Supercharging an Elan

[chris.t]

Prompted by Phil's Ad in the Elan Parts For Sale section I was wondering if anyone has done this and what the results were.

cheers Chris

[Dave Eds]

if someone else pays for it he can fit it to my red one

[chris.t]

I was just interested in how the intake manifold worked/fitted, how the throttle body was sorted. Is fueling an issue. Would the ecu be able to cope. Might be cheaper to buy the rest of the mini.

[Nige]

I like the idea of supercharging and instinctively prefer it to turbocharging. I think the packaging would be a challenge on the Elan as there isn't that much room under the bonnet and wherever you put the blower is going to be constrained by the need to drive it, only when that's sorted can you start looking at the plumbing.

I wonder if this work on my NA

[bobbrown]

I would think that there are a number of problems to overcome like
Where to mount it, not easy in such a tight space.
The drive, the crank pulleys on the Elan are not going to be wide enough for the power consumed by the supercharger and you need to get a good wrap on the belt.
The plumbing may prove tricky.
Exhaust manifold as the original will not work.
Camshafts, the turbo cams will probably be unsuitable.
ECU????

The NA may be a better starting point but not sure the compression ratio is right and may need to be reduced may be a turbo block with a NA head and cams.

All gets rather complex

Bob

[rip]

The NA may be a better starting point but not sure the compression ratio is right and may need to be reduced may be a turbo block with a NA head and cams.

Not sure NA cams would be right either. Valve timing on an NA is designed to use the exhaust's momentum to induce fresh charge to the cylinders. Forced induction is well-named.

All gets rather complex

[bobbrown]

For supercharged engines you probably want less duration on the inlet cam and more on the exhaust with less overlap
It may well be you want the inlet cam from the turbo as it has less duration and the exhaust cam from the NA as it has more duration and then move the timing to reduce the overlap. All of which gets tricky.
If it was a simple case of bolt it on every one would do it.

[GeoffSmith]

An electrically assisted turbo would probably be a lot simpler.

[bobbrown]

An electrically assisted turbo would probably be a lot simpler.

The major problem with that is it takes 35Kw to drive the thing, thats a lot of power, big power storage issues, and keeping the power storage cool (liquid cooling) never mind the weight of that little lot + cables are going to be big and thus heavy, bit like a hybrid car just to drive a turbo.

Bob

[GeoffSmith]

That's where this one's clever Bob as it only supplements when there is 'turbo lag':

They only use the battery/capacitor and motor until the impeller kicks in, so although it's tens of kilowatts, only a few tens of kilojoules are required. Most rechargeable batteries will store at least 100kJ/kg so the weight is not the issue but getting the power out will be without using very high voltages. Ultracaps are probably the better option as they will give ~10kJ/kg and you can get modules with tens of Farads at >100 V with only a few milliohm ESR, so it should be possible to get the power out quickly enough. Once target boost is reached, they don't open a wastegate, but they load the motor by using it as a generator to re-charge the energy store.

[surfboardfiller]

Supercharger plumbing is easy and there is loads of room in the Elan. Mounting it is not difficult, it fits in a MINI!
Bob's right in that an exhaust manifold for a turbo isn't right for SC, unless you have both of course, you just take the Turbo exhaust manifold off and replace it with the NA one. Not difficult really.

The supercharger is essentially an air pump/compressor like the turbo, put any compresser device on the car ant it will be a drain on the engine, some put back a bit more than they drain and some put a lot back.
An electronic compressor will be a strain on the alternator instead of the main crank shaft which will not gain you anything and you will loose more energy through the inefficiency of converting mechanical energy into electrical and back again.
I think electronic compressors are a con for people who don't really know what they are doing, they have been around for years, how many car manufacturer's fit them?

[chris.t]

I was wondering how you connect the charger to the head. Presumably it's not charge cooled?

[bobbrown]

An electric supercharger driven from the alternator is never going to work as the power drawn by a supercharger is in the 30+ Kw thats 2500 Amps which is why the ones advertised on fleabay are as much uses as an ashtray on a motor bike.
I think Geoffs option is to use the compressor to drive a combined generator/motor at high speeds sort of 150,000 rpm to reduce turbo lag but then you still have the problem of storing all that energy. The Tesla runs the traction motors at 375 volts so the current is reduced but even at those voltages for 30 kw you are at 80 amps.

Chris I think the Mini uses an intercooler mounted on top of the engine, so with an outlet adapter it would be straight forward to plumb the system into the Elan's existing intercooler but thats the easy bit.

[surfboardfiller]

An electric supercharger driven from the alternator is never going to work as the power drawn by a supercharger is in the 30+ Kw thats 2500 Amps which is why the ones advertised on fleabay are as much uses as an ashtray on a motor bike.
I think Geoffs option is to use the compressor to drive a combined generator/motor at high speeds sort of 150,000 rpm to reduce turbo lag but then you still have the problem of storing all that energy. The Tesla runs the traction motors at 375 volts so the current is reduced but even at those voltages for 30 kw you are at 80 amps.

Chris I think the Mini uses an intercooler mounted on top of the engine, so with an outlet adapter it would be straight forward to plumb the system into the Elan's existing intercooler but thats the easy bit.

Yes, that's what I was thinking. What you really want is a KERS fitted.

How ever you go about it the Supercharger is a serious project not for the feint hearted.
I'd prefer driving an Elan over a MINI by a massive margin in any situation or circumstance. It's a much better car.

[bobbrown]

KERS in F1 gives 60Kw (80Hp) for around 6.75 seconds and weighs about 35kg not the sort of weight you would want to add to an Elan, its OK on a F1 car as they add ballast (up to 70Kg) to conform to the weight limits of 640Kg including the driver.

[surfboardfiller]

Thers will be a KERS fitted to the new Jaguar 2 seater (road) sports car, I think the F1 system output is heavily regulated by the FIA. Although I find myself going off topic.