TEST: Electric Supercharger

Written by Wild Weasel

Prologue

This page started off with a bunch of questions that I intended to find answers to, but now that the testing is complete, I'll try to begin with a decent summary of what I found. Firstly, here's the charts. The test was a big success. Enough so that I've decided to keep one on my car. There are larger more legible versions below, but this should get you interested.

It's been brought to my attention that the Phantom Superchargers website is down and seems to be pointing to a placeholder site. I'll add the link back in if the site goes back up. I hope all is well with Rob and his endeavours.

Now I know you should never trust anything from the people that are perpetuating these electric supercharger scams, but let's start off with this conclusion. Rob's kit is not a scam. It works, and I have no reason to believe anything I've seen on his site and YouTube channel are anything but honest. I'm basing this on my personal experience with this testing as well as the extensive emails Rob and I have exchanged over the past couple months.

You're going to find a lot of details below, but here is the quick synopsis of my findings. I tested two different blowers. A smaller one and a larger one. There's an amusing story below about how the larger one came into my possession. Both of them made significant usable boost but with different distributions in the rpm range. The smaller one made nearly 5 psi at lower rpm and tapered off to just under 2 at my redline just over 6000 rpm. The larger one made a bit over 4 psi at lower rpm but held nearly 3 psi at redline.

Both made very obvious gains in power. I didn't do dyno tests, but I did measure and record the boost readings. Obviously with boost comes either power or terrible lean conditions. My car didn't run lean.

I also tested both blowers with my M45 supercharger running in tandem, and it was interesting to note that the small one ran out of steam and became a restriction, while the larger one worked brilliantly and evened out the boost curve all the way to redline. This basically confirms Rob's design goals in that the smaller one is meant for smaller engines but won't keep up with a larger one, while the larger blower is optimal for a larger engine that needs more airflow.

So what do I think of all this? Well... frankly, it's a lot of fun. In practice, it acts as though it were a nitrous system that automatically activates whenever you stomp on the gas pedal and is always available. I had it set up to activate at full throttle so when you plant the pedal, a split second later you'd get a noticeable boost in power and away you went. In the future, I may change the setup to activate at 80% or so rather than full throttle, so maybe I'll have an update on how that feels later on. As it was, there's an obvious boost in power when it engages and you can sort of hear the whooshing noise it makes.

The obvious question then, is how long does it last before it runs out of juice? Frankly, I don't really know. I did the best I could to run it out of battery and just couldn't do it. So the short answer is that it recharges faster than you can use it up. That's not to say it's instantly charging. It's just that you simply can't spend that much time at WOT while driving around, even in the most spirited manner. It would probably be an issue on a lapping day, but it isn't during anything that can remotely be called "everyday driving".

Now it's worth noting that it's drawing a LOT of power while running, and all my test runs involved WOT pulls from under 2000 rpm to redline. That means that my boost numbers at redline are at a time when the battery is already a bit depleted. Rob suggested I might get even higher numbers by doing a few short pulls from around 4000 to 6000 rpm. I may try that in the future and post the results just for kicks, but the results I have now already show that it clearly holds up all the way though to redline. If you can get even more out of it, then so much the better.

You may be able to tell from the tone of this article so far that I seem a bit excited by all this, and in all honesty I really am. I've been warning people off of e-blower scams for nearly 10 years in these pages, so while this will ultimately make this mission more difficult, I'm genuinely happy to have an actual viable option in this space. I believe he's going to be selling them for around $1400 or so, which is pretty tough to beat for this sort of power gain.

Now, if you have any questions or comments about what I've done here, please drop a note in my guestbook or contact me on Twitter (@WildWeaselGT).

If you're new to this page please keep reading to hear about everything that's happened. If you're already following along...

Follow this link to get to the latest update.

From here on in, I'm going to stick with the original text I wrote before doing the testing and add in all the results and comments along the way. The new additions will have a green box around them.

Introduction

Every now and then some yahoo will contact me about my article discussing electric superchargers and why they're all scams.

Sometimes they'll email me and sometimes they'll post in my guestbook. Many of them will just rip into me, probably because I'm costing them money. The angrier they sound, the more I giggle. Some will try to convince me that their particular piece of garbage isn't a scam and that I should talk about how theirs is the exception. It usually doesn't take much discussion before they give up.

