For years, we've been seeing the leaf blower motors being sold to the unsuspecting as "superchargers", however there has been at least one "real deal" electric SC/turbo made by Thomas Knight.

Thomas Knight Turbo Electric Supercharger - Tech Review - Turbo Magazine

This tells me that it can be done. Doing a quick search, I got all kinds of leaf blowers and such, but a few stood out to me as being potentially legit:

eRacing's eRAM e-Racing :: OFFICIAL SITE :: The e-RAM Electric Supercharger from e-Racing Motorsports ($300 base, $580 2-stage)

Thorton Electric Superchargers (I couldn't find a price here)

Thomas Knight turbo (big surprise) thomas knight : turbo upgrades + superchargers ($2500)

Looking on eBay, I found miles of hair dryers, but only one seller had anything remotely resembling plausible:

eBay Motors: ELECTRIC SUPERCHARGER TURBO NITROUS 01-05 HONDA CIVIC (item 150335526564 end time Apr-04-09 21:36:27 PDT)

($395 shipped)

I think one or more of these may actually be worth considering for the "casual booster", since they actually have claims (sometimes even dynos!) of boost numbers, not just CFM's (which of course are meaningless).

(Note: the Thomas Knight is powered by extra batteries, to be supplied by buyer and recharged periodically, a la nitrous)

Thoughts?

 

honestly i just write those things off as scams, wastes of money, but where there is a will there is a way. for thousands of years backyard mechanics have been making power on a budget, but you have to remember the golden rule of building power:

fast
reliable
cheap

you can only pick 2 from that list.

 

I looked some more and found this page:

MIMOUSA Electric Supercharger

which has the SAME text as the eBay link above. They mention it pulls 2.2 amps from the alternator, which any sane person should know is nowhere near enough to produce any boost whatsoever. So that's one off the list.

 

to be able to run enough boost, you'll need a ton of batteries. a ton of weight. offseting the benefit of boost

 

2.2 Amps isn't going to cut it, that is only 30 watts of power. Think about how much an average hair dryer uses... some use 2000 watts, that would be the same as drawing 150 amps (which is way more than your can can output) and that doesn't have enough power to compress air.

It is possible, but there hasn't been enough R&D to really make it feesible. You basically need to buy a turbo and hook it up to a powerful motor (I have seen some that use like 3 starter motors)... then you need to power it with either a bank of batteries or a very large capacitor(s)... we are talking like 100 Farads or so for short boosts.

In the end anybody who has actually got reasonable results has spent WAY more than a basic turbo kit

ADVISE: Stay away, the only reason people look at this option is because they think it will be cheaper... it isn't and on top of that it isn't really sustainable or able to provide reliable power.

 

I read a good bit on Thomas Knight's kit (his is the one that uses 3 motors). His is designed for a constant 15 PSI boost, which is way more than needed for our tiny motors. A few of the kits I mentioned are only supposed to put out 1-3 PSI, which is enough to be noticeable but not so much as to need lots of batteries (at least in theory).

That's why I didn't dismiss these outright: they aren't claiming huge gains, and 1 or 2 even had dynos.

 

to design a system like that would be very expensive and skill demanding... it would be cheaper and more efficient to use the engine as part of the equation than importing a set of battery cells.

 

dude!! Still, even his 5psi one powered by starter motors was drawing like 700amps.....700amps!!!!!

Put that into perspective man, that is a TON of wattage. If you tried to power that off your motor it would stall!! lol

THe only way to produce that amout of power is with a lot of batteries or capacitors charged slowly over time. You can't power your engine constantly with that much power draw on it.

I am not saying it isn't possible, but totally unsustainable

Also if you read the links you put up he is saying it has a maximum 15 second boost for 5psi kits... then you have to go home and recharge. 2500$ for 15 seconds seems kind of crappy & expensive.

Yeefit is selling his turbo right now for about 3000$, it has a CONSTANT supply of free power

 

Okay, did some more looking, and it seems that several people have actually tested some of these things. I decided to focus first on the e-Ram, since it doesn't make big claims and is cheaper than some. I give you links that deal with the subject:

Motorized Mayhem Ensues... - The Electric Supercharger
Has some calculations on power requirements in general

http://filebox.vt.edu/users/mschumac/leaf.htm
Actual leaf blower connected to intake on Mazda B2200 2.2L; owner claimed very slight increase in acceleration, but not significant.

E-Ram Electric Supercharger Testing
This guy dyno'd the e-Ram on a Porsche 911 3.6L; 2-3 HP gain

Team3S- Dodge Stealth Mitsubishi 3000GT Owners Pages
This guy seems to be buddies with the e-Ram's designer, claims dyno results show 5 HP gain on Mitsu 3000GT

http://home.att.net/~t.vago/howto/waste_money.html
Scathing review from 2001 from a guy who hooked up an e-Ram to his Dodge Stratus. He may have had a defective unit, as he said it only pulled 15A whereas it "should" pull 40-50A. His dyno results from 2004 show a 0.5 to 0.9 HP gain.

