Anyone heard of these - and are they just a gimmick or are they worth it ???

was thinking of maybe trying to create one myself - any thoughts?

http://www.electricsupercharger.com/



[Edited on 6/6/03 by protofj]

Hmm, I've seen this before.

I actually had the same crazy idea myself a while ago, before I found this product. I was looking around for a 4-5 inch fan with a decent power output when I stumbled on this site.

At first glance it looks promising and I couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't work. However, I researched into it for a while and found a forum where some geezer put up a pretty strong mathematical arguement why an electric supercharge just wouldn't do the job. His basic point was, that although possible, the power the electric motor would need would have to be at least equivalent to 1 bhp - whatever that is in Watts (crank driven superchargers take 4-6bhp from the engine). And to get an electric motor that powerful it just wouldn't fit under the bonnet.

I wasn't particularly convinced either way. My thoughts were a little more basic than the mathematician bloke but went as follows...

When I had the air filters off the twin SU setup I had on the machine in question, the amount of air they were sucking in under mid range revs (3-4000) was quite reasonable but not huge. With a high output fan I'm sure you could give positive pressure over this, hence a mild supercharging effect. But, at full revs I doubt it would be able to keep up. If this is the case then what you would get would be an improvement in power at lower revs, mild improvement mid rev range and no improvement to top end power (assuming the fan doesn't cause a restriction).

I thought it would be worth the experiment, but wasn't willing to spend out the dosh they were asking for the system. So I carried on looking for a suitable fan myself, but without any luck.

I'd be interested to see one on a rolling road...

HTH, but I don't think it does unfortunately!!

I think i have come to much the same conclusion myself.
But as you say it would be interesting to see one in action.

I am glad that there are other "mad" people like me as I have also been down this route, but went one further
I used a radio controlled ducted fan motor and shroud plummed into the inlet casing on my old rover 416 twin cam
with it switched off and 3000 rpm, on a flat road, and then switched on the revs would increase by 2-300 rpm

after this at most other higher rpm speeds
no differance would be found

my conclusion was with serious hardware ie motor fan and motor housing someone could come up with a good product

problems are that the fan spools up quite slowley in relation to acceleration
so it would need to be armed and running at, say half speed in anticipation of hitting the switch
my next expirement was a large funnel attached to te inlet track and fitted behind the front grill
this gave better results as the air speed was more constant, and the faster you went, more air went in!!

all good fun!

steve