Sometimes, however, they're not a complete waste of time. There's been a few folks over the years trying hard to overcome all the issues inherent with this concept and some have seemed quite promising. Ultimately, nothing I'm aware of has come to market that genuinely works (this has obviously changed), but as technology gets better it seems as though it may just be a matter of time. As a matter of fact, Audi may be working on a system to provide low levels of boost at lower RPM's to get the ball rolling before a larger proper exhaust driven turbo takes over. I believe their system is designed to eliminate turbo lag while keeping the benefits of a larger turbo. It's certainly a step in the right direction so far as this technology is concerned.

This brings us to the present day. A gentleman called Rob from Calgary got in touch with me a while back and is working on a system that seems to tick all the right boxes. The conversations started as they always do with me peppering him with questions about all the areas where these things fail to live up to expectations. In this case though, he didn't give up and go away. He seems to have good answers to all the questions I've thrown at him and eventually we got to talking about testing.

You can see his videos on YouTube posting as Robftss. He's also sent me a number of dyno sheets which I won't post here just yet, but it appears by all accounts that what he's got is actually working. Of course, this is the Internet, so there's no way I'm going to take him at his word when it comes to this sort of thing, and neither should anyone else. For the first time in my experience, however, this guy is willing to back up his claims with an independent test so I jumped at the chance.

So What Have We Got Here?

So that brings us to the point of this page. Rob has put together a kit for me to install on my Sunfire to see for myself the results of his efforts. I've just received the parts, and from the initial inspection, it all looks very promising. Even after all the discussion we had, I was half expecting to be completely let down when the box showed up with a plastic bilge blower and a spool of wires, but that's not what I've got. What I've got is a proper turbo with the turbine replaced with an electric motor. I've also got a set of 3 compact batteries to replace the stock one. One of them is to run the car, while the other two are connected in series to provide 24v to run the electric motor.

There's also a nicely built control box that will handle the switching of the motor and the charging of the battery pack and all the other bits and pieces I need to install the kit in the Sunfire. It all looks to be a very high quality bunch of kit and I'm initially very impressed. Even though it's still a prototype, Rob has obviously put a lot of effort into making this stuff look good. The arming switch even has a built in voltmeter to tell me how much juice is available in the battery pack.

Of course, none of this means that it will actually produce any boost. That's what I mean to find out.

The Battery Pack

The Pile of Parts

More Detail on Blower Note that the larger blower showed up later.

Does It Look Plausible?

Ultimately, looking at everything he's put together, the only question now in my mind is whether the motor and battery pack can provide enough power to spin the compressor with enough speed and torque to compress the intake charge all the way through the RPM range. If it can, then I believe we have a winner. It did. None of the obvious issues that come with electric supercharger scams are present here. It is definitely a proper compressor. It's not running off the stock 12v system. It's not hooked up with flimsy little wires.

Without having hooked it up yet, there's no obvious reason it shouldn't work. Rob even provided a method of relocating the CCV hose. So not only has he sent me all the bits he's been working on, but he's really thought out the installation on my particular car, which I fully expect to be the only one of it's kind and, thus, useless to him for future kit development if it comes to that. Kudos to Rob for going the extra mile.

What Are We Going To Do With It?

Now, even if this works, there are still a lot of questions as to how such a system will behave. I welcome you to post questions in the guestbook and I'll address them here as much as I can. We've already had a bit of discussion on the Toronto Mazda3 Forums about this and got into a bunch of the details. Eventually I'll get to putting as much info here as I can.

To end this for the moment, I'll give some details on how the testing is going to go. The Sunfire has been sitting idle for years now, so there's a few things that need to be taken care just to get it up and running. I'm a little concerned about the fuel in it and want to ensure the oil is as fluid as possible before starting it for the first time, so I'm going to wait for some nice warm 15+ degree weather to get things going. That might be a week or it might be a couple weeks. I'll definitely post something here when I get started.

By some miracle, the car started right up once I hooked the battery up. It seemed highly unlikely, but it did. I ended up getting a bunch of random cylinder misfire codes when really pushing it with boost at higher rpm's, but these stopped happening once I had run down most of the old fuel, replaced it with fresh Ultra-94, run most of that down, dumped in a full bottle of injector cleaner, and finally filled it fresh again.

