Air Tank as turbo?
 

could a pressurized air tank with a pressure regulator fed directly into the TB produce enough PSI to make a boast at WOT on a ford mustang 2.3L EFI? and what kinda of PSI would it need to produce?

Not at all. The extra weight of the tank would just slow you down.

Very creative idea though.

i'm thinking of using a little 100psi tank, only weighs about 40 lbs. that wouldn't slow me down.

Not a chance, there just wouldnt be enough flow. It doesn't matter what the psi in the bottle is, the volume of air coming out of the bottle woulnt be great enough.

my question for you, Gizmo, if you want more ponies and you want a tank in your car, then why not the JUICE? why use compressed air while you can have the real deal? im a little confused, but creative thinking on that air tank!

nos is definatelly the way to go. but im just tryin to be cheap and creative i guess lol.

After doin a little research since my last post i have changed my mind. I think that it could put you into the high 12's. Go ahead with the install, just be shure to take some pictures and post them. :D

Really?? what kinda of PSI would i need to set the regulator to? i wouldn't want to push to much and blow the motor or something.

Try and remember, the only way you will ever create any boost is if you can force ALL the air into the engine faster than it is going in on it's own, which can only be done ONE WAY. By COMPRESSING the air. PERIOD. It's not about hooking up your windshield washer squirters and filling the tank with air, and having them plumbed into your TB, so that everytime you turn on your wipers, you'll get pinned in the seat. I admire your desire to beat the system, so I'm trying to help you. The only way it's going to happen is if you figure out a way of compressing ALL the air going in, and doing it by a means that requires less power than what it will ultimately yield.

Good luck.

Take care,
~Chris

ok thats understandable..... so where can i find out exactlly how many CFM of air my stock 2.3L pulls at WOT? so i know how much CFM i need to produce.

also, i know at WOT a car isn't pulling the max CFM it can. so if i can feed it anymore CFM if would do something. commpressed or not. right?

When i said i had chaged my mind i was only joking. PKRWUD wasn't trying to help you do it, he was trying to help you see that it its not possible. Like someone else already said, if your looking for power in a bottle, you might want to look at nitrous. A simple dry kit is practicle and relatively inexpensive way to boost your HP when compared to other types of power adders.

zepherman is both right and wrong. I am trying to help you, but you need to see that it's just not possible with Home Depot as your supply house.

Figure a 2300 in great shape will pull 300cfm at WOT. Maybe 325cfm. And no, IT HAS TO BE COMPRESSED.

Let me try this yet another way. Let's pretend that the engine is a coffee can. At WOT, that coffee can is able to hold 1 gallon of air. You can blow an industrial leaf blower at it, but it's never going to hold more than 1 gallon of air. UNLESS, you compress the air going in. The only physical way you can fit more air into a given area is to compress it. Kinda like a Scuba tank. If it help regular air, you'd use it up in less than 2 minutes, but by compressing the air before it goes into the tank, they are able to fit a lot more air in there. If you sat the Scuba tank in front of an attic fan, it still wouldn't hold any more air than it would sitting in a closet, because the attic fan just pushes the air, it doesn't compress it.

That is the thing you really need to pound into your head: blowing/pushing air don't do dick. It MUST BE COMPRESSED. PERIOD. NON NEGOTIABLE FACT. Boost is ONLY CREATED WHEN THERE IS MORE AIR IN A GIVEN AREA THAN ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE WILL ALLOW, and that is only possible by compressing the air before it goes in.

Now, with that said, good luck.

Take care,
~Chris

ok, lt me try to expain it. The motor draws in air when one of the pistons in your motor starts its intake stroke the piston moves dowm in the bore and creates space in the cylinder that is filled with air. The force that makes the air fill the cylinder is atmospheric pressure. at the end of the intake stroke the intake valve shuts and traps the air in the cylinder. then the piston starts back up the cylinder on the compression stroke. at the end of the compression stroke all of the air i the cylinder has been compressed to around 9 times the atmospheric pressure(in a 9:1 compression motor). when the spark ignites the air/fuel mixture that is compressed in the top of the cylinder the piston is forced down by the explosion, which is what drives the motor. Now, if the compression stroke of the motor compresses all the air thats in the cylinder to a pressure 9 times what it was before, what if the air in the cylinder is already at a pressure many times greater than the atmospheric pressure when the compression stroke starts. Ill tell you what, you get a bigger boom on the power stroke. thats what a turbo/supercharger does, it makes the air pressure in the cylinder many times greater than it would normally be at the beginning of the compression stroke. you cant just make it easier for the motor to draw in air, you actually have to compress air into the cylinder before you will get any results. you simply cant put enoug air into a tank to do that.

oops, looks like PKRWUD beat me to it.:)

LOL. Right on, Z-man.

