were made from. The tolerances on a rotary vane compressor are incredibly tight. Think about the rotot to shaft fit. Our rotor shafts were originally ground to size. End bearing alignment, rotor length to housing length. I can tell you there was no way the two end bearing caps would be aligned with the bolt holes they have in pics. I doubt that they had the machinery or access to such machinery to produce anything that would either work or last, and that is why they likely gave up.

 

Update.. found two more.. one is fairly complete! Hoping we have enough to complete the other two now.

 

Wow 3 unmachined?did they ever get into selling em or production?

 

One is fully machined and looks as though it was on a car at some point. Going to disassemble and see what’s inside in the next week or so! ATTACH=full]5792497[/ATTACH]

 

Pretty cool find after three years. Looking forward to seeing the innerds.

 

Cool Stuff! Now, whether it actually works, stays together and makes any boost . . . time will tell. Having done a lot of work on supercharger rotor designs (14-71 roots stuff), I imagine that even if they ever actually got one completed, that it probably made little if any appreciable boost. Also, given the shaft length, probably a real bitch to create a shaft/vanes that didn't deflect/wobble in the middle. But hey, who cares - they are still cool as heck!

 

Oddly enough, the new pics ,with the end housing in place, look like the shaft may actually be centered in the housing. If that is true it will not be a vane type. Maybe just a couple diverging screws (?) which, sorry, won't really do anything. Waiting eagerly for the reveal.