For those of you unfamiliar with my wonky Sunfire, here's a pic of the engine bay showing where it's going to go. The battery, intake tube, and filter are removed here, making space for the new stuff.

Then I plan on replacing the fuel and doing a few test runs to record what she's presently doing in her current form. When last she ran, I believe she was making around 7-8 lbs of boost through the M45 supercharger. The nice thing about using this car as a test bed is that it's all set up for boost already and the existing blower can be easily disabled.

There's been a lot of questions and speculation regarding how I disabled the M45. The blower has a bypass valve built into it that allows it to spin freely without creating boost when you're mostly off the throttle. This is to prevent it from using much power to spin when not needed. I used zip ties to tie this bypass open at all times rather than allowing it to close and allow boost. To understand why this works, you need to understand how a roots type supercharger works.

The blower doesn't actually compress air internally the way a turbo does. What it does it to essentially grab a bunch of air and then push it into the intake manifold while not allowing any to escape backwards through it. By pushing more air in than would otherwise be sucked in there on its own, pressure is created. By tying open the bypass valve, you open up both sides of the blower to the open end of the intake so the supercharger blades are just spinning in the breeze. The very slight amount of pressure you can see in the tests with the bypass tied open are essentially the equivilent of the blower acting like a big fan blowing on the intake. I've basically turned it into the M45 equivalent of an electric supercharger scam.

Once I have that baseline, I'll put in the new electric blower, disable the M45 by tying open the bypass valve, and then we'll give it another go to see what happens. What happened is BOOST! I've got an OBD scanner, but I haven't a clue whether the ECU will give a boost reading. It did. Quite nicely. I don't know what wizardry GM used to get the car to recognize the 2 bar MAP sensor, so I'm not really sure what to expect from the data. What we DO have available for sure though is the mechanical boost gauge on the pillar. That should provide all the evidence we need to determine whether this new gizmo is making a tangible difference.

What Are We Hoping For?

In my mind, I'm setting the minimum threshold for success at 4 psi. Both blowers made well over 4 psi at low rpm. The smaller one made nearly 5. If it drops to 3 or 2 at the top of the RPM range, then that's fine by my reckoning, but if it drops below 2, then we're getting dangerously close to robbing power rather than creating it, and we'll throw down the gavel and call it a failure. That seems fair to me. Producing 2 psi is better than nothing, but not worth the effort of trying to install something like this in your car.

Note that this was the comment that spurred Rob on to send me the larger blower. I expect he knew that the smaller one would taper off to below 2 psi at redline and was hedging his bets so I wouldn't call it a failure.

Now, having said that, even though this was the threshold I'd set going in on what I'd call a success, having tested both of the blowers, I have to change my tune there. The smaller one, even though it tapered off to under 2 psi, is the one I'd recommend for smaller engines. The boost difference isn't much even on the low end, but there was a noticeable difference in how quickly the boost came on when you planted your foot on the pedal. There is significantly less weight in the compressor wheel of the smaller one which made a tangible difference in how quickly it spun up. To be fair, both kicked in within a fraction of a second, but the smaller one felt peppier.

Since doing the testing, I've sent the blowers back to Rob and he says he's going to fit a lightened compressor wheel to the larger one which may do away with the difference in spin-up time. I'll post something in the future regarding whether I notice an improvement. If this difference in spool-up time becomes irrelevant, then it may become just a matter of which one your engine can keep up with so far as fueling goes.

Conclusion

This section is going to change as we progress through the testing, but for the moment what we have is a plausible system with a huge question mark around the electric motor and battery pack. My fingers are crossed as I'd really like to see this succeed and have something concrete to point to when people ask about electric superchargers. Time will tell though. Come back often for updates!

Kevin

Well, obviously my conclusion is that it works. Please read from here on in though to get a sense of what I went through as the testing progressed. I've left this next section un-edited so you can come along for the ride as I went through the various steps of getting this stuff installed and running.

Update: April 9, 2013

I had a fair bit of concern about whether the car would even start. It's been sitting in storage for around 6 years now so, even though I'd put fuel stabilizer in the tank, there seemed to be a good chance I might be in a world of hurt.