Okay, now that he and I have made it complicated, I will once again make it as simple as pie. There is only one effect that blowers and turbos have on an engine, and one effect only. They increase the engines displacement. Period. They don't turn the mix into some super stratospheric explosive mixture, they simply increase the displacement. A blown 302, at sea level, at 14.7 pounds of boost, produces EXACTLY the same power as that same engine had it been bored out to a 604. No more, no less.

Take care,
~Chris

Hey PKRWUD, somebody is really gunna laugh when they check out the time that these last 3 or 4 posts were made.:p

ok thanks guys. i get it... i understand all that now. so that being said, (probably a dumb question). but i know you can turn an AC compressor into an air compressor. ran straight to the TB like a turbo, could that produce enough compression? (i know i shouldn't have asked.... if it where that easy turbos wouldn't cost so much lol).

:eek: .............................................AAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHH!


No offense, but gizmo must enjoy working on Honda Civics on the side.

hey i'll beef up anything with a motor... ford, honda, lawn mower, gas powered scooter. or at least give hell tryin'

Why? It's only 1:30am here.

Take care,
~Chris

Okay, remember that it has to compress ALL the air going in, meaning that any air that enters the engine HAS to come through the compressor, which in your case would be an a/c compressor. First off, the a/c compressor couldn't possibly keep up with the demand, let alone create boost, and would end up being a restriction instead. However, if you had a larger a/c compressor, say the size of a round kitchen trash can, and it had a huge pulley on it, then it might be close. BUT, it would take an awful lot of energy to spin such a big compressor, and the end result would be spending more energy than you would be getting in return.

Take care,
~Chris

my clock says 4:09am right now. Damn time zones, always screwing with people.:)

It's only 11:20pm in Hawaii.

Just a matter of perspective.

:)

Take care,
~Chris

I somewhat disagree with you guys, I think the tank of air if engineered properly and compressed with a compressor before hand, could somewhat increase his horsepower for a quick burst. Once the air enters the Intake and mixes with air at 14.7psi, it will dissapate and drop in psi, but it will still supply more volume to his engine. After all, why do people put ram air kits or K&N's on there cars, or put radical cams in?? It allows as much air in as possible at 14.7psi, and for the cam it also does other things too. It is not meant to replace a turbo, or to supply "boost" in any way, but it will make sure the engine has as much air as can be crammed into the cylinder at that pressure. And you might end up getting some boost if the air in the bottle is pressurized high enough that when it comes out of the bottle an reaches the intake valve, it was not able to fully dissapate.
I also agree that it is not a practicle way to gain horsepower. The amount of time, effort and money would make it worth it to just go buy a nos kit. Nos is really doing the same thing, its just a more efficient way to store oxygen, chemically. But, if you wanted to do it just to do it, I think it might give you something, about as much as a ram air kit.

First of all, just to clarify, all a ram air kit does is permit cooler outside air, which does increase power potential. It does not "ram" the air in. That also is not possible. The speed at which the vehicle would have to be travelling would create a tremendous vacuum at the TB, and there's no way the "rammed" air would surpass that. You may not have been implying that, but I wanted to be clear.

As for this bottle of air idea, no way. It will never create boost unless it does the things I've already outlined.

PLEASE be my guest, and give it a shot! I would LOVE to be proven wrong on this one, but it aint gonna happen.

:)

Take care,
~Chris

Excellent idea in theory. Not very practical for a racecar. Checkout Ford's concept 'TONKA' truck. It has a setup very similar to your idea.


Blowers and turbos increase engine displacement??? Very interesting.

