Eliminate Turbo Lag Idea......

[Guest]

Today I was talking to a guy that had a turbo small block and he came up with a way to eliminate turbo lag. Its a great idea, so I thought I would present the idea in case anyone wanted to try it. He did this and it took a lot of time off his quater mile.

What he did was mounted a NOS injector in his exhaust manifold or turbo exhaust housing, and mounted it such a way that it injected into the exhaust wheel in the direction to spin it. Then he ran the lines and necessary equipment to activate it. But instead of a NOS bottle, he used a bottle of CO2.

What this did was pre-spool the turbo so there is no lag at all. But he said you have to be careful and only fire the injector long enough to reach the boost level you are running so you dont overboost the motor.

Cool idea, eh?

[Mr._HP]

Yeah not a bad idea, but does sound slightly dangerous. When I was graduating, i had to write a thesis paper, and guess what I did it on? An idea for a Turbo which would eliminate all the downfalls of forced induction!!!  ;D

 

I'm not going to elaborate because I could still try and develop something like it. Seemed good on paper, and in theory would be great.

 

I can tell you that it would be pretty universally mounted, not run by exhaust (no added heat to intake charge which=more dense air=++++efficiency using a smalled turbo), and it woudln't be run by a belt either (eliminates parasitic drag). This would all lead to a wide range of applications, and the most power form the smallest unit possible. I'd love to tell you the specifics, but this is the internet...

[MidNiteRide89]

I've brought up Turbdyne a number of times, but no one seems to notice. Here is an excerpt from their site;

 

Turbodyne's DynachargerTM consists of: 1) an electronically controlled ultra high speed electric motor / generator mounted between and coaxial with the turbine and the compressor of a conventional turbocharger. 2) an electronic power and speed control system.

 

The DynachargerTM is custom sized to match specific OEM engines, and is designed to meet the different OEM power, torque, cold start, and emission requirements.

 

Electrically, the operation of the DynachargerTM will alternate between Motor Mode and Generator Mode. In Motor Mode, the DynachagerTM provides the required boost pressure for a cold start, and the required boost pressure for low speed engine acceleration. The electric motor is designed to compensate for the lack of exhaust gas energy (used to power a turbocharger) in this area of engine operation. In this mode, the DyanchargerTM will also produce a quick growth in engine power, thereby providing a significantly faster transient response. Additionally, at low engine operating loads, the DynachargerTM can be used to supply extremely high EGR rates, while maintaining a proper air fuel ratio for a clean efficient burn.

 

In Generator Mode, the DynachargeTM will utilize the otherwise wasted surplus exhaust gas energy by using the turbine to drive the rotor. At full engine power, the generator can be used to slow the turbine down, and in many cases alleviates the need for a waste gate. This mode is also used to optimize the air fuel ratio in Diesel and DI spark ignition engines at partial engine loads (highway driving speeds).

 

Sounds pretty damn cool, huh?  

[Mr._HP]

Yeah that's pretty cool! Somewhat like the design I was thinking of in regards to the fact that they both use electricity. However the dynecharger would still need to be mounted off the manifold... A problem for many cars when you consider the small amount of room for extra goodies under the hood, and for the hopes of running an intercooler to cool down the intake charge.

 

It is a possible solution though. Forced induction is making a come back once again, and with the new technology they're better than ever.

[ttiger]

Hey Mr. HP, ...I am wondering what color that car on the bottom is painted.  I like it, looks like a champagne color.  I might go back with something like that down the road when I repaint mine.  Also, those wheels look pretty d**n sweet.  Custom made?

[Jeremy_C]

Those are some stylin' roller there.  Seriously, where'd they come from?