After some discussion on what to do about it, I tried to siphon some out to see what it looked like. I fed over a meter of hose down the filler tube. I didn't even get the end wet, much less draw any fuel out. Another suggestion was to disconnect the fuel line and let it pump some out, but that seemed hard.

So I did what any reasonable person would do and crossed my fingers and turned the key. She started right up like a charm! So that's one big potential hurdle crossed. I'll still be burning it off and putting fresh fuel in before running any tests, but at least we know the car runs. Here's hoping the fuel isn't bad enough to ruin the cat.

As a bonus, I hooked up my scan tool and started logging some data. Since the car wasn't originally designed for boost, I wasn't sure what wizardry the ECU had done to it when it was reprogrammed for the M45. As it turns out, it's giving a proper boost reading and I can record it, so we should have some good data outside of just watching the boost gauge.

Update: April 11, 2013

We're dealing with a winter storm in Toronto right now, so it's safe to say we're still a little while away from doing the actual testing.

In the meantime, however, I've been in some conversations with Rob about what I'm expecting from the results. I mentioned that I feel that less than 2 psi up near redline seems to me like only half a success. Which is, of course, very close to being a failure. I mean... it may show that the concept is working but with so little boost, it's probably not worth the effort.

Now, the expectation is that the boost will be highest at lower RPM's and taper off toward the top, sort of the opposite of what you get from a centrifugal supercharger. This will be running at full power all the way, sending as much air as it can, so as the engine RPM goes up and it's consuming more air, it stands to reason that the pressure will drop. Even if we've got 4 psi through the meat of the power band, we've gotta draw the line somewhere when it comes to dropoff.

Well it turns out that Rob has been testing the one he sent me on a 2 litre VW and, while he's quite confident it can keep up with that engine, there may be some doubts when it comes to my 2.4L. Is this starting to sound like he's making early excuses to you guys?

I might think so as well, if not for what showed up in the mail yesterday. I like the way this guy thinks. Meet the little electric turbo's big brother.

It looks like the technology is scalable. :)

This is a version he's been working on for larger engines. He's had it in mind more for a V6 than a somewhat large 4 banger, but since my car is already able to handle over 8 psi, it's not gonna be a problem if we end up with more than we bargained for.

I'll definitely be testing both of them to see what happens. It's it's making too much boost, well... nobody's gonna complain about that, right?

Update: April 15, 2013

After quite a miserable week, it looks like the weather is starting to improve. I'm hoping that this weekend I can at least get to burning off some of the old gas, test-fitting the batteries and running the wiring into the cabin.

Now, after the update from the 11th, I know what you all must be thinking. "Sure... it looks like it might make boost... but how would it behave with a 1000 watt audio and nav system sucking power from the alternator while it's running?"

** Runs out to check the mailbox. **

Hmph. Nothing. Ah well... can't win 'em all, right?

Update: April 20, 2013

It's snowing outside and feels like January, so I don't think I'll be doing any wiring today. Someone was asking about the wire connectors between the motor and the control box though, so I took a moment to look at them in detail and get an opinion on them.

Like everything else so far, they seem quite solid. They fit nice and snug so I've got no concerns about them coming apart. They're gold plated so corrosion shouldn't be an issue. All in all, they're good stuff.

I got details about them from Rob. The connectors are rated at 200 amps and can be found here: https://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXTJJ0&P=7

Update: April 27, 2013

I'm reluctant to post too much detail at the moment, but I thought it was worth mentioning that I had a sort of a silly grin on my face today for at least an hour.

I did a test fit just to see whether everything would go in place. Remember that this kit was put together specifically for my Sunfire for testing so it's a bit of an experiment as far as the fitment goes. I've been having some trouble finding a good spot for the control box, and at present it's sitting on top of the batteries, which isn't really ideal. You can see from the pics below what I've done. I had to relocate a relay that was in the way, and I've set up the switch to activate off the throttle body at WOT.

Once I had it all put together, I couldn't help but want to at least turn it on to see what happens. Firstly, I giggle like a schoolgirl every time I manually activate it under the hood. It is LOUD in a totally laugh-inducing sort of way. I'm surprised it's not far more noticeable from inside the car (it really isn't). What I really want now is for someone to stand by the road while I drive by with it just to see if it's worthy of a full fledged "WTF???" when it engages. I took a video of it, but it's not even worth posting. In the video it doesn't sound loud at all. In real life, it's loud enough for my wife to come out and scold me about angering all the neighbours.

