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Not exactly.
Many if not most classes of motorsport ban forced induction.
For other classes of motorsport such as drag racing and Bonneville, massive low end torque and crisp throttle response are worth nothing.

Where twincharging really shines is hillclimbing, road racing, and rallying, and that is where you find many twincharged cars. Pikes peak has seen a lot of twincharged entrants over many years.

Then there were the Group B rally cars that were twincharged.
Check out the Lancia Delta S4, these 1.8 litre cars were routinely putting over 500 Hp through all four wheels, and nothing at the time could catch them.
Today, 500 Hp does not seem such a big deal.
But twenty five years ago, 0 to 60 Mph in 2.3 seconds was sensational performance.

Unfortunately the very high speeds this produced on dirt roads led to a large number of fatal high speed crashes, and Group B was then discontinued as being far too dangerous.

Nothing wrong with the cars, or the technology, or the reliability, they were just too powerful and too fast for racing in gravel and mud.

There have been several production twincharged cars too. The Nissan March, and VW GTi, just to name two.
The VW example was built for economy not performance. It is probably too expensive to go into very wide production, a larger capacity engine is always going to be cheaper than an engine + turbo + supercharger.

I was just reading a road test of a the new 2011 model Audi A1 Sport that is twincharged, I doubt if they would have done that if it did not work or was unreliable LOL !!

For road racing, nothing can beat twincharging for a wide flat torque curve, plenty of top end power, and fast throttle response.

It is something the wider petrol head community mostly still do not know about, although twincharging has been around as long as both the supercharger, and the turbocharger, at least a hundred years, it is nothing new.

It is just cheaper for the manufacturers to build a much larger capacity engine than to build a twincharged smaller engine.
But if you wish to build a small light weight race/road car with a really compact and powerful engine, it is well worth investigating the benefits of twincharging.

When you do, one thing will immediately become very obvious.
Most of the available power in the lower gears will be completely unusable without four wheel drive.
A moments thought might convince you that the mid (rear) engined Lancia Delta S4 could never have achieved 0-60 in 2.3 seconds with two wheel drive.

I have been building, and helping others to build some very successful (and reliable) twincharged engines for a very long time, it is not all that difficult.

All this is exactly why I am currently building what will very likely be the first four wheel drive Hot Rod in Australia, unless someone else beats me to it, which is fairly unlikely.

Worst Locostusa thread ever

You know the scene in Happy Gilmore where his "happy place" turns all evil and nasty, that's how I feel about this stupid bickering, it doesn't belong here.

Mods, make it go away

+1

im done with this thread.

Right at the start I said:



At that time I didn't think we would see this level of arguing, or that it would get so personal. I am very sorry about that for everyone's sake.

I know I speak for the many here when I say that good ideas from everywhere are welcome. This site is called Locost.USA, but it's not intended to be limited to people of just one place. No other country has been better at harnessing the talent, intelligence and energy of people from around the world than the USA and this site generally reflects that positive attitude.

I'm not ready to give up on this thread yet. There's too much good information that could be shared and there's obviously a strong pool of talent out there. Maybe we should take a break from it for a few days and let everyone take a step back and reflect?

Regards,

Lonnie, in retrospect I agree with you and apologize for any part I may have had in inducing the level of behavior observed in this thread so far.
You have, in my opinion, raised a good topic that does deserve to be explored, chosen practices for boost within a given set of parameters and what where the results.

