Inliners International Forums General Discussion Hi Performance Turbo straight eight?

Hell to all!I am new to this site.I have lurked around for a while,but this is my first post.My question is what do you guys think about puting a turbo on a Buick straight eight?Im not sure if any of you guys mess with straight eights,but any info would be good.What size turbo?How to manage fule?any thing else you can think of.Thanks in advance!!!


P.S.I went to Bonneville in 2004 and met a few of you guys.Thanks for being so nice!

to help size the turbo, what is the rpm range of your motor, displacement? you may want to think about a blow thru throttle body fuel injection. tom

Hi Tom

I have 4 motors to chose from,I think the small one is a 294 ci,and the big one is 320ci?...lol....I think.I think the RPM range will be less than 5000 rpm.I want to build a realy neat street motor.It is goin in a 28 tudor,that I am planing to drive to Bonneville after its done.Thanks for the help!

I guess no one cares about eights?

that's not true for your's, just for the bent version. i would recommend getting some books on turbocharging. one is by corky bell and the other is by hugh mc(somthing). do a search on ebay for turbo books and i bet you'll find them. i bet your motor will only rev to around 4000. with that in mind, a turbo from a buick 3.8 might not be far off. i don't think it really matters which cube motor you use, but use the one it the easiest to get parts for. stock pistons should work fine in low rpm's. tom

Geez, evilone, you are Nuts!

But in a good kinda way, that is. I don't really know much about this subject, but I'll share what little I've got.

There was a guy at the Denver Inliner drags a couple of years back who was using a turbo off of a small tractor engine; sorry, don't remember what type. Anyhow, the tractor engine was probably a fairly low RPM application, which would be similar to the Buick - thinking max RPM about 4500-5500. Might be something to look at.

Another approach might be to think about your straight eight as two inline fours. At around 300 cubes/ 5 liters, maybe look at two turbos sized for around 2.5 liters each. One drawback to this approach might be that the smaller gas engine turbos are designed with a higher RPM range in mind than your engine needs.

You might run this by the Turbo/Super forum over on Fordsix.com; there area lot of guys looking at turbos on small inline sixes over there.

Good luck w/ your project! Kinky6

There was an early 50's Buick with a turbocharged straight 8 for sale on ebay a couple of months ago. I will see if I can find the pictures when I get home.

The latest issue of Ol' Skook Rodz (issue 17, page 88) has an article on a 1950 Buick with a supercharged straight 8.

www.olskoolrodz.com


Also, the following thread on another board had some discussion of turbocharging a straight 8:

http://www.teambuick.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9365


And here is a thread about Bonneville salt racer with a straight 8:

http://www.teambuick.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10371


-Sean

Dang....you guys rock!I thought I was the only one who had ever thought of a turbo inline eight!....lol.Guess not!

OK, I couldn't figure out how to post pictures here so I put them on my personal website. Here is the link to pictures of the turbocharged straight 8 and a couple of pictures of the supercharged straight 8.

http://www.imasmith.com/Cars.htm

-Sean

buford26.....you are the man!

I found the link for the turbocharged Buick that was on eBay. Here is the link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1948-Buic...1QQcmdZViewItem

Maybe you could contact the seller and find out what happened to the car and if they have any info about the builder.

-Sean