Again, I don't want to read too much into the results right now since I didn't do anything remotely resembling a proper test yet. I haven't disabled the M45 or anything. I just took it out for a drive to ensure that the TB switch was working properly and that it all seemed to be put together right.

That said, I CAN tell you that my M45 has NEVER produced 10 psi, and my torque log from my little jaunt is showing 10.1 psi at around 3000 rpm. For reference, the M45 usually pushes around 6-7 on it's own, though it's been a very long time since I've driven this car so I may be mistaken. Again... don't read too much into these numbers just yet. I just wanted to give a brief update of the test fit.

Here is a snippet from the torque log. I'm not sure what to make of the RPM readings. It seems like the ECU just isn't sending updates fast enough or something as they don't make a whole lot of sense. I definitely took it to redline on at least one or two of those runs.

torqueTrackLogSnippet20130427.xls

That's it for the moment.

Update: April 28, 2013

I know I'm just having a bit of fun at the moment and that yesterday's post was really only good for fueling rampant speculation, so I've gone out today to get more numbers just to fuel the fire. The e-blower is removed and the stock intake tube back in, so these numbers are from the M45 all by itself. Max boost logged was 8.36psi. Yesterday, with the e-blower going, the max was 10.1 psi.

torqueTrackLog20130428M45.xls

Speculate away!

Update: May 2, 2013

I'm fully insured now for the next 10 days, so it's time for proper testing. I know I should do all the tests back-to-back for the best results, but we're not doing dyno runs here. We're just looking for boost. Today I went out on the highway and did two solid 3rd gear pulls in "stock" form with just the M45 to give an idea of what this car is used to. You can see that the boost starts off around 4.5 psi @ 2000 rpm when I mash the pedal and builds up to well over 8 psi @ 6200 rpm.

To do this, I'm getting to an onramp with no traffic in front of me. I'm putting it in 3rd and settling at around 2000 rpm. Then I'm mashing the throttle.

The next test will be to prove that the bypass does what we expect it to. Either tomorrow or Saturday I'll be tying it off and doing another similar run. If all goes well, we'll see 100% throttle with no boost at all. Notice that my data points are much better now. I don't know if the pro version of Torque is better at this or whether it's the fact that I'm only taking 3 data points now. Probably the latter, but we'll be sticking with this going forward. I'm getting RPM, throttle position, and boost.

trackLog-2013-May-02_18-46-20-M45-full.xls

Update: May 4, 2013

WE HAVE BOOST!! I'm going to have to post up the data later because my Nexus7 is completely dead, but the bottom line is that it's definitely working, and it's great fun!

I tied off the M45 and did a test run and I got the results I expected. Then I hooked up the small e-blower and HOLY CRAP!! OVER 10 PSI OF BOOST!!! Well... not really. The zip tie fell off the M45 bypass so that run was moot. I spent the next 20 minutes figuring out a way to tie it off better, and then tried again.

This time, we got well over 4 psi from 2000 rpm and it fell off to about 1.8 psi at redline. This is pretty much exactly how Rob described it would work. Even more entertaining though is the way the boost comes on. The best description is to imagine the scene from The Fast & The Furious where they're racing for first time and seem to have 10 shots of nitrous. Every time they hit the button, they get slammed back in their seats.

Well... this was that... but with only about 5% of the drama. :) I know people question the butt-dyno, but getting a sudden shot of 40 or so hp is no "maybe sort of" feeling. You mash the pedal, the boost comes on, and then you FEEL it going. Having driven this car with boost for years, I can tell you that it was frustrating doing the test with the M45 disabled. It just felt slow, and it was compared to what I'm used to. With the e-blower, that feeling was gone. When I mashed the pedal, it felt like it had some balls again.

As for the bigger blower, Rob has asked me to refrain from posting results from it just yet as there are a few wrinkles to be worked out with the one he sent me. He actually asked me not to test it just yet, but this is the guy that just fired the car up with bad gas and did the first test run with both the e-blower and the M45 engaged. I haven't exactly been a pillar of caution through this process, so of course I gave it a shot. All I'll say is that it held boost more evenly through the rpm range and held well over 2 psi up to redline. I'll leave it at that until Rob gives me the go-ahead to do a proper test with it.