What I can tell you from my experience, which is primarily diesel since I roll to the sweet smell of the soybean is;
The less restrictive the plumbing after the turbo the faster the spool up of a turbosupercharger. (I've only had 3 gas turbo's total, fun cars but all of the "polish the turd" variety.)
This can help compensate for the lag of a slightly overlarge turbo.
You'll notice the ready availability of larger down tubes and the claimed output gains from them in the diesel truck market. ..
Wrapping the downtube is another easy way to gain performance, keeping the heat in the exhaust stream keeps flow speed up helping the gasses leave quickly as well as improving driver comfort and keeping underhood temps down.
Ball bearings instead of the typical bushing are another good choice to help reduce lag and lag is the killer on a track.
Having to pedal down and pray for boost is a bit disconcerting at speeds in excess of 80 coming out of a corner surrounded by other cars and waiting until you're past the apex to apply throttle makes for a much slower time overall.
While I have seen footage of one driver leaving tire tracks as he upshifted while exiting a corner at speed (and was "pushed" up the corner bank by centripedal force, dude was going something well in excess of the typical corner exit speed), that's not something I would expect to be in the reach of the average driver. .. and a bit beyond my personal comfort level.
The cooler the intake charge, the higher the power output and there are fewer other potentially unfortunate issues. (preignition being the worst of them though I have seen and touched a Windsor block that cracked quite literally in half between the banks.)
Air cooling of the charge works great if traveling at speed in situations where there is a constant demand for charge cooling and can be a better choice since the supply of cooling medium is unlimited however an air/air cooler is space intensive.
A water/air cooler might weigh a little bit more depending on design and cool as well as or better in the short term compared to an air/air unit but has a limited time before it approaches "heat soak" and loses some of it's cooling capability.
However a water/air intercooler is much, much, much smaller than an air/air system and already available in wrecking yards as a Cummins or Jaguar part. I think the Jag ones are pretty neat, very small packaging and capable of handling a 2 liter without inducing restriction (they use 2 of them on a 4 liter from the factory). The Cummin's units are sized for a 5.9 at 3k rpm so they should be capable of handling the flow for a 2-2.3 liter at 6500-7000 rpm I would think. Remember, a diesel has no throttle plate so its going to flow the total capacity of the engine all the time. ..
There are ways to extend the cooling capacity such as the ice bucket system I used to cool the fuel in my Buick, available from drag specialty shops everywhere.
An ice bucket system can have the added advantage of providing a cooling source for a vest so YOU don't overheat too. .. A problem that many of our southern members will attest to in the summer months, fire suits get awful dang uncomfortable after a day of wearing one in a 90 degree plus climate.
A common source for the tank is a styrofoam cooler. ..
Two things I do highly recommend for longevity in any highly stressed engine is oil squirters for the pistons and a large oil cooler. Engine oil does far more for engine cooling than most people are aware of and is capable of a lot more than the typical factory system takes advantage of. .. The engine oil cooler off of a turbo 300d Merc is actually a very nice size to mount horizontally and readily available in wrecking yards.

hi i your here for info , watch, listen, every body has good or bad ideas, use you head a bit, google the questions an answers.
when i started my build i knew nothing about after market fuel injecting or turbos. research got me to megasquirt, great system , does lots, easy to install an tune. mind you i have not been on a dyno yet, but i can play back every drive slowly to check tune, make mods. 1/2 hour to get running in the garage, 2 or 3 more to be ok ,, 10 or so hours am i am very close.
lots of turbo info out there, i was able to size up, get a $199.00 ebay turbo, yes it looked just as nice as the big buck vw dealer one.
so far so good, yes running mobil 1 oil

Let's not delete. All of you folks in the discussion have useful experience and perspectives. Including the ones that are saying this thread is a place to stay away from, maybe especially.

I'd like folks to go a little slower and resist posting in the heat of the moment, if they are upset or uncomfortable. I expect the contributors of this thread to fix this situation by making it a useful reference going forward. Yes you. So report back here with something useful by next Monday.

Please respect the thread title and the audience. Acknowledge the issues are multi-dimensional, do not stand in your corner of the problem and beat on other people.

Reliable is probably more "Realistic" then pop 'n swap. So for race engines 10 - 50 hours, you really can't dump your oil on the track every year. Good solutions for 200 - 300 HP with other stuff considered more extreme would be a good start. Price, complexity. fabrication skills and learning curves are always a big consideration for us.That's realistic too.

So please guys fix this up. I know you can do it.

