Switched supercharger?

ncoop23

Registered User
Is it easily possible... to wire a switch to my blower so that I can turn it on and off when I want to? And would I get better gas mileage or since at high throttle the ECU expects there to be boost so it will mess things up?
 
Wow...no.

A supercharger is not electronic. It's a purely mechanical device driven by a belt running off the crank pulley. What exactly would a switch do?

I'm not saying this to be mean, but you should really do some research on how they work before you go any further.
 
Basically the MAF tells the ECU how much air is going in and based on that the required fuel is delivered (more to it but thats the basics).

As far as best mileage etc, I would think that since the motor has been built to run with a supercharger, that it will gets its optimal gas mileage with it. Where the switch comes in is the right foot controller ;).

A good running SC can get almost 30 mpg when cruising.
 
As others have said, you already have a switch for the supercharger: the gas pedal. If you drive in a manner that doesn't make the boost gauge go past "0", then you're not "using" the supercharger. You will notice, however, that the car is somewhat of a dog when driven in this manner!

Vince
 
To add to Vince's response.....if the supercharger bypass valve is open (which is it any time you show a Vac. reading on the boost gage) the supercharger uses very little HP since most of the air is being feed back to the inlet to prevent cavitation. While I have driven a car with a broken SC Belt there is such a restriction in the intake that it takes more throttle to get any power so to answer your question directly...even if you installed a clutch on the blower you would not get better gas mileage.
 
you can always take off the belt to the sc, but your car will run horribly weak, worse then a n/a v6...leave it alone.
 
I've planned a device to work like the A/C clutch on the jackshaft, but seeing how the car handled without the SC belt on i dont know if its even worth it. Maybe enlarge the bypass valve area to 2 1/2 butterfly and connector with a better return angle into manifold. There are plenty o electric clutchs but i'm not sure how much acceleration shock the sc and handle as most cluchtes are a locking kind without friction plates to gently engage it. Deffinately could turn it off but turning it on might require you to trunoff the car, then engage and start.
 
Our engines have low compression IE for a supercharger that boosts compression. Why would you want to lower your MPG? A NA tbird gets worse MPG then our SC`s at normal speeds. Now if you could put a clutch on the main belt so that only the supercharger runs at the flick of a switch you might just have something there for a short blast down the 1/4 mile.
 
AMG had a clutched eaton on one of their motors. But those cars ran pretty low boost. There are some significant engineering challenges to a electronic clutch that is small enough, and yet strong enough to deal with the load that the end of the SC shaft sees. The very marginal HP cost of spinning the stock SC when under vacuum is simply not significant enough to worry about. You'll improve engine efficiency more by making sure your plugs, wires, o/2 sensors, and fuel filter are in good shape.
 
ah, i beleive the volkswagon has a turbo/super combo that the sc is clutched off at higher rpms where the turbo shines, kinda neat but i havent seen the car in person. Now I just go the SC back from my brother in college with a extremely poor battery. After jumpin it, driving 65 miles home, turn it off and the headlights go dim to a black within 2 mins. I checked the battery, all the cells were iced!:eek:
 
I was thinking more of putting an on off switch on the bypass possibly a servo. I want to mess around a bit with it and have a switch for it. Its not that hard but would the computer deal with it? It would be pretty fun to floor it then flick the switch at a certain RPM. I imagine it like hitting the NAWZ button in fast and furious but minus the fire out the exhaust... Idk it would be fun to play with I really am not worried about mpg I just don't want to blow it up... Could I just put a pneumatic solenoid on the bypass valve so that it would stick wherever it was till I press the button and it will do what it should then? if it was blocked and didn't leak if I was idle and closed the solenoid it would stay open and if the bypass was closed and I hit it it would stay closed.
 
I was thinking more of putting an on off switch on the bypass possibly a servo. I want to mess around a bit with it and have a switch for it. Its not that hard but would the computer deal with it? It would be pretty fun to floor it then flick the switch at a certain RPM. I imagine it like hitting the NAWZ button in fast and furious but minus the fire out the exhaust... Idk it would be fun to play with I really am not worried about mpg I just don't want to blow it up... Could I just put a pneumatic solenoid on the bypass valve so that it would stick wherever it was till I press the button and it will do what it should then? if it was blocked and didn't leak if I was idle and closed the solenoid it would stay open and if the bypass was closed and I hit it it would stay closed.

That's how it works right now. The button is the throttle pedal. I get the feeling you don't have a good grasp on how a positive displacement supercharger works, and how that has been implemented on the Tbird SC.

There are articles of the main page that discuss this, as well as other threads on this site that goes through all of this.
 
I know how it works I just want it to stick on command... Will that hurt the engine if it sticks open? All I am asking...
 
I dont think it would hert anything but I really dont have any idea what would happen but a few guys have tried waist gates like a turbo but any time you mess with metered air in a closed system something is going to go BOOM. I love the concept your speaking of but I dont think I would chance something going wrong. To much goes wrong all by itself:rolleyes:
 
It took a whole bunch of really smart engineers, with degrees and everything, to design our system to work as well as it does. Anything you can possibly do to the system to implement this "on-off switch" thingy will surely de-optomize it, and result in:

A) Lowered overall performance (if you're lucky)

- or -

B) Damaged engine components (most likely)

There are a lot of guys on this site making impressive and substantial horsepower and torque with modified SC's, but they've practically earned an engineering degree in research and development making the system work properly. They've also broken a lot of expensive hardware along the way, and spent more money than many people are willing to admit.

Trust that Ford hired the right guys to design the system, and don't try jury-rigging some B-movie gizmo to impress the Honda guys. Save your money for tried-and-true power adders that are outlined in excruciating detail many places on this site. Save yourself some money.

My $0.02 worth...
 
Back
Top