My half baked FI idea (not electric supercharger)

So I was sitting here working on starting an ebay scam buisness selling electric superchargers (those things are selling for $120, I have to give it a try), when an even stupider but plausible idea came to mind. Hows about a compressed air tank that can deliver like 14 seconds worth of air for a 1/4 mile run? It could be connected to an e-cutout, so under normal opperation it runs off the stock intake, but flip the switch and open the nozzle, and compressed air gets blown in via metal tubing.
1: is there any possibility it could actualy work, or
2: would somebody be stupid enough to buy it?
sorry, I know this is on the brink of a lounge topic, but I figured I'd see what ya'll have to say first.

Good healthy SBC could suck down a 25 gallon air tank in about .5 seconds....

Mike

Good healthy SBC could suck down a 25 gallon air tank in about .5 seconds....

Mike

Well, those ebay scams rely on stupid people. I don't think ricer's know how much air an engine consumes per second.

It'd probably sell to some jackass.

Even if you could supply a sufficient quantity of air to the engine, there is nothing there to keep it from escaping back out the intake. You wouldn't actually build boost because the existing throttle body and intake piping would act like a huge path for the air to escape through.

Just cut to the chase and install Nitrous.

why not just go down to home depot and buy a small tank of liquid oxygen and hook that up. You know the ones they sell for the propane torches. :D

Nice to see people just sit around and come up with ways of scamming people...

What goes around comes around.. And one day you will have to answer for stuff like that.

I don't think anyone on here is trying to scam anyone. Just joking around.

....

if you're looking to waste time, try my idea.



Build a turbocharger kit where the turbo is pushing air at higher presser say 12psi, with the intake psi being lesser say 8psi. The air will stay at higher pressure all the way through the intercooler, then drop to lesser and then into the engine. This will probably slow spooling, but on a V8 that's not much of an issue. This way the air entering the engine would be (assuming an awesome intercooler) compressed and at a temp lower than ambient temps.


The regulation of this pressure would be tough though. Let me know how it works out so i can patent it.


:confused: :confused: :confused: WTF :confused: :confused: :confused:

if you're looking to waste time, try my idea.



Build a turbocharger kit where the turbo is pushing air at higher presser say 12psi, with the intake psi being lesser say 8psi. The air will stay at higher pressure all the way through the intercooler, then drop to lesser and then into the engine. This will probably slow spooling, but on a V8 that's not much of an issue. This way the air entering the engine would be (assuming an awesome intercooler) compressed and at a temp lower than ambient temps.


The regulation of this pressure would be tough though. Let me know how it works out so i can patent it.


i get what your saying, maybe the willie nelson guy will use a couple bowls full of the sticky icky trying to figure out how to do that one.....hehehe.

as for the bottle of air theory. being a firefighter i can tell you that the compressed air from a bottle wouldnt support the flow needed. yeah, you can get 4500psi air coming from the bottle but pressure isnt the same a volume.

ever had your blower hooked up with out the piping on and actually felt the air? those sucker move some air!!!

but rock on man! "light it up, smoke it up pass it to anotha...." cypress hill

but rock on man! "light it up, smoke it up pass it to anotha...." cypress hill

"roll it up, light it up, smoke it up, inhale, exhale"

"roll it up, light it up, smoke it up, inhale, exhale"

thank you, i stand corrected. dont listen to that kinda music much anymore...

Mickey Thompson developed a AA dragster in the early 70's that used compressed air in lieu of a supercharger. It was never completely sorted out and the NHRA rulemakers took so long to decide whether or not to allow it in competition, he lost interest.

One of the main challenges was weight of the array of compressed air tanks required for a 1/4 mile run. I remember an article about it at the time in Hot Rod Magazine titled "Mickey's Bottle Baby".

thank you, i stand corrected. dont listen to that kinda music much anymore...

I wasn't trying to correct you. I thought you were quoting another song of theirs, since they all seem to talk about smokin. I don't listen to them either.

where the turbo is pushing air at higher presser say 12psi, with the intake psi being lesser say 8psi.

Only reason that happens is because of efficiency losses and because of the delta across the core. 12psi-8psi is a HUGE loss of power.

This will probably slow spooling, but on a V8 that's not much of an issue.

This will have no effect on spool that you will ever notice...

This way the air entering the engine would be (assuming an awesome intercooler) compressed and at a temp lower than ambient temps.

That's just not possible. As you expand a mass of moving air the pressure drops and the speed drops. So you'll end up making the turbocharger go out of efficiency, more work to make less power, AND get less air into the engine... Dont forget your engine bay temps are higher then your temps after the intercooler. In this volume of air that idea isnt possible at all. Get a liquid/air intercooler and fill it with Ice. Call it a day. Or a Methanol kit. Or just run Methanol instead of gasoline.

