Inliners International Forums General Discussion Blown and Injected McCulloch/Paxton vs Turbo

Does anyone have any info or experience using the VS57 centrifical supercharger from the Studebakers on a 292? They originally were used on the 289 V's so the cubes are close. Not sure how the power would compare to a turbo setup as all I have is the info from Tlowe's dyno test for a blow thru turbo, the blower use the original Studey hat setup. Going to use the 292 for towing 700R4 transmission.

The 289 V8 in my son's '54 Stude has a McCulloch. It makes most of power in the 2,500+ range. It is scary fast. Mike McGuire's record Bonneville runs were made with an almost stock 302 GMC with a McCulloch. He said it pulls hard through the whole rpm range. The argument will be made that the turbo is "free" power. The McCulloch is fun. John Erb in Carson City rebuilds them. Beater

The ball drive is a bit fragile if you run it too fast, Erb has some excellent articles out there on improving the oil supply.
A turbo is "free" (no actual power take-off), except for the power lost by less-than-ideal chamber evacuation on overlap (normally aspirated engines do fairly well, race engines very well, blowers completely remove all exhaust, turbos always retain some). The normal pressure ratio for streetable turbos is intake boost × 2 for backpressure: 10 psi makes 20 psi in the exhaust manifold. It can be reduced, but getting it down anywhere near boost is a lot of work. Pumping the cylinder out against 20 psi of resistance is extra work.
A 300" engine at 8:1 CR actually has 343" of possible mixture because the chamber is also full at ignition. It's not added to the official displacement because it's generally not "clean" mixture, but contains lots of exhaust gas (and of course, it means that the engine size changes when you change the CR - which it does). With a blower, the chamber volume burns also.

John has also improved the seals and the impeller (which was ripped off by guess who). He has experimented with different ball material. The biggest problem though is the races. My son worked for John for several summers and John is the reason he is a mechanical engineer. Jake's super charger has several of John's improvements. Quite a guy even if you don't count the Keith Black and Silvo-lite pistons he designed. He is working on a bunch more stuff now for Stude V8s.

Not to steal the thread, but how are those pistons? Good? Bad? they're alot cheaper than Ross...

How do they perform under boost?

Yeah, Paxtons ball drive are not that great,,,yes, they are very quiet,but once you overspin them,forget it.

The Early McCulloch will not make as much boost pressure as the later Paxton ball drive set-ups.
The So called race compressor wheel was never an option as far as I know for the McCulloch.
The early McCullochs only made 4-6 psi max on a SBF 289 that had a standard small camshaft.

My 250 6 had a large camshaft,IIRC,236 degrees duration @ .050 on a 114 lobe center .550 lift. Part of the reason I could not make that much boost pressure,if I had a stock camshaft,I would have probably made 12-15 PSI

I could only get 8-10 psi max out of my SN-89 Paxton w/a race compressor wheel installed,JR Granatelli(SP),he said I could make 15 psi no problem & bought it indirectly from him as I was @ the business where I bought it through & he had delivered it to me.

I overspun mine one time & it instantly started making noise.

They sold there ball drive blower line set-up to Paradice (SP) ,they (Ball driven blowers) are not great for high pressure output,they start to slip,that's why they are gear driven now. The Novi series.

My Camaro ran low to mid 12's w/only 8-9 psi,& it was dead quiet,I gave my friend a ride in it when I had the blower on it & he just said,man, this thing makes some great torque! He did not know I had the Paxton installed.

MBHD

The turbo is free power but the expense is in the turbo, exhaustt manifold,waste-gates and intercooler, the Paxton I'm looking at can be had for $850.00 complete but I would have to fabricate brackets and buy belts. Price wise I'm thinking the paxton will be cheaper and provide the tourque to tow a trailer, but I also want something that is practical and reliable.

They are a very good cast pistons and they will take some boost but forged is better for any serious boost.

Could be the Paxtons make more boost because they found a better impeller some where. Maybe some trusting soul sent them a prototype to test and.......

