Marty: Electric superchargers from eBay, Everybodies talking about them and they're cheap
Moog: and they can be installed in minutes, but will you get the massive power gains that are promised on the box?
Today we find out, on Mighty Car Mods
Moog: Okay so we got this email from Joseph and he says "hey guys, i love the show
i've got a 1 litre 3 cylinder Daihatsu Charade, and i
want to put on an electric supercharger from eBay, how much power will i get
now that is a good question, so i'm gonna send Marty with $100 to go buy a Daihatsu
Charade, and bring it back to the dyno... Marty: A hundred bucks? Moog: yeah dude, and make sure it has rego
Now off you go...
Moog: this is an early 90's Daihatsu Charade
It's rough, but its also Hellaflush direct from the factory
It's got rust, mould
and a one litre 3 cylinder engine, thats perfect for our electric
supercharger experiments.
Moog: so we're down here at Port Hacking Automotive with Ben who's our Dyno
technician expert AND guru, now i just wanted to make something very
clear, because the last few times we've been down here, a few people have left comments or
emailed in saying the problem with dyno's is that there's no air moving, now these
people have clearly never been to a dyno and don't understand how they work so i just wanted to shoiw
you this big thing here, this is a massive industrial fan
and that's what sits in front and pushes air into the car to make sure it doesn't overheat
how much air does it push out? i simulates the kind of air that would be running through
and over your car if you were driving down a highway, so that
is a fan, that is how a dyno works, now lets do a stock run and see
how much power the charade is making, before we put the turbocharger on
We've got a massive 24.4 kilowatts
we're gonna do a second run to confirm the results
We've got 23.5 kilowatts
Moog: okay so there are a number of different superchargers available on eBay
that range from $20-30 up to the best you can get
which is this kit here, now this one cost us over $300
but it does have some pretty exciting features so i thought i'd run through some of them with you
It works on any engine, carby or not, we've checked with the manufacturer so it
it's fine for our Charade. It adds power on top of your existing engine mods
like chips, front mounts, those kinds of things.. you can put it on turbocharged cars
apparently to reduce your lag. Now this will give you
up to 5 PSI of boost pressure. Now that is the kind of
boost that you'd get from an XR6 Falcon Turbo, thats pretty
impressive. We'll also be able to develop up to 50 HP of power
now our stock car got 31.5 HP
now if we can develop and extra 50 we're tripling our power
and we should be seeing about 75 KW based on those figures. More realisitically it says we'll
get 15% increase across the rev range
so that means we'll go from 23.5-24 up to around 28 KW
it's a really good increase for something that only cost a couple of hundred dollars, now to prove all these claims
of course, there's dyno figures on the back there to show just how much extra power
and torque is being made. It's pretty exciting, the kit gives you everything you need to put
it on, so we're gonna install it and enjoy all the extra power.
Marty: okay so this is a conventional exhaust driven supercharger/turbocharger
becuase its got a turbine on the back of it. The exhaust goes through there, spins the
wheel, which spins the compressor and makes boost pressure through here
this is a particularly big and awesome one. Now that turbo is going to cost you well over $1000
by the time you put in on a car, you're probably looking at over $10,000 with all the stuff to make it work
properly. So its quite incredible that for $300 you can get something
that does the exact same thing. I'll show you how they work, this is the conventional turbo
thats the compressor wheel, thats the compressor wheel on the electric turbo
you can see, this spins this spins - they are exactly the same.
Ben's worried the car's going to make too much power, so he adds some extra safety straps
The install is really simple, it get's put in
before your intake. Moog: so people have been wasting their time
all these years spending their time putting on convetional
turbocharger systems. This system can be installed in
just a couple of minutes and gives you the exact same results
Marty: once the supercharger is installed, the positive and negative are connected to the battery via a relay
Marty: okay so that's the switch that operates a relay that gives the fan juice directly from the battery
you cna attach that either to the accelerator linkage
on the engine, or you can stick it under the pedal, cause you're only supposd to use it at full throttle
*turbo noises*
It's time for the first run WITH our electric supercharger.
Moog: amazingly we've gained 2kw
and Marty's pretty excited. To confirm our results we're removing
the supercharger and going for another run,
Marty: we've made more power
without the supercharger and Moog is not happy...
Moog: this is s**t. Hey ben, there's something wrong with your dyno
Marty: it doesn't work man! Moog: your dyno's broken, we didn't get
Ben: I just had it calibrated!! Moog: i don't care if you had it calibrated
All this work all this time putting a turbo on
and your dyno's rooted mate..
