$2,500 ELECTRIC TURBO! your thoughts on it.
 

I was on you tube and saw this video about electric turbo charger and this product look legit. It would be easier that all of the headache of tubing with a turbo. What do you guys think about this kit??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a_J2X88fSE
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...c-supercharger

I saw the same video......very impressive. I stated a thread in this section a while back ago!


GTO George

They only got 3 lbs - 5 lbs of boost on a 2.2 liter engine but it was also only a 48 volt turbo.....ive seen them 60 volts!


GTO George

Since you ask for thoughts on the units........................

Turbo Match was wrong if the Electric Turbo only made 3-5 psi of pressure in the intake, George.
The Ford Boys have played with Electric Turbos for at least 10 years now.
The problem is the vehicles are designed for 12 volts and a 12 volt electric turbo does not do well at that low voltage level.
The OEMs would really like to convert all new vehicles to a 48 volt charging system and get rid of the exhaust driven turbos. But then you would need a supply base for 48 volt batteries in high volume.

You can run the 48 volt turbos at a higher voltage (example 60 volts but the durability would be lower.
Racers typically do not care if they abuse stuff but at $2500+ per turbo you better have some cash available to replace the thing. Just like any performance item. You go over the design limit and the durability drops.

I personally tested 48 volt (properly sized electric turbos) at 20+ psi of boost pressure on 2.3L engines in my previous research job.

Tom V.

Not to be pedantic, but doesn't a "turbo" have to be driven by a "turbine" (exhaust gas driven)? The device being discussed here is an electric supercharger.

Yes you are correct so basically it’s an electric supercharger!

GTO George

A couple of output graphs. More information than I have seen for an 8-71. :eek:

Stan

No problem at all. Need to help you with a few terms.

All belt driven, crank driven, or exhaust driven boosting devices fit in the 'family" of Superchargers.

Almost all Centrifugal Superchargers (belt or crank driven) use Turbocharger design Compressor Wheels. The Compressor Wheels performance is in many cases documented on a Compressor "MAP". The map has pressure ratio on the left side and typically Lbs/min mass flow on the bottom of the map.

There are a few Belt Driven Compressor Supercharger manufacturers out there. ATI (procharger), Paxton, Vortech, Powerdyne, and recently Torqstorm.

Until the last few years, most of them used Turbocharger Compressor Wheel designs adapted to their compressor housings.

Virtually all of the electric Supercharger wheels come from the Turbocharger compressor wheel industry, either as a actual part or as a compressor design.

Turbochargers have two flow paths: The cold side (Compressor side) and the Hot side (Turbine side). Compressor maps are generated, like I said, on the Cold side wheel. Again many times with a Turbocharger wheel used and a Turbocharger map for documentation. Compressor wheel does not care if a belt, a turbine wheel driven by the exhaust, or a electric motor driven by 12 volts or 48 volts spins the compressor wheel.

All of the Electric Supercharger guys (Borg Warner, Garrett, etc) who could supply electric Superchargers in large volumes are also Turbocharger manufacturers.

So now you have the real story. Because you have no background on the electric units, easy to get confused on the words.

Tom V.

All of our research testing over the years showed that the 12 volt electric superchargers were marginal for making any real pressure ratio (boost). The 48 volt units had no issues with making the design pressure ratios, and several times the quoted 5 psi from a previous post..

It is obvious, from the graphs, Stan, that the pressure ratio on the electric units is not very high. At 5 lbs of mass flow the pressure ratio is the highest but the charge temperature goes up by almost 100 degrees F.
5 lbs of mass flow would be 50 hp increase with a bunch of heat added.

As the Mass Flow is increased and the pressure ratio drops to about 4 psi and the mass flow thru the unit goes to 16 lbs per minute (160 hp) increase.

So the point is: the electric units CAN make a higher pressure ratio (Boost Number) but it offers Little Benefit vs running at a Lower Boost Pressure and moving more mass flow thru the unit. Basically the same type of performance as a smaller roots supercharger exhibits.

If the engine Naturally Aspirated makes 160 hp and by using the electric supercharger you can add more mass flow at a low pressure ratio you get a nice benefit and more HP. Thanks for the graphs Stan.

Tom V.

I'm familiar with gas turbine engine technology, turbo"chargers", turbo"superchargers", turbo"normalizers", and PRT's (power recovery turbines). I also understand the difference between a "compressor" like a centrifugal or axial flow, and a positive displacement pump (like a Roots).

The salient point here is that regardless of the design of the cold side, if there is no means to extract power from a fluid flow (turbine) to drive it, it's does not warrant the "turbo" moniker.

Again, not to be pedantic, but no turbine; no turbo.

Ive looked into Torqamp web site plus watching youtube videos (i started a thread on this subject earlier) and come to the conclusion (unless something changes) is that with its (electric supercharger) size and (electric) motor RPM installing it on a 400 cubed engine you won't get any boost.......maybe on a 350 engine you just can't push enough air to make power on any thing over 300 or so CI. Now a long, long time ago I had a 250 B & M supercharger on my 74 GTO a 462 engine with e-heads and a roller cam....it ran 9.0's - 9.20's ET's. that blower broke right before the Pontiac race in Norwalk so in order to race I installed the only other blower I had my old faithful 174 B & M Streetcharger on it. It being kinda small for the engine mods I only made 3-4 lbs of boost BUT I still was able to run in the high 9.40's which wasn't bad for the tiny blower! It goes ro show you that its not how much boost you run but how you use it.......!! LOL!
A little FYI..... I was talking about using 2 of the torqamp supercharger ion this post!

GTO George

I believe TorqAmp is a European company. So most cars there have much smaller engines than we do here in the US. Here is an example of a dual installation on a Mustang.

Stan

Hence my above post.
A 289 is still a small engine and I’m not sure a 30 hp increase is worth the money!

GTO George

Well my vehicle is a DOHC 2.5l (FORD). So if they can get the price down some, I might be interested.

Stan

Unlike Turbo or supercharges where boost ramps up with RPM. It looks to me like when the TotqAmp is turned on you have full boost. So like a nitrous shoot this should greatly increase mid range torque to a much greater amount than the peak HP increase would indicate.

Stan

So if the Compressor Wheel was originally designed originally for a Turbocharger, if you buy the wheel (which Vortech did from Turbonetics and other Turbo manufacturers) and bolt it into a Vortech Supercharger
it immediately becomes a Supercharger design vs a Turbocharger design.
Interesting. What ever you say.

Tom V.

You would need several small electric Superchargers (3 or 4) to equal one simple Vortech Street Supercharger on a V8 engine.
A base T-Trim Vortech Supercharger has made 862 HP on a 5300 rpm Pontiac engine on the dyno.

:)



GTO George

Do you know why the 250 B&M failed George.
Ever send it back to B&M for a failure analysis?

Tom V.

Ahem, the torqAmp unit looks similar to my build, except the electrical box next to it is waaay bigger. And Mine is 2-Stage with total weight at 10 Lb.

Have that nice a day

for TV; I saw about 60F rise for 3.3 psi

Typical Vortech type Supercharger with an ambient inlet temp of 80 degrees will raise the temp to 125-130 degrees at 7 psi of boost pressure. The bearings and gears in the Vortech supercharger are also cooled by engine oil. So about 45 degrees rise for that unit with a 71% efficient Compressor Wheel.

A unit with a less efficient wheel will have a higher temperature rise.
What wheel did you use?

Tom V.