E30 Zone

I had a bit of time tonight so I eventually mocked up the up the supercharger kit I have had sitting around for a while to my spare engine. As it came with out instructions it took a few minutes to work out what went where.

The other issue is there was no hardware and it turns out I need to sort out longer bolts and some machined spacers to get to mount up.








Jason

Wow, i love that inlet manifold, are you looking to get it running on your car then? Which car?

What make is the kit? would be intrested to know abit more about history of the kit.

I got speaking to someone along time ago who said he used to own a e30 m3 that had a superchager fitted and that he bought the car when it was only a few years old from Santa Pod who had bought the car new and fitted charger, this was all back in the day...

Sorry for all the questions

Mega - More info needed i think

WOW! More info for sure, it looks great, I bet it will sound EPIC!

This looks promising!

Hi

it was made by albrex.com back in the day and originally came of a UK car which was fitted with the kit, Demlotcrew knows more about the history of it than i do. It also came with a fifth injector system linked to boost sensor.

Albrex have been around for years and the US Vortech units are copy of the albrex and the closest spec is the Vortech V-5 which is good fro 450BHP. I emailed Conrad for the compressor map, and gave him the engine spec he only came back to say I needed a larger crank pulley, so I need some to make one.


The engine I am fitting 2 is a 2.3 bored out to 2.4 with MLS, ARP's and forged JE lowcomp pistons. I will be running on stand alone (euro 1 efi) and fitting an intercooler.

Any schematics on how you plumbed yours and where you got the By-pass valve from also my ecu does boost control, but I am not sure how to work it on the SC engine apart from limiting the max bost

And it is going in the e30 m3

this looks epic:)cant wait to see it all mocked up and then running!

Nearly wasn't epic due to the lack of engine crane on Friday, had to use the bonnet of some scrappy e30 touring to slide it out of the boot

Nice

You can run boost control if your running a high psi in the lower revs and need to cap off the boost at high revs. Something like an external waste gate would do this with the spring set to a certain psi. I personally think it would be better without a intercooler, I cant see a massive need for one unless your running very high psi's. Maybe start without, keep an eye on boost temp and add one if necessary.

This supercharger is a lovely idea. Good luck with it!

Might be worth your while tracking down a flow-map for that compressor Jason - before you decide to fit it to a bigger capcity engine.

I know its widely believed that you can fit any old compressor to any old engine, but that simply isn't the case for reasons that you could find out the hard way.

It's only gone from 2.3 to 2.4l not a big step, but as the man who made is has yet to send a compressor map it's going to be tricky to get one

Jason

e21Jason wrote:It's only gone from 2.3 to 2.4l not a big step, but as the man who made is has yet to send a compressor map it's going to be tricky to get one

Jason

Fair enough.

staley_turbo wrote:I personally think it would be better without a intercooler, I cant see a massive need for one unless your running very high psi's. Maybe start without, keep an eye on boost temp and add one if necessary.

WTF?

Regardless of what boost you are running at (whether low or high) an intercooler is as responsible for the rise in engines power (over stock) as the compressor is!

Even if the compressor only raises the air temp by a meager 10'C over ambient (as a result of adiabatic heating), the increase in power as a result of the intercooler removing that heat is EQUAL to the increase in power brought about by the compressor in the first place! Fitting an intercooler is like bolting on free power. The only question that needs to answered is how big the intercooler should be.

Boyles Law

Geoff I have a copy of maximum boost but it's pretty light on supercharger control strategies, any thing in your library you would recommend

Jason

You need Supercharged by corkey Bell its more supercharger biased as you may have guessed by the title but still has little in the way of limiting boost other than sizing the correct charger to start with

When i had the wrong supercharger on my car (the C30-94) i looked into ways to limit the boost and the only real viable option that came up and that was proven to work but that required abit of trial and error was a reducer cone made by storm developments
http://www.stormdevelopments.co.uk/.