Think of it like this. A larger displacement motor pulls more air into the combustion chamber than a smaller displacement motor. Therefore if you're putting compressed air into a motor it will react like a larger displacement motor.

This would definitely works, however you need a high capacity
tank. If the tank flow enough and can make 10 psi of boost it
will be empty after few seconds. I am just guessing but i think
thats what will happen.

The motor could also surge and or die when trying to open the
tank. That s what it did when i was trying it few years ago with
my 5.0. There was just enough air for about 5 seconds at idle.
I did it for my personnal knowledge in a desert place. I would
be a little bit shy to do it at the track.

SC

I think that if the motor see 10 psi of boost
from a supercharger, a turbo or even an air tank
it will make almost the same difference. The motor
don t care about where this air come from. It cares
about its temperature and the amount of air provided.

It works in theory but not in practice;

-When you open the tank the car is not tuned to receive
the air. Tuning the car is almost impossible cause the boost
is there for few seconds.

-If the bottle flow enough, as i said, it will be empty before
you ll see the green light.

-The last problem is that the engine will need 2300 cc of air
at 10 psi for 4 revolution. It will be hard to flow enough
air to make boost.

SC

The ONLY way that you could make any hp with an air tank for more than a matter of seconds is if you had an air tank the size of your car plumbed into the throttle body. Do you know how much time and electricity would go into compressing all that air into that bottle only to get 30seconds or so out of it at best. but still, if anyone here wants to strap an air tank the size of thier car to thier roof and make some passes its fine by me, just be shure to take some pictures and post them here so everyone can laugh at you. End of story.

How it could work
 

Suppose your car flows 300 CFM and the tank that you describe has an additional 10 cubic feet of air inside of it (at 100 PSI). If (and here is the problem), if you could dump all of that air at pressure into the intake at one time then you could raise the pressure inside of the engine. The problem that you will run into is that you have 10 cubic feet of air that is flowing through a hose 1/4 or 1/2 inch from the tank to the intake. There is no way to get all of the air into the intake at once to increase the pressure to anything noticably above atmospheric levels. It is like trying to blow a straw into a 5 gallon bucket and expecting to increse the pressure in the bucket. Could you possibly make a difference? Yes, but it would be so small that it would not be measurable. Combine the fact that as your are trying to increase pressure in the bucket, new air is flowing in at atmospheric levels while your air is flowing out of the bucket and you are fighting a battle that can't be won. You also would run into a problem of the pressure in the tank dropping very fast as air came out. Your peak air would be at 100 PSI, but as air comes out of the tank your pressure would drop so your flow rates would drop as well.

Sorry this is kind of jumping around, but your question just got me to thinking.

Not many people here who have a good understanding of fluid dynamics. (PKRWUD and some others not included, you guys did a good job and I won't try to explainwhat you've already covered, too much ;) ).

You could NEVER add a pressureized bottle of air to a car for an increase in HP in any practical way, shape or form!

If you dump 100 psi from a tank into your TB (Let's assume that somehow the computer know about this additional air) Who says that the air is going to go into the engine??? It will go to the path of least resistance. And I'll tell you that the intake tubing leading to the TB is a hell of a lot less than 100 psi! Therefore you would have to ensure that the ONLY source of intake air was from this tank, which would at best last a few seconds, maybe longer.

As for the A/C compressor, ALL compressors are rated by "Flow@pressure". Assuming we solved the problem above (IE we're using only one source for intake air), if you could generate enough flow from that air compressor, please let me know, I work for the largest compressor company in the world, we'd like to have your technology :) And if you can provide the air flow, you won't have the pressure to go along with it. If it was that easy, someone would have already though of it. Remember the internal combustion engine has been around a LONG time!

Effort: A
Persistance: A
Technical Knowledge: let's learn from this one ;)

This is an article from a recent Car Craft magazine in which a reader wants to know why you couldn't drive a blower electrically, for free power.

Take care,
~Chris

Good article, Chris. It seems to rule out the possiblity of hooking up a vacuum cleaner and leaf blower, too. :)

Nitrous is definitely the correct way to use a bottle for power.

you were all right, i had some extra time on my hands and gave it a try. didn't do anything.