The older McCullochs can be used with the clutch and solenoid set up that in theory makes them progressive or they can be converted to direct drive like the ones used on Avantis and Larks. Brackets are not hard to make and carbs are not too hard to modify or just change the floats and put it in a box.

If you want,,, I have pics of my old Paxton set-up on my 250 L6?

The McCullochs I believe had a pulley set-up that would varyy the speed of the blower along w/the clutch for on & off.

MBHD

There used to be a great site at http://www.vs57.com but it seems to be gone. I'd like to see the 250 pics especially belts, pulleys, and brackets. I have both the long and short snout versions (variable& fixed drive) that I can take pics of. I also have pics of Jake's R-3 type air box if any of that will help.

Pictures are good!!! I have lots of room in the '58 engine bay and a good Clifford intake, just wondering if I'll have to run water heatr on it?? Or will the heat of the compressed air be enough?

I found a few from VS57, stored them here:
http://victorylibrary.com/mopar/VS57.htm

OK,here you go.







MBHD

More here.
MBHD

Hank,
Wow! That's not the simple bracketing I was thinking of. I remember some of those from a few years ago. How did all of that play out and where is it now? Gary is putting his in a '58 sedan delivery. Lots of room.

Panic,
Thanks for saving that. I didn't get the pictures but that is what I get for using a MAC. Good reading any way.

With the Paxton set-up it ran OK. It ran 12.3 - 12.6 's 108 - 112 MPH.
I had it blowing through 3 48MM DCOE Webers.

I could never get the boost I wanted because of the planitary ball drive setup,it would slip @ the upper boost pressures,8-10 max. psi

I sold the complete set-up to some guy on ebay that lives in Australia.

I had plenty of room for it in my 69 Camaro also.
Here is a pic of the race compressor wheel.



MBHD

Very respectable. 8-10 psi is quite a bit for these. Maybe I'll stick one on the 153.

Bracket overkill is the safe plan.
Many slippage, belt throwing, belt failure, lack of boost etc. problems on high-boost ATI Pro-Chargers etc. can be traced back to trusting the original ATI brackets.
When in doubt, add 1/8" to the plate thickness, and 2 more bolts.

If you put one of those on a 153,that will def make more than 10 psi of boost pressure.

MBHD

Half the cubes, it could be fun. The bottom end is strong. It's something to think about.

You can strengthen the bottom ends even more by using a small journal 4 bolt kit from Milodon or other manufacturers.

Do they make a 4 cylinder set or do you use a SBC set?

I use the SBC (265,283,327)sets, as long as they are small journal.

Hank, after looking at the pix, what was the unit originally designed for?? the unit I'm looking at now is at least 30 years older and has a single V-belt drive, but your pix show a serpintine stlye belt which may be a bit more reliable.

The head unit was just a universal unit.
The year I bought it new was,,,can't remember,late 80-early 90's.

The SN89 (Model number)was used on SBC, SBF kits.
I made all the serpintine pulleys,brackets,ect.

The thing about serpintine belts,better make sure they are lined up close to perfect,otherwise they will move.


MBHD

The V requires a bit less precision in alignment, and is very effective for each inch of width, but a single row probably isn't enough for safety and positive drive at high boost. If you run multiples, try to get the same brand and series (not just the length) to be sure of equal tension. Due to the wedging action it needs slightly less pre-load than a flat belt.
A serpentine is easy to adapt since the same profile is used on many modern accessory drives, but the lateral alignment (front to rear) is more critical, and the shaft parallel also - anything that allows the shaft to bend or flex will jump a serpentine off, and it may be badly damaged by riding over the end flange. It looks safe to run a 6-rib belt on an 8-rib pulley as long as the ribs align, which gives you some design freedom.

The early McCullocks (SP),did not make much boost & to my knowledge the "V" belt does not slip. I could be incorrect,but they were low boost blowers.


