hmm...... what do folks reckon to this? 
~ 20 bhp for £100 can't be bad going
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Electric-Supercharger-Turbo-Kit-vauxhall-vectra-gsi_W0QQitemZ120024411792QQihZ002QQcategoryZ36680QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
or this, same p[rice/claim but 12 W ???
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SUPERCHARGER-FOR-all-Vehicles-Turbocharger_W0QQitemZ150027670090QQihZ005QQcategoryZ32094QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
[Edited on 2/9/06 by 02GF74]
Does the unit put an exessive drain on the battery?
No, the Generation 1 draws 40 amps @ max load (40,000RPM)
I guess it puts no drain on the battery but only on the alternator. 40A is only just over 0.5 BHP.
Being electronic, you can turn it off most of the time so it doesn't put extra load on your engine.
I am sceptical. If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
I heard a discussion on electric superchargers once which was bsed around the fact that to create any serious boost pressure they would need lots of
electrical power and would loose mst of the efect through additional engine load through the alternator.
I am no expert but if these are any good, why have the manufacturers not started using them yet. They could be clever enough to control them with
ECU,s to have real benefits. If they are not used by manufacturers I woul be wary.
Of course, if you try one and it works, £100 is a steal for 20bhp extra.
Love the bit where it says it 'cooles the air'. By compressing it ? Magic.
Ah the spelling. Cools = colder. Cooles = hotter?
[Edited on 2/9/06 by Dusty]
Maybe if someone was bald enough to try it they could post there views on here, then if it worked i would by 2 of them.
Dont buy 1, its a piece of crap. I could work out the increase in inlet pressure to prove this but it isnt even worth bothing with. The only possible gain i can see is that combustio may be helped with additional swirl.
It only makes your purse ligther!
You need to cause a pressure differential across the fan blades for this to be any good. Electric ducted fans like this have good volume flow but crap
pressure change (at most 0.1psi. You need at least 2-3 before you would notice) - they would make little or no improvement on engine performance.
However, if you can put an electric motor on an old centrifugal turbo housing you will have a proper charger worth testing!
With something like this you're converting energy from mechanical (the engine output) into electrical (the battery/alternator), then turning it
back into mechanical energy again with the fan. In each of these steps there will be a lot of lost energy because no process is anywhere near 100%
effificent. Now compare this system with a mechanical driven supercharger where you're not doing any of this conversion, and its obvious that
this thing is going to be ludicrously inefficient if it does anything at all.
[Edited on 2/9/06 by ChrisGamlin]
This has been covered before. I'm sure someone did some calculations about how much energy would been needed to generate some pressure ............... believe me, if the numbers are right the thickness of the cables required to power the fan would weigh so much its not worth it.
Conclusion:
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!
Gotta agree with Jim on this one.
Model aircraft use them for propulsion to great effect. They work by throwing loads of air backwards at high speed (i.e. loadsnloadsa of mass flow) to
create the forwards reaction force (Newtons 3rd law). Creating high pressures with these is bloody hard, thats why commercial aeroplane jet engines
have about 20 of these in a row just to create a mild pressure.
Its analogous to sweeping water uphill with a broom with about 3 bristles in it.
Ed.
quote:
However, if you can put an electric motor on an old centrifugal turbo housing you will have a proper charger worth testing!
that sounds like it might actually have the power to do some good.
I think there are a LOT of people that just don't realise how much air an engine needs, and how hard it is to pump that much air!!!
Bear in mind for example, that a typical top fuel dragster uses 250 of its ~8000hp to drive the supercharger!!
Electric superchargers, in the manner found on ebay, are purest snake oil, quite funny though to see people actually buying them, just goes to prove
that evolution only works slowly and the world is still full of retards 
quote:
Originally posted by NS Dev
Electric superchargers, in the manner found on ebay, are purest snake oil, quite funny though to see people actually buying them, just goes to prove that evolution only works slowly and the world is still full of retards
Another classic Natquote!!!