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Pressure Sources

Writers Science/Medical posted on Jul 18, 2017
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Description


I met my first automotive supercharger in Tennessee in 1956. As dusk fell a deep rumble of a flathead v-8 presaged the appearance of nosed and decked, lowered Mercury sedan on a low hill above the trailer park I was staying in. My companion Bobby, the boy with a hawk on his shoulder knew who it was and after a time we walked up to meet the owner who was sitting in his car as the day cooled off. He opened the hood and showed us his souped up engine. It was a 1949 Merc. On top and topped by two two-barrel carburetors was a Rootes type supercharger looking like a little armadillo. It had the letters S.C.O.T. on the side in large characters. I had seen references to this being an Italian conglomerate that exported this piece of hardware to the United States. The cast iron McCulloch centrifugal supercharger is something I never saw in person. The MuCulloch’s I saw were on Ford 312 cubic inch engines. One was on a baby blue two door 1956 Fordomatic sedan belonging to a friend of my friend McKichan. It was raced against a 1958 Impala convertible with continental kit and Turboglide. The second was just installed as a dummy on Duane’s 1934 Ford with a swapped in 312 y-block V-8. He located and purchased kits for both a blower installation with a pressurized carburetor and with an air box for a stock carburetor. Neither kit received any boost from the McCulloch machine but pulleys and drives were installed. One more McCulloch came to my attention. This was the Banker’s Special installation of an airbox and supercharger on a Pontiac Grand Prix 421 cubic inch engine in 1963 by Royal Pontiac. We went to an open house to see their Bobcat kits and other special showroom products. I then saw one that Bob Scott who had earlier had a 1937 Ford sedan with a Chevrolet V-8. Bob attended Ferris State graduating as an undertaker and went into wholesale embalming in Detroit. Another former high school student at my high school came back from the Navy after 6 years with a Packard-Hawk. It had neither the 1956 large displacement V-8 nor the nominal Studebaker 289 cubic inch V-8 with a Paxton supercharger. At some point, I installed the Rochester 2GC carburetor I had rebuilt to replace the semi-downdraft stock unit on this car and he raced it fender to fender with the 1958 283 V-8 Chevrolet Bel-Air four door with a 3 year later 2-GC. I only mention that to tie in to the image I am showing here of a Packard-Hawk in a museum that has the optional supercharger. The next supercharger I encountered was a vane type driven off the crank pulley of a Triumph TR-5 sports car. The owner tried castor oil as lubricant and I helped him to dilute it with ethanol in the Winter and to retighten the idler pulley every time it lost boost and he complained to me the installation had failed. This Judson supercharger drew air and fuel through a Holley 2 barrel like once used on Ford flathead V-8s. A simple log manifold replaced the two Stromberg-Zenith side drafts of the original installation. This owner had had a Bill Frick built Volvo with a Chevrolet V-8 that though tired, had three Rochester two barrels. I met no superchargers in California and had to settle for the stereo sounds of “Bakersfield Smokers” IN 1965 on a Zenith Stereo. My own experience with operating and maintaining a supercharged engine was with a Rajay 40cfm turbocharger on a 1000cc DOHC, 8-valve four-cylinder aluminum engine. This could get me in the Harley bars with its American addition. It nominally used 8.5 psi as a pressure limit and it was set at the top of second gear. More common OEM installations used 3 psi. It has a waste gate that could be adjusted to provide one full atmosphere of 14.7psi. I operated it once to a crankshaft rpm of 9600 rpm which was 1100 over red line and matched to the core speed of an F-100 turbofan where I eventually worked in Field Service. My experience I see as being more appropriate to the continuing use of turbos on diesel trucks and general aviation aircraft. While turbos are used in racing cars, I never owned a DOHC 4-valve installation of any kind. I knew two Indianapolis drivers, Jerry Grant, and Danny Ongais, but never saw their cars or saw them race. This contact is what I parlayed into buying a Dan Gurney developed vehicle.

Comments (4)


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kenmo

8:36AM | Wed, 19 July 2017

Very cool....

)

Cyve

8:57AM | Wed, 19 July 2017

What a fantastic mecanic my friend !!!

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Richardphotos

6:57PM | Mon, 24 July 2017

is this a Studebaker Hawk? sure looks familiar. great capture. I seen the name as being a Packard. same company and basically the same car in the mid 50's

)

tallpindo

3:32PM | Tue, 25 July 2017

The Packard Hawk had a fiberglass nose on the Sudebaker-Hawk body. I has a sort of wide mouthed fish look.


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Photograph Details
F Numberf/4.2
MakeNIKON CORPORATION
ModelNIKON D3200
Shutter Speed1/60
ISO Speed3200
Focal Length26

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