[Mr._HP]

Sorry  I haven't been able to post until now, I've been traveling for work for the past week. Thanks for all the comments on the 87' It is the champagne color and original paint too!!! Looks great for 15 years old... actually even if it were 5 years old! THe wheels are made by simmons. They are somewhat custom since they're made to order. THe wheels are a 3 peice design, so you can have any offset made. I just stuck them on the 87 to see what it would look like with that color. They do look awesome, but that's only picture I've got. I don't even use those wheels unfortunately :-[ As you can tell by the number of responses due to jsut the picture, they stand out a lot on such a rare car. I know a few people who are into clipping peoples wheels and know that wheel locks don't really put up too much of a problem to those who know what they're doing. Luckily, I'm friends with some of these people so don't have to worry too much, but it's the ones I don't know that have me in fear of leaving my car anywhere it's not in my site. It's a shame to have to wrry about this crap jsut because you have something nice, but that's how it is these days.  

[Conquest351]

We've got a customer at my shop who has tons of money (good customer) and he wants to try the nitrous idea but do it on the compressor side and aim a nozzle at the turbine to spool it up in low RPM's.  He wants to use compressed air so you don't freeze the impellor and also it would just be less expensive to do as an R&D thing.  We're gonna try it on one of our SVO's and see how it works.  Of course you have to realise the car isn't gonna make boost unless it's under load so we'll see what happens.

[heefner]

Mr HP, if I feared my car being cliped cause it looked good,  I would look in to moviing some where else.  Those wheels are too nice to be sitting on a shelf.  Where do you live?  I will be sure to put it on my DO NOT MOVE HERE list.  

[ttiger]

I have to agree with you HP.  I'm from Nashville, soon to be moving back, and from the listed price of the simmons wheels, It scares me too.  Never seen it, but hear all the time how someone came back and found their car up on blocks.  It really sucks that there are so many people too lazy to work for their own.  But, I really want some of those wheels on my car!  I like the cheapest one's on this website: http://www.moto-on.com/wheels.htm , but I really really like the simmons on yours and shown at the bottom of that site.  Guess I'll have to wait till I can park it in a garage, which will have to wait on a house with one ;D

[Mr._HP]

Mr HP, if I feared my car being cliped cause it looked good,  I would look in to moviing some where else.  Those wheels are too nice to be sitting on a shelf.  Where do you live?  I will be sure to put it on my DO NOT MOVE HERE list.  

 

I live about 15 minutes south of boston and right next to a town called Brockton. Definitely put that place on your "do not move to" list. That place is ghetto!!! So you can imagine the material that comes strolling out into surrounding towns. If it's not them, it's just the steady cultural decline of a somewhat urban area. I don't live in the sticks and don't ever plan on it, so being aware of the people around you is my best insurance. Imports have picked up in a huge way here in the past few years, but the nice cars still stand out. Unfortunatly there's a lot of cars rolling around looking like ray charles did the upgrades : You know, everything painted inside, big stupid exhaust on a bone stock car, wheels (usually tasteless), big a** spoiler that does go with the stock body work, bondo, primer, cut springs.... There are a few real nice cars though! Especially someone rolling around in a 2002 M3 that's all done up and supposedly damn fast!!! I guess we'll see at the races this summer ;D

[Joel]

Just an observation here...

 

But if your

A) relying on power from a bottle (no lag from a bottle)

using a nitrous kit to do it

 

why aren't you

 

C) using nitrous in the bottle.

 

Use a wet kit, aux fuel pump (armed with the switch), and not only will you eliminate lag, you will make more power.

 

Letting off CO2 sounds like a great idea, except you'd need a 1000psi bottle of it since its not 500-700 degrees F. Theres no expansion, infact, all current exhaust would cool off and contract. The bottle would only last a few runs.

 

Joel

[jinx]

MSD two-step rev limiter allows you to build boost on the starting line. Some turbo 2.3 ford guys swear by them, claimimg it makes all the difference in the world. For the 5 speed cars, nothing had a tremendous impact on 60ft times, like the msd... and you don't have to replenish it.  Check it out

Like any other means, be sure your drivetrain is up to it

[smokehouse_83]

I have an idea i thought up one day i dont know if it would work or how well it would work of if anyone has tried it, but here it goes i think if you put some sort of gearing system in the center cartridge and geared the compressor housing down so the wheel in the compressor housing would spin much much faster then the exhaust housing wheel.  This would do away with lag and you could creat enormous amounts of boost from a t3 sized compressor housing tell me what you think.

 

Drew

[mikec]

A few things immediately come to mind...