Ah, Marcus, they overcame that problem in the early 70's by o-ring'ing the block and heads. They would cut a fine groove in both that lined up with each other. They used copper wire in the groove. The 1600 and 2.0 pinto motors were the first serious competition to the all-out tweaked VW in off road racing back then. The guys loved em because they were cheap and torque-y. I just loved the sound they made coming around the track.

Tom

I used to o'ring the block only. I do not think that they can both be done - impossible to have perfect alignment. BMW offered a "cutting" headgasket that actually cut itself into the head for a better seal. One time thing without surfacing the head.

JMR

You too? The torque-convertor-style absorber for my old Clayton chassis dyno has been sitting on the bench for a while, waiting for me to get around to brazing or welding the trailing edges of the vanes. Apparently a previous owner didn't bother to read the part of the manual about corrosion inhibitors.

The turbo Kawasakis and Hondas were made for quite a while, in "bike years." The Suzuki was a one-year-only, and Yamaha only two years. I put 30,000 miles on my Seca 650 before it was terminated by a crackhead in a Buick.

I wired the wastegate shut, which bumped the boost from 6 PSI to 15 PSI, set by a popoff valve on the airbox. The valve wasn't big enough to completely control the boost, which would eventually creep up from 18 to 20 PSI, depending on outside temperature.

A close friend had a Kawasaki ZX1000, back when it was pretty much the big dog in the American market. In any kind of drag race situation he would annihilate me. On a roll-on, I could just watch him shrink in my rearview mirrors until the rev limiter shut me down at just over 150mph. Then he'd eventually creep by, mirrors folded in, laying on the rank. Assuming there was enough road...

What killed the turbo bikes? They were all 550-750cc, cost more than the 1000-1200cc bikes, had no better performance in stock form, and insurance was double that of a Ninja-death-bike, assuming you could buy it at all. American insurance companies loathed anything with the T-word.

I haven't forgotten about this thread, but did want to let emotions settle out.

Here is something for the GM/Chevrolet enthusiasts, which I once was until I owned a Z-28 built in the Roger Smith era. It probably does not qualify as inexpensive, but may become a realistic option. After decades of ignoring the I4, it looks like GM has decided to (potentially) compete with Ford. The GM Performance Division brought their whole dog and pony show to the Fall Del Mar Nationals. They actually showcased something other than the (one must admit formidable) range of V8s and promoted the Turbo EcoTech.

Photos of a cut-away for the 2.0L, 260 HP, 260 Ft-Lb version once used in the Pontiac Solstice GXP are below.





There was also a real-world, working example of the engine in racing configuration (I believe this one is 2.2L) producing 500+ HP according to the GM person I spoke with. While obviously not a good example for a street Locost, it does show GM Performance is starting to see value in promoting the smaller engines, particularly of the turbocharged variety.





At this very moment, GM Performance is debating whether or not to offer the 260 HP, 2.0L version as a crate engine. It will be in production for two GM models here in North America for 2012. So, for all you GM guys, if you're interested you should contact the GM Performance Division and express your interest in this engine while there's still time to influence their decision.

Cheers,

That would be one hell of a good start.

Look at the size of that thing though. We do have an excellent build with a turbo using that motor. Check Rad's build log.

Guess I'm starting out grumpy today, but what I would love to see is physically smaller and simpler motors. When you open the cowl of a Seven / Locost etc. and can't see the ground around the engine, I think something has been lost along the way.

Maybe the GM 2.8 with simpler log runners would fit that bill? Heavier then I would like though. Hmmm, maybe the old Ford SVO 2.3 with a transaxle in back. Still heavy though...

I don't think o-rings solved the problem for the Ford xflow and the Lotus and Cosworth engines based on that block. I don't know why. As for the "open design engine project" I know of an effort to fix these issues by redesigning the xflow block and a twin cam head for turbo by altering the water jacket passages. It was a big effort with custom made head gaskets. Nearly microscopic porosity in one cylinder bore caused the engine to eat itself on the dyno though. The tiny hot spot of a buried bubble in the casting caused knock under heavy boost. Inspection with a magnifier found the tiny heat discolored spot. Perhaps they will try again, I don't know. Maybe a cast iron block would have been more suitable.