autospeed - fitting a supercharger, part 1.pdf

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Issue: 328 Section: DIY Tech Features 29 April, 2005

Fitting a Supercharger, Part1

The step-by-step of fitting a wrecker blower

By Julian Edgar, most pics by Michael Knowling

Click on pics to view larger images

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At a glance...

Part 1 of a 4-part series

Different blower designs

Planning a blower mount

Bracket requirements

Email a friend Print article

With cheap superchargers available from Japanese-importing

wreckers, there’s now a viable option to turbos. And the advantages

of a supercharger over a turbo? Well, there’s no need for a new

exhaust manifold, you don’t have to adapt the exhaust system to the

turbine outlet, and in most cases there’s no requirement to tap into

the engine’s coolant or oil galleries. Sounds easy, huh? Just bolt up a

few brackets, attach the belt and some intake plumbing, and away

you go. Blower power!

Well, not quite.

In reality, installing a blower as a one-off exercise is still plenty of

work – but it’s also the sort of thing you can do with just normal

home workshop tools, sending-out just a few jobs like welding or

plate cutting. We know, cos we just did it.

So what exactly is involved?

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Superchargers – either centrifugal or positive displacement – come in two basic physical packages.

There are those that have inlet and outlet plumbing that’s designed to attach to hoses, and those

that have an outlet designed to flow straight into an intake manifold. The latter usually have a long,

narrow outlet.

Second-hand examples of the ‘plumbed-in’ types

include the very popular Toyota blowers from the

4A-GZE four cylinder and the 1G-GTE six cylinder

engines, and the superchargers from the Subaru

Vivio and the Nissan MA09 (the latter an engine that

is both supercharged and turbocharged!). Most

aftermarket centrifugal blowers – eg Vortech - arealso of the plumbed-in type.

Examples of the superchargers that are designed to

bolt straight to an intake manifold (or plenum) include

the Eaton and Whipple blowers. These are used in

both aftermarket and OE applications.

So the first decision about mounting needs to take

into account the type of blowe r you’re working with. If

the supercharger mounts directly on the intakemanifold, the manifold itself usually supports it – just

as an exhaust manifold supports a turbo. But if it’s a

‘plumbed-in’ blow er you’re dea ling with, the story

becomes more complex. In this series we’ll

concentrate on the plumbed-in design, which is much

more popular at wreckers.

Blower Mount Planning

Nothing is surer than death and taxes than the

shrinking that occurs of your engine bay in the time

between spotting the blower at the wreckers and

taking it home to install it. Even if you’ve measured

everything first, the space you thought you had

seems to lose inches everywhere. It’s therefore

wise when buying a secondhand blower to suggest

to the seller that you may want to return the blower

(in as-bought condition, of course) if you ge t it home

and it proves impossible to fit.

So, you have the blower clutched in your hands and

you’re pondering just where under the bonnet to

put it. It’s very, very important that you don’t just

look for physical room for the blower body but also consider the following points.

Drive

If the blower is to be driven from an existing

accessory belt (a common approach with smaller

blowers), can it be placed so that its drive pulley

lines up exactly with the main crankshaft drive

pulley? If the answer is ‘yes’, is there free space for

the belt to reach the blower pulley – and then

return to the drive system? Will the belt still have

adequate clearances if you need to fit a larger or

smaller supercharger pulley? Is there a belt

available wh ich is the right length?

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Most superchargers have an ‘up’ direction. This can

be indicated by the presence of a dipstick (which may

be in the form of a graduated bolt), filler hole (again

it may be plugged with a bolt), or other obvious

mark. As much as possible, you should keep the

blower orientation matching this direction.

Plumbing

Is there room to get the intake air to the blower and

boosted air away from the blower? Note that in

many cases, the existing supercharger plumbing

connections can be unbolted and new ones made to

better suit the geography of the new engine bay.

When considering the plumbing clearances, also

start thinking through various blower mounting

schemes – after supporting brackets are installed,

all your plumbing space can soon disappear!

Brackets

We’ll devote a w hole section to the topic of brackets but at this

initial planning stage it’s important to start looking for existing

super heavy duty bolts to which you‘ll be able to attach the

blower mounts. We’re talking engine mount bolts, alternator

mounting bolts, power steering pump bolts – big bolts that

disappear into heavy duty parts of the engine like the block and

the head. They also need to be near and accessible.

Designing Brackets

So you’ve found a spot where there’s room for the blower and its input and output plumbing, the

blower is near-vertical and the drive pulley lines up with the existing accessory drive. Great! Now

comes the fun bit – making brackets to hold the blow er in place.

A supercharger needs to be mounted rigidly. This is

the case primarily because of the loads placed on it

by the belt drive. First up, there’s the power that

the belt is transmitting, which is trying to twist the

blower off its mounts. Then there’s the belt tension,

which is trying to draw the blower closer to the drive

pulley. Finally, there are the usual loads caused by

anything heavy being bounced around in the engine

bay as the car passes over bumps.

Most OE belt-driven accessories - like the alternator

and power steering pump - are mounted very close

to the engine on short brackets. This gives a more compact engine package but just as more





importantly, it also allows the use of rigid brackets. When you’re trying to install a blower in an engine

bay, it’s likely that all these up-close-and-tight positions near to the engine have already been taken.

As a result, you’ll probably find that the blower has to be mounted quite a long way from the block or

head, necessitating much longer brackets than used for any of the other belt-driven items. Making

matters worse, it’s likely that the pow er be ing absorbed by the blower is higher than for any other

belt-driven devices already present, so requiring lots of belt tension. Which tries to bend brackets

even more...

Another important aspect to keep in mind when

thinking through mounts is there needs to be a way of

adjusting belt tension. It may be that the existing belt

tension adjustment system can be retained w hen theblower is fitted. For example, perhaps there’s an idler

pulley on the ‘slack’ side of the belt that is moved

laterally to increase or decrease belt tension. Or

perhaps there’s a sprung tensioner pulley. However,

sometimes this adjustment mechanism needs to be

removed to make way for the blower. If that’s the

case, the blower mounts will need to incorporate a

means of setting belt tension, for example by the use

of a s lotted bracket like that used on alternators.

As you can see, the mounting of a blow er is a little more difficult than it first appears...

Checklist

When considering the installation of a blower, here are some key questions to answer:

Is there physical space in the engine bay for the blower?

Can the blower be positioned so that its pulley lines up with existing belt drives?

How w ill belt tension be adjusted?

Is there room for inlet and outlet plumbing connections to the blower?

Are there existing heavy duty bolts that can be used to hold the blower mounts in position?

Think through the answers to those questions and you’ll be much better placed to make a good

decision.

Next week: mounting a supercharger

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