1) the extra mass and inertia of the gears would dull response - the turbo might not be able to spool up fast enough to keep up with the engine as the RPMs climb.  Early in the age of the turbo, all sorts of effort was expended to reduce the rotating mass and inertia to keep the spoolup lag at a minimum.

2) more stuff to lubricate

3) whenever gears are used to increase RPM, the torque to drive the system goes up by the same amount - i.e. if you used a 1:2 gearing (compressor speed = twice turbine speed) then the turbine would have to pound out twice as much torque.  At low exhaust flows, that might be tough to get - so tough that you might end up loosing compressor RPMs compared to a straight 1:1 design.

4) the higher the RPM range the compressor wheel must work though (i.e. from engine idle to max power) the tougher the aerodynamic requirements.  What limits the max boost a turbo can efficiently produce is the point where the compressor airfoils get a lot more drag versus the lift they produce - lift does the compressing, drag eats power from the turbine.  Propeller aircraft, to keep the props efficient, use props that are "variable pitch" which means the blades can rotate at their hub so their "angle of attack" (i.e. the angle of the blade's width relative to the air coming at it) can be tuned to keep the airfoils near the maximum lift/drag ratio.  Ideally, props run at a fairly constant RPM.  Well, turbos do anything BUT run at a constant RPM.  The wider the RPM band the compressor has to operate over, the more the need for tunable blades or the more compromises made in the lift/drag ratio as the turbo operates.  

 

Some ChryCo turbo cars (or was it Nissans?) used what was called a "variable nozzle turbo" which was a turbo design that had a diverter flap in the exhaust manifold to turbo area: the nozzle directed idle engine exhaust at the outer edges of the turbine and as the exhaust flow increase the diverter opened more and more allowing the exhaust to hit the whole turbine wheel.  What ever became of this?  Probably mechanical unreliability - nothing like a moving flap subjected to exhaust heat!  Plus extra cost to build.

 

just my first thoughts anyway... I can't prove or disprove any of it though.

mike c.

[Tazman0072]

I remember once reading of the 323 gtx guys running NOS but only for a second or two just enough to spool up the turbo enough from a dead or slow start. But a normal mounted NOS method like on the intake manifold, etc. not like you guys said of right on the impeller. So basicly the motor gets some nos to make more exhaust and power quicker so thus it spins up the turbo faster and as it starts to run enough psi and out of the lag area it goes off. I don't recall the specifics but

[Conquest351]

Yeah that's what a lot of the Supra guys here in Austin do.  They put turbo's on their cars that would never spool up normally and then they put a fogger system in the intake manifold and hose it with a 200 shot out of the hole to spool up the turbo, then they're on their way.  I just slip the clutch and let it build boost on my Turbo Coupe, of course that car's a POS and I think the clutch is going but hey, it works.

[Frank-tsi]

I live about 15 minutes south of boston and right next to a town called Brockton. Definitely put that place on your "do not move to" list.

 

where do you live ? I go to brockton all the time....I live in R.I.  .... 8)

[Ramquest]

I read in an article a while back about using the compressor section of a turbo with

a  small hydraulic impellor run by a hydraulic pump(like power steering pump).

Running a variable hydraulic valve they could make any boost anywhere they wanted

the unit is small ,could be hid out of sight, and increased engine volumetric efficancy

from removing exhaust section.Unit runs MUCH cooler than a standard turbo and would definately reduce under hood temps.The article said they could create any

powerband they choose with no lag whatsoever and always had boost at whatever

level and rpm before they needed it.This unit spins at same Rpms as normal turbos

-just by hydraulics instead.Your biggest problem would be where to hide it ?Maybe

in a fake looking battery?Hmmm ;D

[mikec]

Lemme see if I understood that... rather than using exhaust gas energy in a turbine to spin the rest of the turbocharger, this idea uses a v-belt or something similar to spin a hydraulic pump... the pressurized hydraulic fluid then is used to spin a turbine which spins the rest of the turbocharger.  Okay, I can buy that.  But why go through the intermediary of hydraulic fluid - what you've got is a "low RPM" v-belt system going through hydraulics to become a high-RPM turbocharger based air pump... why not use a plain old supercharger instead - "low RPM" v-belt drives a relatively low RPM air pump to make boost pressure?  Of course, superchargers do have their own drawbacks - as does any mechanical system.

