Hey guys I was looking at cars on google =) and I saw one with a blower and it struck me...I have no clue how those things work and what exactly they are used for besides looking hardcore. Any help in clearing my ignorance would be appreaciated and thanks!

-BrandonB

Brandon:

There are several ways to answer that question, but, in short a blower is used to raise compression and increase airflow into the combustion chamber. With the blower that I believe you are referring to there are two aluminium "gears" that look similar to that curly mac-n-cheese. They fit fairly tightly together so that when they spin at high speeds they will suck air through the unit.
These pull air in through the carb, (or throttle body) and down into the motor. One simple rule of horse power is, the more air that you can get into and out of your motor the more power that you can produce. Could give a tech talk about the pounds of boost equating to the compression ratio and that low compression pistons and high boost is the way to go but .... I run a blower on my Harley! Instant on power!

So can you basicly put a blower on any car? or do things have to be adjusted and mods done to the engine?

Just about any car can take some sort of blower a.k.a. Supercharger, with only fuel mixture and slight timming adjustments. You need to maintain a lower boost on a stock motor to prevent over stressing the stock componants such as rods, pistons and crank. If you keep the boost modest you should still see a 100+- HP boost on a stock motor.

Huh thats crazy...cool always bugged me becuase those things look so cool on cars yet I had no clue how they worked.

At this point in time, I plan on putting a Paxton Supercharger on my CS when I get the restoration done. It has a kind of nostalgia flavor, I don't have to cut up the hood or anything and it'll make the 302 jump. I've seen where Jegs has the entire kit with the carb box for about $2600.00 . You might do some research on that method also.
Steve ;D

The two basic types of Superchargers they are either Centrifugal or Roots based, I believe that the one you are referring to is a Centrifugal type of blower. This type is an easy install and looks like a Turbo. These can mount in a varity of locations low and out of the way. I would suggest getting a system with an intercooler. The colder the air is when it goes into the motor the more it will expand during combustion and the more horsepower you will get. This is also why people use Nitrous, but that is a conversation for another thread I guess.

There's also the Kenne Bell Screwtype SC's. They are different than the Centrifugal and Roots.

You got me there, kinda. The version that you are referring to is basically a Roots SC with angles built into the gears that force the air to the rear of the blower to give you a little (alot actually) better performance and higher boost for the same gear ratio.