See PKRWUD, I told you he would try it anyway.:D

Wow, you actually tried? Did you take pictures?

lol yeah i actually tired it... you can either give me props for effort of hate on me for bein' stupid. as for pictures, i never got a chance to take any. although it was quite funny... try craming a 40 gal. air tank into the passenger seat of an 87' mustang. lol

Well, well just say your learning things the hard way, but at least your giving it a shot, which deserves some credit. Try working on your theory though, will save you some headaches down the road...

On second thought, good thing you didnt take pictures, because everybody would have laughed at you:D

Ok .. my two cents worth. Instead of running your air tank into the TB ... strap several of them on your car ... say 4 on each each side. Yeah thats it ... 8 large air cylinders each with about 2,200 psi in them. Then rig a gizmo that knocks all the valves off the air bottles at the same time !! Three things to remember
1. make sure you're on a long straight road
2. make sure you bring a clean pair of shorts to change in to
3. Before hitting the switch, repeat these words " I'm going to Outer Space and i'm not coming back ! "
I'm joking, please don't try it :)

Ok .. my two cents worth. Instead of running your air tank into the TB ... strap several of them on your car ... say 4 on each each side. Yeah thats it ... 8 large air cylinders each with about 2,200 psi in them. Then rig a gizmo that knocks all the valves off the air bottles at the same time !! Three things to remember
1. make sure you're on a long straight road
2. make sure you bring a clean pair of shorts to change in to
3. Before hitting the switch, repeat these words " I'm going to Outer Space and i'm not coming back ! "
I'm joking, please don't try it :)

would these work?
 

question for all of you. would Giszmo's idea work on a 2 stroke? i mean piston speed is much faster, therefore it has to work harder at lower rpm's to produce the power it would at higher rpm's were the 2 strokes "power band" kicks in. could it help low end power for the 2 stroke? i assume a 2 stroke 2cylinder doesnt pull as much vacuum(cfm?) as would a 4 stroke 2 cyl.

another thing i didnt see anyone mention. why not freeze the air tank? that would make the oxygen molecules closer together and you probably could compress more air in the tank when it is frozen. it would cool off the air also that you just put into it. after you refilled it again, let it freeze or get really cold. then try it on the car. putting the ice cold air into the intake track would cool off some of the air that is already entering the intake. now i know if you put, lets say 50lbs of air in the tank and then you freeze it or get it really cold, the pressure will drop. that is why you will add more. say it is 50lbs at 70 degrees F when you put into the tank which yet has to be cooled. you put the tank in the freezer at 10 degrees F and lets say it drops it to 35lbs in the tank. put more in again as much as you can fit. cool it again. say you put a total of 75lbs in. let that cool. after it cools, it drops to 50lbs. take that tank and hook it up to your car. the outside air should warm the tank just enough to build the pressure in the tank higher but still would be colder than the air going in the intake at 70 degrees. wouldnt that "cool" the air that would be coming into the intake? wouldnt that much a small "charge" so to say? i dont know the expansion and contraction rates of ambient air, but i was just giving an example. just my .02 cents..

just wanted to say....
 

HotRoddin, cool avatar:cool:

Sorry about the double post ... looks like my submit button finger got itchy again :rolleyes:

Oh and thanks SRV1 :D

Re: would these work?
 

never thought of that... very creative idea... but. couldn't that be very dangerousto freeze, add air, freeze, add air, ect ect.. cuz yeah theres only 50 lbs of frozen air once your done but if the tank warms up to much befor you use it, the presure incresses and could explode the tank. correct?

Gizmo, you would already have everything ready to roll. just hood the tank up if you know what i mean. it wouldnt heat up that much unless you left it in your car or left it in the sun. that is why i said 75lbs of air. by the time it warms up, i cant see it getting over 120 which most small tanks can handle no problem. but yeah, if you put too much in it can. try it if you have a big freezer or access to a walkin freezer.

also, wouldn't the air expland in the TB befor it even reaches the pistons becuz the TB is warm?

Re: would these work?
 

Maybe on your 25CC weed eater engine. The idea is not feasible and should be put to rest, for all the reasons stated previously.

later