 

Each option, one by one, and the pros and cons that come immediately to mind:

turbocharger: uses "free" exhaust energy to create boost pressure.  But we know the turbo does block some exhaust flow so that costs a little HP, even off-boost.  The turbo is like a kink in the exhaust pipe.  Then there is the "lag" problem and the lack of low-RPM performance.  A small turbo helps low engine RPM performance at the cost of restricting high-RPM airflow - which is what the stock TD05-12a does.

 

supercharger: takes HP just to spin the thing at all times - like having the air conditioner running 100% of the time.  Some supercharger setups (e.g. original Toyota MR2) used a a/c compressor style clutch to engage/disengage the compressor when it wasn't needed... although this would introduce a bit of lag.  Superchargers - since they always run at some ratio of engine RPM - can make boost pressure at much lower RPMs than a turbo.  Most superchargers are good at low RPM boost and they tend to loose performance as engine RPMs climb - just like our stock TD05-12A turbo is actually too small to keep up with the 2.6 engine's high-RPM air appetite.  A larger supercharger can be used for high engine RPM at the expense of low engine RPM - just like a -20A or other "big" turbo.

 

hydraulics: again, takes continuous HP to run the pump (probably not much though), hydraulic pressure can be "stored" in "accumulators" (we do this on airplanes) for the times when boost is demanded at engine-idle RPMs.  What bugs me though is energy is being transformed twice: v-belt to hydraulic pressure to turbine... usually a series-system is less efficient than a single system like a v-belt directly to a supercharger.  Maybe not; it's possible the hydraulics are really efficient and the supercharger isn't - I don't know.  If the hydraulic pump is "oversized" so it makes good pressure at engine-idle RPMs then the turbo part could be spun at big-boosting numbers even if the turbo is a "big" -20A or whatever... so you could get a wider effective powerband from the turbo.  Is this band larger than what you could get from a good supercharger setup?  To me, that's the $64 question.  I can't definatively say one way or the other.

 

Where did you see that article?  I'd like to browse it myself.  

 

mike c.

[jinx]

www.corolla-quebec.cityslide.com    Corolla90

My dad and me have been working on this project for quite a while now. We had different ideas on the setup (a la Vortech, Z-Engineering, etc..) but decided to go with hydraulic because of the flexibility, innovation and challenge. We got a compressor off a 2.2 litre turbo dodge (Garrett-Air research). We have machined a shaft and a casing for it with 2 bearings. An oil passgae has been added to the casing to properly lubricate the 2 bearings for high speed rotation. We have tested on a couple of pumps and we are now using a 2 gallon hydraulic pump which will be run off on of the belts as our main pressure creator. The pump will feed by line an impeller box (attached to the end of the compressor shaft and casing) that will propel our shaft and turbine to the much needed 80000-100000 rpm. The system has been carefully tested by my dad's hydraulic engineer friend, Steve. We can easily get 80000rpm (impeller) at 1000 rpm (engine). All depends on how much pressure the line feeds to the impeller box.

 Allied signal announced a similar system to the world in February 1998 but I have yet seen one. This system should be replacing superchargers and turbochargers in the near future. Why? Less friction, less spooling, takes much less space (you can set it up anywhere you want), you can set the pressure before it reaches the engine, etc...

 My friend Pascal will probably be doing all the piping + I'm in the lookout for an air to air or air to water intercooler from either a 4agz or 3s-gte. We should have everything set up and ready for next summer. Engine is stock so we won't be running more than 6 or 7 psi.

 I'll have pics soon on my site so stay tuned!!!

 

Why a hydraulic supercharger?