That big ass bottle of air might work a lot better if you were to inject it directly into the cylinders, in-sync with the compression strokes (shoot a quick burst of air into the cylinder as soon as the intake valve is seated)... but that would be a monstrocity of a challenge in itself. Then talk about the process of getting enough fuel in there to burn with all the added oxygen.

Hell, while your at it figure out how to do this with nitrous. A direct-injection fuel/N2O setup could be made for some KILLER power.

I think that if you get one of those huge compressed air tanks, it might work. I'm talking about one of those things that looks like a scuba tank, but taller.

You could use a -4AN hose fitting and pump it directly into one of the fittings on the intake manifold. It'll make the intake charge nice and cold as well. However, you're back to the problem of why not just use nitrous then. Not to mention the fun of trying to regulate a huge psi to run on your engine. Also good luck fitting that tank in the car and hauling the extra 100+ lbs when empty, let alone full.

If you could find some way to make a "spark plug" that could act as an oxygen injector and a spark mechanism in one piece, then that would be the trick. I'm sorry, but if you really want some oxygen injection method to work right, then you're going to have to find a way to get it directly into the cylinder by means of direct injection. Shooting air from a tank into the intake manifold won't do much good since the most critical pressure differentials exist between the cylinders and the manifold... and not the manifold and the outside air. Let those thousands of psi in the tank work for you in a direct injection method. Having 30+ psi of fuel and air/nitrous in the cylinder right after the intake valve closes will make a huge improvement in power. Just grind a cam to move the IVC event a little earlier and push the combustion mixture in there with the tank's pressure to make maximum power. Sure, you'll give up a good bit of power this way when the system is off... but DAYUM when that thing is armed at WOT!!!

I wish it were more simple in reality though. If a direct-injection method like this could be perfected for the gasoline engines we know on the streets today, all the imperfections between a 23* head and a 11* head would become a moot point. Just inject a fuel/air/nitrous mixture directly into the cylinder and most of the work is done for the system without the need for complicated and expensive heads, cam, valvetrain components, etc.

Hmmm, i'm thinking about making a post in the advanced tech forum about this to see what those guys have to say....

Why not just run a small cylinder of liquid Oxygen, and supply it thru a fogger nozel with the correct amount of additional fuel. Would probably burn pretty hot and be hard to control. But think of it, all the power adders are doing is putting more oxygen and fuel in the combustion chamber, so why not just use what your trying to get in there by other means. LOX :p :bow:

Wow, these is getting pretty intense. Pure oxygen, I can't believe I didn't think of that. Wouldn't 100% O2 make more power than nitrous, as nitrous is also has nitrogen, which I assume doesn't combust as redily as oxygen. I'm thinking fill up tank with liquid oxygen and direct port that into the cylinders. :eek:

Or, as I said earlier, just use Nitrous.

Wow, these is getting pretty intense. Pure oxygen, I can't believe I didn't think of that. Wouldn't 100% O2 make more power than nitrous, as nitrous is also has nitrogen, which I assume doesn't combust as redily as oxygen. I'm thinking fill up tank with liquid oxygen and direct port that into the cylinders. :eek:

Are you being serious?

yeah youll make a lot of power for a second....then your motor explodes into itty bitty peices.

Wow, these is getting pretty intense. Pure oxygen, I can't believe I didn't think of that. Wouldn't 100% O2 make more power than nitrous, as nitrous is also has nitrogen, which I assume doesn't combust as redily as oxygen. I'm thinking fill up tank with liquid oxygen and direct port that into the cylinders. :eek:


oh yeah. oxygen itself isnt flammable. it dramatically increases combustion.

pretty sure nitrous gives a lot of power due to the cooling effect too. but im not into nitrous......

Haha, its funny you guys should talk about injecting O2 instead of N2O- I just did a report on this for my combustion class. There are two main reasons why people don't inject O2-

First, you would have to inject it in liquid form to get any realistic gain due to the density of oxygen air being so low. This is also the reason why nitrous is injected as a liquid which is then quickly vaporized. Liquid oxygen is EXTREMELY reactive, with just about anything. Handling it is very dangerous, and requires a ton of special equipment to make sure it doesn't combust with everything it touches. Liquid nitrous is not very reactive at all, and if it spills from your tank, it won't create a dangerous situation.

The second reason is this: the boiling temperature of liquid oxygen is -297 F, while liquid nitrogen boils at -130 F. It would be pretty damn hard to keep oxygen as a liquid (it would have to be at ridiculously high pressures at say 70F), much harder than it would be to keep nitrous as a liquid in your tank.

So those are the main reasons... plus, seeing that you can get 500+ hp from nitrous injection, I don't think that anyone needs to be looking for another injection method that will give more power than nitrous. ;)

I'm thinking fill up tank with liquid oxygen and direct port that into the cylinders. :eek:
Let us know how that works out for you.
Have you considered filling the car with helium to make it lighter?