Dan's Data letters #105
About a third of the way down, some interesting thoughts on electric vs. conventional FI.

My MR2 Dyno Test Data
From 1999, dyno results for an MR2 with the e-Ram show about 3.2 HP extra.

YouTube - Force Flow electric supercharger turbo comparison
Video showing airspeed and current draw (what? I want boost numbers!) for:
an eBay RipOFF brand bilge pump supercharger;
an e-Ram;
2 different superchargers from Force Flow

Discuss

 

the 2000 watts is not from blower fan operation but from the heating element. If you plug in a Hair Dryer to a KillAWatt you will note it has different draw at different Heat settings, but the blower setting doesn't change power much.

but the ADVISE is good. Nothing good comes from putting a leaf blower on your airbox

 

You know, I'm curious now. I've looked on about 10 forums and 20 other websites that deal with these things, and (specifically speaking of the e-Ram) I haven't seen ONE person who claimed they tried it and it didn't do anything. On the other hand, I saw lots of people saying "it won't work". Not "it won't work, and I can prove it". Heck, even the guy who DID say that showed a HP gain with a DEFECTIVE one.

Now, you may or may not know this, but the idea of the turbo was initially met with skepticism. After all, you can't get more energy out of something than you put in. But that's not even the issue here. A huge amount of energy is stored in a car battery, and tapping that momentarily could put a lot of energy somewhere else, no?

I'm thinking that at least e-Ram and Force Flow's gadgets actually do something. They're not claiming anything ridiculous (1-2 PSI boost and 5-8% power gain), the power draw is realistic (42A e-Ram, 69A Force Flow per youtube video), and actually enough to do something.

My IQ is higher than a houseplant, and I know all about the scammers selling bilge pumps, but that doesn't mean everything is a scam.

 

Nobody is saying it is a scam (except people selling computer fans that claim 15-50hp on ebay of course)

As I was saying above, the Thomas Knight test ones that produced 5psi was drawing 700 Amps! 700a x 12v = 8400 watts of power.

Ok, think of it this way; most cars that draw 50 amps (not continuous btw, usually in pulses) for stereo equipment usually need a large capacitor system, at around 75 amps that is usually the line where you start to install larger alternators and more batteries.

We are talking 7 to 14 times more, for a 5psi system. On top of that you need a REAL turbo and not a fan to power it which is going to cost you big time, plus you need some kind of system to power it... think lots of expensive, heavy high output batteries.

Again, not saying it is a scam; just not really a good idea when other options such as turbo's and superchargers are out there with proven reliability and the ability to provide continuous power... all probably cheaper options to top it off.

Keep in mind the base KWSC has about 5psi... it outputs about 115 to 125whp from what I have seen

 

Even in the article they said the limitation was the batteries, that nothing had the capacity to fully work the super high power boost. And the car they were using it on the motor blew up because it went lean. And the car had dual batteries in the trunk as well, added weight. Its similar to the hydrogen generators HHO that they draw high amperage thus you are always fighting your gain with a loss, or adding an assload of batteries.

If you just shove tons of extra air into the car it will lean out and detonate. With a supercharger the boost grows with the revs, and with a turbo its a lil slower at the bottom end and boosts like crazy at high rpm. An electric fan gets up to speed almost immediately. It would need like a voltage regulator to make it vary with rpm to get it where it could be a tunable thing. But anything you see on ebay is usually a scam.

Plus, for the car to learn the fuel mapping, it would have to be on all the time that the car is running. Most of these are set up for temporary switch on so your gerbel can beat some other slow jalopy, and then turn it off. By having constantly varying air/fuel mixture the car cannot LEARN the a/f stoich settings. You would need a multi map ECU or fuel controller where you could have idle setting, and leaf blower setting(where it dumps a ton of gas in to compensate). Without that you are basically strapping on something that could kill your battery, and blow your engine.

With the WHP I have seen on all these turbos and superchargers I would go kswap route. Its a lil more expensive, but not by that much, and your baseline power would be 30-40hp more than a boosted L15, and you would have torque, a 6 speed tranny, and GOBS of aftermarket tunability. I'll take a "Big Block 4 Banger" over a lil snail any day if its my DD. an unmodded Kswap is gonna be more reliable and powerful than any other power adder route. My lil bro's h22 EG hatchback was like 2400lbs, and ran 13second QM, and if you weren't burying your foot in it the thing would get 38-40mpg, and since it is used to pulling a 3200lb car, the engine never stressed at hurtling the lil hatch through space.

I prefer reliability/practicality in my insanity. If you get one of those fan thingys make sure to post up and do a lil dyno pull and electrical system diagnosis, the fit's battery belongs in a motorcycle, so you are gonna need a voltage stabilizer and a cap.