An additional engine only to power a supercharger for the main engine?

I went to the Madison Regatta one year and spotted a 6-71 blown Hemi in front of a Rolls Royce Merlin V-12, in an unlimited hydroplane race boat. The Merlin dwarfed the Hemi. The crew chief of the team was asked by the P.A. anouncer " How much speed could such a small engine add to the boat? He said the small engine didn't power the boat at all, it just drove the two-stage supercharger for the "big" engine.

 

Are the responses counted as posts, or are they considered frivilous?

 

I would go buy a wind generator and mount the wind generator on the top of the car. The power from the wind generator could run an electric motor to power a super charger. The faster you go the faster the electric motor will turn and the super charger will provide more boost. Just kidding!

If you believe in perpetual motion, this could be used on electric cars too.

 

I think that if I had a wheel and it rolled I would probably leave it round and rolling.

I dunno did your post count just go up or did it stay the same.

Hmmmmn I wonder if you could use a second transmission driven off of a PTO and then use the second transmission as a supercharger drive.

 

There was a funny car built in the '70's that used 2 compressed gas cylinders instead of a supercharger. It probably would have worked - 'cept NHRA got in the way and outlawed it - pronto..
...Pretty well along the same lines as when they outlawed the addition of nitrous oxide to nitromethane motors. With nitrous oxide in a nitromethane motor instead of having to lean out the motor on the big end because of the difference in the pumping effeciency of the fuel pump as opposed to the supercharger (air pump) - they'd just introduce nitrous oxide which would replace the oxygen that the motor didn't get with the lessening effeciency of the supercharger.
...It worked WELL - BUT at that time nitrous controllers were pretty crude and folks would win the round - BUT pretty well burn up a motor a pass....
...The real death of the combination was when the chemists started telling the sanctioning bodies WHAT ELSE could be in those bottles that they couldn't check at the track BESIDES NITROUS OXIDE.....

 

RichFox

First off. I said if it would work, All the top fuel boys would be using this set up. And for the trunk, I was talking about the looks of the set up for a show car. The blower on the engine looks very good. Not putting it in the trunk. I hope you can understand me now.

 

No I don't understand you. Even if it worked so good that my grocery getter came with it, no T/F cars would be using it. It is illegal by the rules in T/F. If the rules do not allow it, nobody is going to be using it. Hope you can understand me now.

 

What makes you think it wouldn't work? Of course it would work!

My blown flathead made 570 HP, and the roots blower probably takes 100 HP to turn.

If I had a 'pony' engine turning the blower, I'd net about 670 HP. That's the same reason Art Malone tried compressed air-more net HP.

The reason it isn't done, is the fact that all the governing race bodies have outlawed it!

 

You know what ? I was going to write a long post to try to get you to understand what I'm tring to say. I know the rules . But I'm just going to quit. It has nothing to do with rules anyway.

 

What he said...


And besides that, it does work.

It has been proven to work despite the extra weight and complication.

( in the right applications and the types of racing where it is allowed...)

 

Where did I say" this will not work " ? I know it will work. I ask" Why ? "

 

Well...

Because it fuckin works...

 

Metalshapes
I thought this board was to discuss cars and building. Sorry, didn't mean to upset you.

 

You are not upsetting me.

But you seem a bit eager to dismiss something you are not familiar with.

People have complicated their cars to get more perfomance in many ways.

A blown and injected Hemi in a Willys is a bit more complicated than the little 4 cyl inline it came with, for example.

But people have been doing it...


The reasoning behind using a seperate engine to run a blower is sound.

It also has drawbacks, but then again, most things do.

 

Sometimes things are "against the rules" to keep a fair playing field and keep it safe.
There are at least 2 million things that work extremely well but are against the rules.

Pony engines are used for lots of things.

Now I'm not quiet sure why you want to have an auxiliary engine or electric motor dive a supercharger. If its for economy, as is In eliminating parasitic drag of a supercharger, there are plenty of OEM systems that do this. Toyota used this on their SC14 equipped vehicles. No drag and power boost when you need it. Mercedes and BMW have a similar system.

If its to eliminate high end HP loss due to turning it, I suspect that would work. However the HP freed up or gained will be neede to drag the extra weight of the auxiliary drive source. Maybe there's a net gain that exceeds the conventional way. But to be competitive , you're going to need to follow the rules.