 

Superchargers are air pumps or blowers in the intake system of an internal combustion engine for increasing the mass flow rate of air charge and consequent power output from the engine. A turbosupercharger (normally called a turbocharger) is a supercharger with a turbine driven by engine exhaust gas. When superchargers are driven mechanically from the shaft of the internal combustion engine, a speed increasing gear box or belt drive is needed. Such superchargers are limited to a relatively low rotating speed and are large in size. Paxon Blowers and Vortech Engineering Co. are marketing such superchargers. Fixed gear ratio superchargers suffer from two very undesirable features: 1) there is a sharp decrease in boost pressure at low engine RPM because boost pressure goes generally to the square of the speed of rotation, and 2) it is generally difficult to disconnect the supercharger from the engine when the supercharger is not needed.

 

Most automobiles are not supercharged, i.e., air is sucked into the engines merely by vacuum created by action of the engine's pistons. Some selected models are turbocharged or supercharged for improved engine performance. Most diesel engine driven trucks and buses are turbocharged. At low engine speed many of these engines suffer from a lack of air flow especially during periods of acceleration. During these periods particulate emission can be a severe problem and attempt to avoid the emissions tend to result in poor acceleration.

 

Maximum effectiveness is provided when a good simple control system. It is in some cases desirable to be able to change the supercharging pressure into the engine in a manner independent of engine speed.

 

What is needed, is a good simple system for controlling supercharger performance on typical motor vehicles which is in the works right now. We have 5 different systems. 4 electrical and one which uses vacuum.

 

___________________

 

The system was announced in February 1998 by Allied Signal (owners of Garrett). It was unveiled at an autoshow back then. It might take a couple of years for the system to come out like many of their prototype products. It might also take time before it is available to the public. (Van lines will probably get the first dibs on it). Luckily, yesterday while on the net, I decided to hit the US Patent office by curiosity and BINGO! The system has been patented in June 1995 by some guy in California. The EXACT same system me and my dad are building! The site offers all the information on the system, installation, parts and where to get them, blueprints, dyno graphs (system was installed on an RX-7). Everything we need to succesfully complete our project. An the best thing is that the system works amazingly!! The power gain and response is superb.

 

For those of you who are curious....

 

www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

 

Go into quick search (the left one), once there, you'll have an option called "numbers" on top. Go there and type the following patents..

 

5,421,310 for the Hydraulic supercharger

5,937,833 for the control system

[Ramquest]

Hydraulic pumps are an efficient way to do work.The impeller (on new turbo) is

amazingly small,so your really after pressure rather than volume-so a giant pump is

not needed.Parasitic losses are kept rather constant through-out power output(changes)although increase nominally at higher rpm's (compared to centrifugal or

roots type blowers).Superchargers demand large amounts of energy,especially roots

type blowers but you get a big kick(at lower rpms) and to keep it going at higher

rpm's you need a larger pump which increases energy required.A larger blower at

lower rpm's DOES NOT have the lag of a turbo, it just requires more energy to turn it.Most people who have one enjoy the gains so much they don't miss the energy

loss.For a TRUE street car(not race car) the response of a Blower is hard to beat(

with the exception of hyd powered turbo).I have installed blowers on a wide variety of cars(including offshore racing applications)and the instantaneous response has to be felt to be believed.Clearly blowers have a place in perf applications(otherwise

John Force wouldn't use one,they move the ENORMOUS volumes of air-required for making 6000+hp),but most of us don't have those type of airflow requirements.

 

The hyd-pwred turbo offers the advantage of efficancy(better pump design) and

separation from engine rpms from "traditional" compressor types opening amazing

possibilities.Think about it you could go with a much larger "turbo"than you could

traditionally because you control rpm's(to turbo) independently of engine rpm's.

"Turbo" could be rpm "optimized" for even more efficancy(because YOU control rpms it runs at).You could also go the other way if high rpm(volume)was not an important

factor in your setup.This idea(hyd-pwr turbo) is the logical next step and wave of the future.

 

Don't worry about your turbo going the way of the dinosaur anytime soon though.

It will take some time to come up with a universal reliable setup tunable for all

applications-although hyd-pwr turbo has enormous potential and I'm hopeful of a

quick solution(I want one).A turbo-charger(traditional) is still the most efficient design

for constant high rpm engines(high exhaust velocity, losses are minimized)that's why

they are so widely used in aircraft and marine engines. ;D