Moog: Ben thinks the supercharger may be adding load to the electrical system which is making
the car lose power, so we're gonna run an external battery and power the supercharger
from outside of the car. Ben Explains that if the supercharger works
then we're definitely going to see power gains on this next run.
Marty: remote power source
Moog: we're now not drawing any power from the cars electrical system
Marty: we lost 0.1 of a KW
We're starting to worry that we've wasted our money, so we do another run, hoping to see
some of the gains promised on the box...
Moog: aaah &#($ this ###@
This is bull$%#%
Marty: so if you want to supercharge your car
but you have $300 for one of those superchargers, you can do it yourself for half that
Moog: thats right we're just gonna use some basic stuff you can find around the house
and show you how to twin charge your beast for only $150
You need $20 worth of AG pipe, a Tee piece and a
silicone joiner, some pipe and a couple of leaf blowers.
Moog: Ben says if we dont make power this run, he's gonna cut our legs off for wasting his time,
Moog: so if we get a tape measure
We'll just measure the distance between there, from the front here and then
if we measure that same distance on the bonnet...
oh...
Moog: so we're just testing to make sure Marty's measurements
actually work, and, sadly they actually work
Ahh...So we're just going to cable tie this on here..
make sure we've got a good seal
this will poke out here, Tee piece then V mounted twin charger, the first in Australia.
*burp*
Moog: we're V mounting the leaf blowers for extra power
Not just for the short pipe work, but for the extra street cred
Moog: that's basically engineered.
Ben: this is the weirdest s%^t ever thats for sure!
Marty: we good? Moog: one more mate!
Moog: the leaf chargers are securely attached, now its time to plumb it up
Marty: good one!
Moog: not only is Ag pipe good for draining your garden
it's flexible, cheap and great for supercharging
Moog: okay so THIS is how this incredible system work, we've got our twin chargers
here and here, they are going to be compressing air which is coming down these pipes, it's going to be going into this
Tee piece, which is then going down directly into the intake, the whole thing has been sealed professionally with duck tape
so thats going to compress in there, we SHOULD be making
around 50-60KW at the wheels, so we're pretty excited
We've made a massive 27 kilowatts
Moog: on our second run, we've got a massive 27.6KW, the highest figure of the day
Moog: the dyno graph shows that the leaf blowers have made the most power. Moog: the reason that we've lost power down low is that
the turbo lag, thats why, you can see the
purple and the white, there's less power than any of the other runs, but then they slowly go up and take
the lead Marty: yeah man it comes on boost Moog: it's spooling, but when it gets to around
here, it hits boost and our leaf blowers are making more power
than any of the other runs, so i would call that a success
Marty: electric superchargers - they promise so much yet deliver so little, there's so many models to choose from
but they all have 1 thing in common - they are just fans. Which work great for ventilating a toilet or drying
your face, but not nearly efficient enough at this size, to supercharge intake air on a car engine
a fan this size, of this construction would never be able to make usable boost that you would actually feel
while driving. Turbo's, which are turbine driven superchargers, spin at over 100,000 times a minute
in order to create usable boost and take huge amounts of exhaust energy in the form of heat and pressure
and there's no way that this eBay fan delivers that kind of performance. Moving air doesn't much energy at all
but actually compress it and create boost pressure, you need a LOT of energy, more than any
cheap fan is going to be able to supply.
Moog: so this is where we are at, the eBay supercharger literally does nothing. It is irrefutable
inarguable, it does not work, it is basically a glorified computer fan. Marty: thats right
now fans are really good at moving air, but that doesn't mean they are good at compressing it
turbos work in much a differnt way, much higher speeds, you're never going to get anything out of a little motor like that Moog: so we did lose a couple of kilowatts
with the eBay supercharger, we saw a couple of KW gain with the twin
V mounted Leaf Charge system, now the thing to note about that, is each of those is
has around about 190km/h air speed coming out of them
but again they're not compressing air, they are just fans that are blowing air Marty: thats right and that has a little bit to do with
intake runner length, temperature, getting 1kw on a dyno really is not a noticeable difference in the real world
Blair: so the ebay supercharger is busted, in fact, its not a supercharger its just a fan
in a pipe so i'm going to call it a 'fan pipe'. BUT the leaf blowers are working, so i'm going to flick them both on
cause there's one thing left to do.
Moog: there's a thread on the MCM forum about these Electric superchargers so check it out, and coming up, we show you how to upgrade a
real turbo.