Leaf blower superchargers?
MCM has already covered this, leaf blowers and ebay electric superchargers just don’t work. Well on the latest episode of Roadkill by MotorTrend, they try this again.
The guys go and get a 1978 Monza with the original 305 small block and four speed transmission. These engines are generally pretty weak, having only about 130 hp, but they have a lot of torque to make up for it. Well, when they took it to the shop, the car ended up making 144 hp to the wheels and 215 lb/ft of torque. Now that isn’t bad.
Upon closer inspection they found that the cams on the had no pre-load so the valves were just kinda floating there. After some maintenance and a new carb they go the car up to 193 hp. Now that is pretty respectable. But the guys from Roadkill wanted to waste their money, so of course they got $1400 worth of leaf blowers. Using the leaf blowers they setup a super complicated supercharger setup having 5 leaf blowers in the back of the car dumping air into the engine.
They ended up making little improvement on the horsepower but a whopping 284 lb/ft of torque. Pretty impressive, but they also did a 350 small block swap, which bumps the stock output to 145 hp. This second number was only with the added displacement.
After making the car safe enough to drive they go to the Ohio Mile and race the car. They ran the car with and without the blowers and the biggest difference they were able to walk away with is 2 mph. Pretty weak for $1400!
Here is the MCM video about why this doesn’t work:
Kind of a waste of time if you ask me. But at least the video was slightly entertaining!
