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00:00 This is the battle of budget boost you're watching engine masters presented by AMSOIL and this time
00:06 We're gonna have a look at the power and the aggravation involved with installing the most affordable
00:12 Implements of supercharging that you can buy in a kit that is a Paxton centrifugal supercharger
00:18 That is a wine roots blower. We're gonna find out which one of these is better for you
00:23 [Music]
00:44 Look it's an actual Ford on engine masters
00:48 We actually love this little motor and you might remember it if you're a fan of our roadkill show
00:54 We put this engine in a 1968 Ford Ranchero and drove it all the way to Alaska from California
01:00 And it got shipped back and on the ship out there on the ocean this thing got so cruddy and horrible
01:06 But Steve Dulcich grabbed it from us
01:08 He put new rings and bearings in it and dressed it all up looking all swanky and ready for its star appearance on engine masters
01:15 This is a naturally aspirated trim makes 450 horsepower and 440 pound-feet of torque
01:21 This is a small block Ford configuration the same as the 302 but it's
01:27 363 cubic inches because it has a bigger stroke 3.4 inches and an aftermarket block with a 4 and 1/8 inch bore
01:35 So that adds up to a 363 the whole bottom end is from Dart machinery
01:40 They sell the whole short block under their SHP line. It's all forged stuff pretty good deal
01:45 It also has Dart heads on it. They have a 195 CC intake runner
01:49 This thing has 9.2 to 1 compression. The camshaft is a comp cams nitrous grind. It's the NX
01:56 282 HR for hydraulic roller - 14 meaning it's on a hundred and fourteen degree lobe separation angle
02:04 Which in theory is going to be good for the boost that we're gonna throw at it
02:07 This carburetor is a Holley 850 Ultra XP. We used it naturally aspirated
02:14 We're also gonna put it on top of the Y and root supercharger
02:17 We're gonna try and use it with the blow-through setup on the Paxton centrifugal blower right now
02:23 Let's hang this thing on the dyno and find out what it does under pressure
02:27 We're gonna lay the boost to it. The first blower that we're going to install is the Y and
02:33 174 mini supercharger that acts like a belt-driven intake manifold. It is the roots blower portion of the Comparo
02:40 This is the first Ford we've done at Engine Masters. I know what do you think? And it was my build too
02:45 I know but it was your engine. So if it goes wrong all the Ford guys will blame you
02:49 This is what's called a roots supercharger the design where you have two rotors in here that spin together
03:01 It's actually a positive displacement compressor
03:04 This is a hundred and seventy four cubic inches every time it rotates all the way around it shoves that much air into the engine
03:10 You can see how they roll around here and are sealed with Teflon
03:14 The whole reason any supercharger including a turbo makes more power with boost is because you're cramming more air into the engine when you have
03:21 More air you can burn more fuel and with more fuel you get more power. Plop the carburetor on let's check it out
03:29 Prop the carburetor on in the right direction
03:31 People are always asking us why aren't we using EFI?
03:36 You know what? A lot of it is is we've got to crank these videos out really quickly and this way
03:40 We don't have to hook up a bunch of sensors or do any wiring or create a tune-up for anything
03:45 This is just simpler for initial fire up and running and a wide open throttle
03:49 It tends to make kind of the same horsepower either way and also for this particular test
03:54 We're talking entry-level superchargers and entry-level guys often don't have EFI and this is rudimentary technology. Let's face it
04:01 As you can see we don't have an ordinary engineer we have pretty much a racing engine with supercharger
04:11 So that's gonna put extra demands on the oil. We talked to the experts at AMSOIL and they've recommended their
04:16 1550 which seems like a very heavy grade of motor oil
04:20 But with the supercharger puts a lot of load on the internal components
04:23 So you want that extra cushion and the extra protection?
04:26 It also has a protection of zinc in the additive package and phosphorus and other ingredients that really protect the engine
04:32 And let's see if I can pour this as good as Frye burger. Whoa, and I'll put before I make a mess
04:38 If you're seeing some smoke out there in the room
04:42 That is just a little oil leak that we've got coming out of the flywheel bolts in the back. So don't worry about it
04:47 [Engine Revving]
05:04 Okay, Oh
05:07 5.6 5.9 pounds of boost but at peak power
05:10 Yeah, that's about it five and a half pounds of boost neighborhood of let's see
05:15 What kind of power we made with the wine blower at five and a half pounds of boost we made
05:18 473 pound-feet of torque and
05:21 522 horsepower. Here's the problem though
05:24 520 horsepower is not a number you want to throw out when you have a blown small block, but it's not a whole blower
05:30 It's only a half a blower. Well, you know, the solution is more boost, right?