 

Sometimes things are "against the rules" to keep a fair playing field and keep it safe.
There are at least 2 million things that work extremely well but are against the rules.

Pony engines are used for lots of things.

Now I'm not quiet sure why you want to have an auxiliary engine or electric motor dive a supercharger. If its for economy, as is In eliminating parasitic drag of a supercharger, there are plenty of OEM systems that do this. Toyota used this on their SC14 equipped vehicles. No drag and power boost when you need it. Mercedes and BMW have a similar system.

If its to eliminate high end HP loss due to turning it, I suspect that would work. However the HP freed up or gained will be neede to drag the extra weight of the auxiliary drive source. Maybe there's a net gain that exceeds the conventional way. But to be competitive , you're going to need to follow the rules.

 

I have built odd ball things to make more power. A Pontiac with Chevy front drive distributer. Chevy BB push rods. Im making hemi head patterns for Pontiac . Going to cut a Hot Heads intake in half and weld it back together To make it fit the heads. I've run blower and injections. Im familer with alot of things. Thats fine everybody has there own opinion. thats why they have boards like this one.

 

I wanna build a hoodless hot rod of some sort. Run a Fiero set up in the back, Iron Duke engine is still HAMB friendly isn't it?

Put a small high revving engine in the front spinning a super charger that is tucked into the transmission hump and plumbed back to the iron duke.

Build that front engine to look as cool and hot rodded as possible, it just has to be something that is obviously too small to make the car move. H Old bike engine maybe?

Might not be the most practical way to get power to the ground, but neither is hopping up a seventy year old boat anchor, but it would look wild in the parking lot. Cause some head scratching at least.

 

I haven't seen it pointed out that, while having a second engine to power a supercharger is more complicated than driving the supercharger off the same engine it feeds, it may be less complicated than having two engines powering a driveline. It wouldn't take any odd one-off gearing configurations, and the positioning of the second engine would be much more flexible.

It's goofy, but it doesn't bother me, as it seems to bother some people.

 

My plan would include a turbocharger looped to itself to make a stand alone turbine, which would then drive (on the same shaft) an extra compressor stage to feed the main engine. Max pressure all the time under power, dumping boost to control pressure. Probably not really that simple, but that's where i would start.

 

----------------
I remember reading about that one
'back in the day". I can't remember
who it was that tried it - I think it
was on a dragster, not a gasser - and
that it worked.but it was banned
outright by the NHRA after it's first
outing.

Mart3406
================

 

Not exactly what you had in mind
maybe, but back in the mid-1960's the
rocket obsessed crazies at Turbonique
offered self-powered centrifugal
superchargers that were driven by
a turbine, powered by a liquid-fueled
rocket motor! They were claiming
power increases of fully 300% or more
over stock on an otherwise bone stock
engine and the few guys back then who
were crazy enough, had money enough
and cajones enough to try them seemed
to have 1/4 mile times that more or less
backed up and verified Turbonique's
horsepower increase claims up! They
weren’t used much in actual competition
though because the NHRA banned them
almost as soon as they appeared.

Mart3406
===============

 

Amherst villiers did it a Rolls Royce Phantom

http://rroc.org.au/wiki/index.php?title=History:31HC

 

HI; One of the Mags did it with twin leaf blowers on a Corvette, then they started cutting body panels off to reduce weight, seemed to work very well? Chris

 

The twin leaf blowers actually made a full 1 pound of boost. Sounds like I'm making fun of that but to be honest, I'm as impressed as the magazine (Hot Rod) was. There was actually a noticeable improvement in performance...although just barely.

Besides, how often do you get to drive around town with a couple of running leaf blowers on your hood... cool huh ??

 

Speaking of one engine driving the blower reminds me of the original design of the Freight Train Top Gas digger.



As you can see, the front engine is driving both blowers which means that the rear engine gets the benefit of a blower without having to use up any power driving it. You can see the shaft running between the blowers connecting them up. It also permitted the front engine to be closer to the rear end.

Once the wheelbase was lengthened, they went to this configuration below with each engine driving it's own blower...

 

And before the Freight Train, John Peters and Nye Frank ran this digger. It also had the front engine doing all the work driving the blower, a Potvin drive set-up.

 

Actually, since the engines are coupled, they are both driving the blower as well as the car it self. The blower is just bolted to the front engine. The whole idea will work. Driving a supercharger with a dedicated power source has been done. But I know of no association that will allow you to enter it and run it.