MBHD

You're right, the original drive was good for the designed purpose.
I'm not sure if higher RPM will overload it since it automatically increases belt tension, but higher boost pressure is going to need more friction surface at some point.
If you have a width problem, just going to larger diameter on both pulleys helps since the actual driving surface isn't the belt width and profile, but a (more or less) fixed percentage of the circumference. A 6" pulley driving a 9" pulley at 1.5:1 may have 40% belt wrap on the 6" and 55% on the 9", or 23" length.
If both sizes were increased in proportion to 8" and 12" (same ratio), the belt contact goes up by 33%.
Re-positioning the tensioner pulley to the outside, and closer to the centerline also increases belt wrap (although flexing the belts more increases heat and reduces life).

That's part of the reason I used an 8" serpentine crank pulley.More belt contact.
If you look closely, it was actually a 10 rib pulley.

I really did not have any belt slipping problems w/the 6 rib set-up.

I used a factory GM 1990 Camaro V-6 belt spring loaded belt tensioner, so the belt was never really all that tight ,even w/the outside idler pulley I added,I just wanted to have more belt wrap around the pulleys,just in case.

My friend had a roots type B&M 162 SBC blower w/a 6 rib belt & it would slip & burn up the belt all the time.


MBHD

The unit I'm intending to use is a single V pulley (Suudebaker) and because the plan is for pulling a trailer and not racing the RPM's will probably never see more than 4000-4500 and that would probably be rare.

You do not have to turn the engine high rpm to spin the blower fast,all depends on what size pulleys you are going to use.

IIRC, the Paxton supercharger I had, max RPM was 40,000-42,000
Plantary ball drive spin it 4.4 times faster than the crankshaft.



MBHD

I'm not really wanting spin the blower that fast, I kinda thought about 8-12 boost max, now do I need to or is it recomended to install an intercooler? pop off valve/waste gate? and the system now has a hat style inlet to the carb that bolts on like an air cleaner, is the preferable over the boxes I have seen with the carb inside? If I use an intercooler will I have to water heat the intake manifold, the car will be a year around driver so 0 degrees in the winter and 100 in the summer. I'm waiting to hear back from CompCams on the cam and valve train.

Using a complete carb encloser is not necessary if you mod your carb ,like sealing the throttle shafts & other items.
http://www.theturboforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=136075.0

A carb encloser is pricey.

Some people say if your running low boost,you do not need an intercooler. I say, anytime you can lower your intake temps,do it.
Don't really need an intercooler if you are running 100% methanol in your gas tank. If not, use a methanol/water injection kit.
I did not run an intercooler,but I also had a positive deck,(pistons came out past the top of the block).002-.004"
That helps reduce the chance of detonation.

A B.O.V. will stop the pressurized air from going backwards through the blower.
I used an old HKS BOV.You can see it in a previous post pic.
Wastegates are for a turbocharged set-up.


If you will drive in cold weather ,a heated intake is a good idea.

Run a wide lobe center cam,115 or wider for a smooth idle,& not too much duration causing the boost pressure to just blow past the exhaust valves & not pressure the engine.

The cam I had was approx .550 lift,236 in 246 ex degrees duration @ .050 on a 115 lobe center,you could definately hear it. Too big for a tow vehicle,but good for my daily driver. 254 ci L6

MBHD

anytime you can lower your intake temps,do it

X2

I think I will try and go with an intercooler, never been a big fan of injecting water into an engine with the zero BTU factor involved. And it looks like forged 8.5:1 pistons with zero gap rings, the cam will be similar to a hydraulic turbo cam that CompCams says will have more lobe seperation and a faster decline on the backside of the lobes. Because this will be a tow enginme I can't justify the cost of special rods and crank work, but will incorporate a remote oil cooler and double filters,port match and O-ring. Now to work out the vacum problems.

I inject 100% methanol in my Syclone,& it works GREAT!
http://alkycontrol.com/
I drove the Syclone on the street last week & it pulled a 1.62 60' according to my Beltronics FX2.
When building your engine,,,try to get real close if not a zero deck.

MBHD