Superchargers and your car

by David C. Atkin

Theres no doubt that a supercharger will improve the performance of your car greatly, on a V8 its usually good for 150 to 200 HP with no problem, its one of the single best upgrades you can do, not to mention the HP improvement, it just looks mean, it looks like it will chew you up and spit you out.

Superchargers have been used for years to increase the performance of muscle cars and hot rods, its not like a turbocharger, no lag, the power is there when you need it, and thats a big plus in my book, the supercharger is a wicked tool to beat the competition, it usually works in your favor.

A supercharger will increase the power of you engine through its entire power range, a supercharger is in essence just a large compressor that sits on top or to the side of your engine, it basically takes the air going in to your engine and compresses it and then shoves it in to the engine.

Its main job is to increase the air & fuel volumetric efficiency of your engine, the more air and fuel that you have coming in to the engine, the more power it will make, so what a supercharger does is it works to fill the cylinders up as much as possible with air and fuel.

The one huge draw back to a supercharger is the fact that they will make extra heat, and heat destroys engines, enter the intercooler, an intercooler will cool down the air and fuel coming in to the engine, colder air is denser air making it easier to pack the cylinders with more air and fuel at a faster rate, thereby increasing the efficiency and making more power.

Just remember that you cant supercharge a high compression engine, anything above 9:1 for a compression is a no, you can blow your engine sky high if you dont follow this rule, this is not a rule thats meant to be broken, unless of course you have a lot of money to build another engine.

Now lets yammer a bit about boost, this is a term that you hear all the time, and its a very important part of getting the most from your supercharger, I can take a Chevy big block 572 and slap a supercharger on there running 12 pounds of boost and squeeze over 800 hp out without torturing the engine, your optimum boost for a street driven car would be from 10 - 12 psi, anything more and your looking to run racing fuel and not pump gas.

Muscle car restoration
Muscle car community

Im a 41 year old male, and have been in the car business for alot of years, and I figure its time to start to teach other people about the American muscle car.