05:35 Well, I did get a smaller pulley for it. We should probably do that and see what it does. I'm ready to go
05:41 What we're doing now is changing the drive ratio of the supercharger to spin it faster to make more boost
05:46 What you want to do is measure the diameter of your driven pulley and the diameter of your drive pulley
05:52 And you divide the driven pulley by the drive pulley to get your overall drive ratio right now
05:57 We're spinning the blower 40% faster than the engine speed and when we put a smaller pulley on top, we're gonna be driving at
06:04 64% faster than the engine speed so do a little math and what's this thing turning like 10,000 rpm or more?
06:11 This is the one part of the whole setup that Dulcich doesn't like. It doesn't match that shiny chrome
06:16 it just doesn't look good against the
06:18 Aluminum low sheen of the rest of the blower. Wasn't it you that said function before form?
06:24 Well, I don't know but that looks like it belongs on a shopping cart or something
06:27 We're gonna see either big boost or belt slip or big boost and less power. I'm hoping for big boost not belt slip. Okay
06:36 (Belt slip)
06:38 There went the belt get out the rubber cement, let's fix that
06:46 Not the WD-40 like last time with the HEMI
06:49 This ends up being a problem on all of these superchargers that have a serpentine belt drive with a lot of boost
06:56 Yeah, they're fine at look really low boost. Yeah, but that's not us
07:01 This is the belt tensioner spring-loaded, but I can almost
07:05 Well, I can completely collapse it and that's probably why the belt is getting thrown so we can pull it out a little bit and hose
07:12 Clamp it. Hey Steve. Oh, where's the hose clamps? I bet we're gonna end up doing the same thing with the Paxton. Oh, yeah
07:18 Run it. This is our third different attempt at running this thing with a small blower pulley and big boost and the belt keeps falling off
07:27 This is gonna be a fry burger. I was gonna ask you the same thing. I think it is either
07:31 We're gonna have more good violence or we're gonna make big power
07:34 *BOOM*
08:01 We made 12 pounds of boost right up at the very very top more like 10 in here but
08:08 568 pound-feet of torque and a pretty flat curve and up here
08:13 602 horsepower all the way at 6600 rpm
08:17 If you can change an intake manifold in a fan belt, you can install this
08:20 Yeah, and we didn't touch the carburetor from the naturally aspirated setup. That was the cool thing
08:24 The carburetor was like 12.8 and and you know, it's probably could have been a touch richer with the higher boost level
08:30 But you know, we got away with it
08:31 But on the five pound boost level that right out of the box, you know after the NA tuning was fine
08:36 Lower swap. Lower swap. All right. Yeah, this will only take another six hours
08:40 Well, that was pretty good we were able to take the carburetor directly off of our naturally aspirated combination
08:49 Plop it right on top of this blower and it just plain worked now
08:53 I really wanted to do that to prove a point but Holley wanted to make sure that you understand that they sell a
08:59 Supercharger carburetor for this which I will say is really well calibrated out of the box
09:03 But here's the most important thing about it
09:05 The supercharger carburetor has a boost referenced power valve the power valve inside the carburetor adds fuel
09:12 Enrichment under periods of high load and it does that by looking at low vacuum conditions. The problem is if I put this
09:20 Carburetor on top of that manifold
09:23 I could be at a part throttle situation where I'm seeing vacuum here and maybe half a pound of boost here
09:28 Maybe even a pound of boost and because there's vacuum up here
09:31 The power valve is not opening and so you boost reference the power valve from the side of the carburetor here
09:37 Down underneath the manifold and it just makes sure that you're perfectly safe on the street
09:41 And that's kind of what you need to know about running this little roots blower. It was simple now
09:45 We're gonna move on to the Paxton supercharger. This is Paxton's
09:50 1200 series SL that means it's self-lubricated
09:53 You don't have to plumb oil into the supercharger and then back to your oil pan
09:59 It will lubricate itself, which makes it pretty neat
10:02 What's a little more complicated about this is that we're going to be blowing boost through the carburetor
10:07 Sometimes that can be tricky with these setups other times it bolts right up and works
10:12 Because the boost is going through the carburetor and also
10:19 Through the vent tubes for the float bowls which are holding the fuel and the fuels coming in from the fuel pump
10:26 you have to have what's called a boost referenced fuel system because
10:29 Imagine 7 psi of fuel going into the bowl and 7 psi of boost going into the vent tube
10:35 7 psi working against 7 psi is 0 psi you would get no fuel flow
10:41 So you need a regulator that can reference boost from the hat and step up the fuel flow in direct
10:48 Proportion to the boost in English you want 7 psi more fuel pressure than boost at all times, right?
