Hello everyone and welcome in this video
we are going to be talking about how centrifugal superchargers work and this in front of me is a
Vortec centrifugal supercharger it is out of a science of speed supercharger kit
Which I will be at some point in my life who knows when that will be installing in my s2000
and so in this video we're just gonna be talking about how these work and the idea of
A centrifugal supercharger is no different from any other
Supercharger and that the whole purpose is to put more air into your cylinders
So you pack in more air into the cylinders
During your intake stroke and by doing so you can inject more fuel and of course by burning more air and fuel you can make
more power
That's the basic idea of a turbocharger or supercharger
Any form of them packing more air make more power, and so how does it?
Do this well like other superchargers a centrifugal supercharger is engine driven
So you'll have this pulley here
Which will be driven by an engine belt that will attach to the supercharger and as it rotates it will force
The impeller of the supercharger to rotate, so we'll show that a little bit here, but essentially
There's a gear box in here so your engine's spinning it a certain rpm
And then there's a reduction gear in here so this spins
And then as this spins your impeller actually spins at a faster rate, so I'm spinning it very slowly
Back here, and as you can see that impeller is spinning, and it's spinning at a much quicker rate even though. It's barely spinning
Then I am spinning this back here as a result of that gear reduction so you can change a
Couple things you could change that gear reduction if you wanted this to spin faster. That's a design aspect
But from a consumer standpoint you can change the pulley that you use
so if you use a smaller pulley it means it's going to spin faster and
As a result this will spin faster through that gear reduction and so you can make more boost simply by changing this pulley
So this impeller sucks in air you'll have an air filter somewhere out there
It'll suck in air through that air filter into the impeller centrifugal force
I know it's not a real thing
But that how's this thing got its name sends that air outward into
The piping around the impeller and from there
It is sent to the engine so it can either go through an intercooler next or go directly to the engine
And so you'll have that added pressure and can be able to make more power now with this particular kit
It goes through and air to water intercooler
So it will come in one end of this go out the other and then you can see there are these two little hoses
Right here where it can come in and out these two ports, so it'll come in
You'll have coolant coming in one end and then out the other
You've got this electric pump, so this water pump will flow coolant in one end out the other this
will be
Mounted at the front of the vehicle
And so you'll have that coolant coming in it'll be hot from passing through this intercooler being heated by the air which is
Passing through it that'll come to the front of the car air will pass through and cool that coolant that coolant will then return back
To this air to water intercooler which is mounted within the engine bay cool off that air before it passes
into the intake manifold and into the vehicle now you'll notice that this looks very similar to a
turbocharger and that's because on the compressor side it is very similar to the compressor side of a
Turbocharger the biggest difference is the fact that this is driven by the engine
rather than driven from exhaust gasses now the difference between a centrifugal supercharger and
For example a twin screw or a root style supercharger is basically how it supplies air to the engine
So these are going to be more effective at higher rpm at lower rpm
they're not going to be as effective as something like a root style or a
twin-screw supercharger
These are more designed for that top-end the faster this spins
Which means the faster your engine is spinning because this is a result of how fast your engine is spinning
Multiplied by the gear ratio within it the faster this thing spins the more boost you make it's not consistent across the entire rpm range
similar to like a twin screw or root style supercharger
Which may have a more linear boost curve than this this boost curve will look seriously just kind of like a line
Increasing as your engine rpm goes up there might be a slight curve to it
But essentially you're gonna have that peak boost will be achieved at peak engine rpm
that's when this thing's going to be pulling the most air in and
similar to Honda S2000's
I mean that's kind of the style of the engine it has all its power all its torque above 6,000 rpm
So that's when this is going to be most effective
That's when that engines going to be most effective until it's gonna be a very noticeable difference in
Torque as you get into the higher rpm kind of maintaining the characteristics of this car's engine
So that you know low rpm not all that much power as you get up into the higher rpm
That's where you start to actually feel the torque from the engine.
So what are the advantages of a centrifugal style supercharger?
Well one of them is the fact that it has a low discharge temperature
So it pulls in air at one temperature and the temperature of that air going out isn't increased all that much still up
We're you know using an intercooler is a smart thing to do, but the thermal efficiency of centrifugal style
Superchargers is pretty good the other thing is from a packaging standpoint
These are generally going to be mounted in the front of the engine rather than on top like a root style or twin-screw supercharger
So you don't have to worry about you know the hood
getting
interfering with space and
Instead it's mounted in front of the engine and as so long as there's space in front of the engine to mount it you don't
Have to worry about manipulating the hood in any way so from a packaging standpoint they can be easy to install
They're also a design which allows for you to pretty easily set up
intercooling so rather than a root style or twin screw where it's mounted on top of the engine and then wants to flow into the
Engine it's difficult
It is done of course even with factory style superchargers
But it's more difficult to put in that air to water intercooler within that setup it has to be much more compact
It's not quite as flexible of a design whereas with a centrifugal setup
You can have that anywhere after this this doesn't have to feed directly to the engine so you're more flexible and setting up your intercooler
Setup, so what are the disadvantages of a centrifugal style
Supercharger? well the biggest one is that it doesn't have a great low-end torque, so unless this thing is spinning
You know 3,000 rpm and above
It's really not producing hardly any boost for your engine
So it's not doing a whole lot for you until it really starts to spin up now in engines like this
S2000 f20c which spins to 9,000 rpm
That's not a huge deal
The car is designed to be revved high and that's where this thing operates in its sweet spot
But it is important to note that you're not going to have that low-end grunt from installing a centrifugal supercharger
At the low end it'll operate very similar to stock, and then as you get into the higher rpm
You'll start to build boost another disadvantage of course adding a supercharger adds a parasitic load
So your fuel economy will go down as a result not only of producing far more power and using more fuel
But as a result of having a parasitic load
Asking your engine to drive this on top of anything else so it takes energy to spin this thing it takes energy to pull in
That air and that energy all comes from your engine
So you're going to get worse fuel economy of course when you're modifying your car
That's probably not the first thing you're thinking about when you're thinking about adding more power
And then finally of course if you add power to an engine that means you're putting more stress on that engine and very simply
There is a correlation between how much stress you put on the engine and how long that engine lasts
So if you ask your engine to make more horsepower
It can do that. You know will it do it reliably? that is questionable
And so you want to make sure you know that you have the internals to accompany what you're doing and you know regardless
Of how well-built it is the more power you put into an engine
generally speaking
The shorter duration that engine is going to last because you are stressing those internal
Components more so if you guys have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below. Thanks for watching