The reducer which fitted in to the inlet of the charger and limited the amount of air the charger could suck in, after talking to storm they said that they were running c30-94s on pug 106 gtis (1.6ltr) with low comp engines so they were sure the reducer could work on my engine

However i decided to swop the charger to the correctly sized one c30-84 with the help of Geoff

Here is a video of the reducer in action but from somewhere in the states, they do two runs with and with out.

[youtube][/youtube]

There is obviously a HUGE problem with this method which is that you now make the supercharger non standard and create a new compressor map which you cant realy work out with out running the charger on a test bed, but i depends if you want to suck it a see approach and make a few diferent sizes of cones and hire a dyno for the moring and do some testing.

the other way i looked at but decided againt in favour of swopping to the correct charger was to run a drive by wire throttle body infront of the charger that you could control via the ECU like a reducer but Infinitely variable and one that you could remove (with the trottle fully open) and then partly close at higher revs to limit the boost, but this still has the same problem but to a slightly lesser extent as you atleast have a correct compressor map while ever the throttle is still fully open.

Here is my intercooler, just had to cut the lower valance behined the bumper, nothing major though and you cant see it from with the bumper on, it also helps for the airflow to the intercooler


This way requires aftermarket headlights with dip, main and side in the same unit but i fitted some fake inner headlights to keep it looking standard



The only other way is to pipe the cooler round the other way up and run the piping in to the brake duct area and then up and cut through the inner wing bit behind the headlight which i didn't fancy

e21Jason wrote:Geoff I have a copy of maximum boost but it's pretty light on supercharger control strategies, any thing in your library you would recommend

Jason

As per Matts suggestion, Supercharged by Corrky Bell, published by Bentley



Sadly, I haven't found one single book out there that I am truly satisfied with. The moment you examine turbo and superchargers in the degree of technical detail they deserve the average reader is bored to tears and likely to move onto an alternative hobby . Don't pay them enough attention and you could wind up bolting anything to anything. And contrary to popular belief, bigger isn't better.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves here. That is to say, lets not go looking to solve problems with your supercharger that you don't yet know exist. There has to be a flow map for that compressor out there somewhere. The other thing you need to know is the gear ratio of the drive mechansim internal to your supercharger. Find this information and all questions, including whether the compressor will surge at certain engine rpm, whether it will choke, and what pulley sizes you require, can be answered. Knowing what you are dealing with is a whole lot better than just bolting it on and seeing what happens.

FYI, the strategy that you follow with you supercharger (chosen pulley sizes, size of intercooler, size and location of the throttle, etc.) will depend largely upon what compression ratio engine you decide to run.

appletree wrote:When i had the wrong supercharger on my car (the C30-94) i looked into ways to limit the boost and the only real viable option that came up and that was proven to work but that required abit of trial and error was a reducer cone made by storm developments

Matt, your problem with your C30-94 was actually surge, not boost pressure. Your engines load-line, plotted on the C30-94 compressor map, crossed over into surge below 3000rpm IIRC. Surge comes about when the mass of air inducted into the engine (as a result of the engines capacity) is insufficent to sustain the pressure drop across the compressor blades at the given pressure ratio (defined by the compressor speed as goverened by the engine speed). At this point the airflow over the compressor blades becomes turbulent and the compressor starts to bark and growl at you, which fits with your description of the warbling noise you had coming from your manifold at low rpm IIRC.

It was Geoff, but the reason i looked into boost "control" was when i was running the c30 -94 on 10:1 compression so i was looking for a way to limit the boost at the top for the first mapping session before i got the low comp bottom end built up so i could still drive the car at full revs until the new bottom end was built which at the time was looking like a year.

my idea was to limit the boost on the standard engine with a base map then, when i got my bottom end built up, remove the reducer and a remap and off i go .

In reality though the engine came sooner than expected and the charger didnt work even on the standard ltr engine so it was swopped.