10:55 Exactly, and if you reference the boost you just add 7 to it and you'll always have plenty of fuel
11:01 What would I do without you? I think I'd get out my calculator. Really? You can be replaced by an iPhone. Oh, man
11:06 This is gonna be our first test with the Paxton supercharger
11:11 We tried to make it run with that out-of-the-box Holley ultra XP carburetor and it just basically wouldn't run
11:18 We're not exactly sure why it was either too rich or too lean. It was just misfiring was struggling
11:23 It's like hit or miss on whether a carburetor is gonna work right out of the box with one of these deals or not
11:28 It can be made to work
11:29 I'm confident
11:30 But we happen to have a carburetor in the cabinet that we already know kind of works well with these blow through stuff
11:35 And so we opted to take the easy road. Yeah, but the other carburetor I think this one works Diva
11:41 Yeah, I'm very confident. This carburetor is a Holley 850 double pumper
11:46 But it's been worked over by a company called CSU
11:49 It has annular boosters and a bunch of other trickery to make it work specifically with a blow-through application like this
11:55 Is it gonna save us? Yeah. Yeah, we're good right now. Okay
12:11 Don't slip. Yeah, you could really see my wagging. Yeah the
12:16 Every time yeah
12:18 Instead of having a spring-loaded tensioner like the other blower setup did this thing just has an idler it rides right against the belt
12:25 we got to tighten it so that it's about a D string sound right there and
12:31 Interestingly, this is the out-of-the-box pulley ratio the other blower
12:35 We only ran into trouble once we started to hop the thing up with a pulley that was really way too small for too much
12:40 Boost this thing straight from the factory
13:09 575
13:11 Here's what just happened final run
13:14 We didn't have any belt slip and that junk made 573 pound-feet of torque, which is sort of just stuff because it made
13:21 675 horsepower what you're looking at here is the Y and root supercharger in red and then blue and the
13:30 Paxton centrifugal in black and really it's kind of the classic trade-off
13:34 Do you want low-end power with your roots or do you want high-end horsepower with your centrifugal?
13:40 It's as simple as that now
13:41 Let's have a look at the torque curves with the same two blowers once again in red and blue
13:45 You've got the root supercharger in black. You've got the centrifugal. Look at that
13:49 Would you ever give up this much power down here if you were talking just a streetcar application not a drag car
13:56 Well, I mean I probably would I I'm more of a top-end high rpm guy. Okay
14:01 Well, then you're gonna have to drive your car above 5,000 rpm at wide open all the time
14:06 I'm taking advantage of that deal. I drive a four-cylinder back and forth to work. I don't think I need any
14:11 So, let me run through my conclusions and you can tell me if you agree or not
14:21 I'll get to tell you why you're chump. That's right. So let's start with the Y and root supercharger
14:26 I'm gonna say that was way easier to install than this. Okay, I can't go away
14:31 It was easier to install than the centrifugal. I'll give you that it was
14:34 Way easier on the tune-up and carburetion issue way way way and I think that's gonna be true anytime
14:41 You've got a blow-through versus a root setup
14:43 I am waffling on what actually looks better because I'm getting accustomed to this meaning horsepower and being cool, right?
14:49 How about you?
14:50 I don't know that big
14:51 Macho blower on top of the engine where it's intended to be with the carburetor on top of that, right?
14:56 It wins me over every time
14:57 I don't know if I can go macho with that little baby blower though. That's kind of that's my in my hang-up
15:02 Okay, so we'll call that a draw. How about horsepower? Well, I mean that made way more horsepower
15:07 Self-evident but the roots blower made so much more torque down low
15:11 I think it would be more fun to drive just day to day on the street
15:15 I don't know. I mean if I had my choice, I would go for the horsepower you would yeah
15:20 Well, I know it's hard to turn down as a magazine editor, but no
15:23 No, I mean even for my personal car as a matter of fact
15:25 This will probably end up in my new Cougar you're gonna put this in my old Cougar
15:29 Well, yeah, what's your old Cougar but it's mine now. Oh, man
15:32 Yeah, because I want the top-end charge of almost 700 horsepower is that things revving up to the redline?
15:37 I really like that. Both of these setups are basically the same money to buy the kit, but here's another point
15:44 I'll make against the centrifugal. You've got also by a
15:48 Complete trick carburetor probably. Yeah, and you have to buy a boost reference fuel system
15:54 Which is therefore gonna require you to have an electric fuel pump and probably a return line and all that
15:59 Whereas the roots setup I'm gonna argue you could run that off of a mechanical fuel pump. No question
16:03 This is a lot more work. Yeah, you know, I'll give you that
16:07 It may not even be as practical of a choice, but I just like that top-end power and what's the one?
16:11 Complete fail with both these systems the belt exactly. Yeah get away from that manufacturers
16:17 We're tired of seeing these serpentine belts slip. So I think that's a pretty good wrap
16:21 We've given you a lot to think about between these two superchargers next time even more interesting engine stuff on
16:28 engine masters presented by AMSOIL
16:31 The Paxton centrifugal circuitry, what was it called?
16:44 No, this takes our 134 a oh really
16:52 It's not an r12. No, I know it's a big air conditioning compressor. It'll keep it nice and cool in the car, right?
16:59 Yeah milkshake break it should work now, how's your milkshake I didn't get one
17:15 Steve's drinking Steve's milkshake, but it's the wrong Steve. You want a sip? No
17:20 [laughs]
17:22 [MUSIC PLAYING]