The same goes for the longevity test. I did do one, and I got over a minute of action out of it before it cut out, but then it seems to have died. Remember that this is a prototype, so I wouldn't read too much into that just yet. I've sent the details to Rob and am waiting to hear back to find out what happened. It didn't seem to overheat, and it didn't seem to be out of battery. So more info on this later on.

The bottom line here is that IT WORKS. I'm really excited about this! Once the bugs are worked out, I think there will finally be something on the market that people can fairly easily hook up that will give REAL RESULTS.

Incidentally, if anyone in the Toronto area would like to see it in person, leave a note in the guestbook. I've only got the car on the road for another week, but hopefully you can drop by soon and see it in person.

Update: May 5, 2013

Firstly, there's been some interest on the TM3 forum for some people to see this in person, so we're going to have a mini-meet this Wednesday at 7:15 at the Canadian Tire on Rylander just off the Port Union exit of the 401 at the east end of Toronto. Now I really don't have much idea of how many people have picked up on this story outside the ones in the forums I've been talking with, so before I end up with some massive crowd of people and everyone ends up angry, if you're planning on turning up PLEASE post something here in the guestbook or post in the thread on the TM3 forum. I'd really like some idea of what to expect there. Hopefully everyone can go for test drives and see this thing working. If you don't let me know you're coming and just show up, then that's great, but please don't feel put out if there ends up not being enough time for me to talk to you about it. You know how the Internet is. After posting this we could end up with 5 people in a parking lot checking it out, or the entire population of London could decide that THIS is a great time for a road trip and flash mob.

Now then... for the data. It's been a busy weekend so I haven't really had a chance to dig through the data, but I don't want to keep everyone waiting. I'm going to repost here what I posted on the TM3 forum so you can see the numbers from yesterday's testing.

I've deleted all the rows of nothingness between runs on all the data files I've posted so if you're wondering about some weird transition or something, first look at the times. There's a data point every 0.1 seconds so if there's a gap, then I've removed a chunk. If anyone is terribly curious or thinks I'm fudging the numbers or anything, I'd be happy to provide the original CSV files from Torque, but there's a LOT of useless numbers in there.

This file shows my runs with the M45 tied off. Then, later, it shows me running again with the e-blower, but as is plainly obvious, the zip tie for the M45 had fallen off the bypass. It's all in one file because I forgot the change the filename before starting logging again.

trackLog-2013-May-04_12-28-27-Tied-and-Both.xls

This file shows the runs with just the e-blower going and the M45 tied off securely. This is the money-shot.

trackLog-2013-May-04_14-21-23-Small-Blower.xls

Max boost was 5.31 psi @ 2100 rpm. That run tapered off to 1.83 psi @ 6349 rpm.

This file contains at least one run with the eblower off to show that the M45 is in fact disabled. If you see a run with 100% throttle and no boost... that's what's happening.

The last run ends up tapering to 1.68 psi @ 6086 rpm so I imagine the battery was a tad bit lower for that one after having done the earlier pulls.

Update: May 7, 2013

Just a quick update. There's been some question about the very slight amount of positive pressure shown with the M45 bypass tied open. If you look at the numbers, it's very slight, but someone on the MCM forums is saying it is "skewing the results a tonne" and definitely contributing to the boost.

Tonight I've swapped out the pulley from the 2.6" that's on it to a 2.7" that I used to run. That's the best I can do for the moment, but honestly... look at the numbers in the logs. If it's making half a psi of difference, that hardly matters for me at this point considering the numbers I'm getting.

I'll get some new numbers by the end of the week with the new pulley on. Meanwhile, I'm really looking forward to meeting people tomorrow night! There's a few people coming for sure, and I hope a few more will come across this and show up. I've tossed my belt wrench in the trunk so if there's small crowd there, and anyone has any doubt, I'll go pick up a stock sized belt, put it on, and see how that goes. If that isn't convincing... well... it's all the same to me. I'm just calling it as I see it. :)

Update: May 7, 2013

Here's the numbers for the 2.7" pulley vs. the previous one. It did make a difference.

If you compare these logs to the previous ones, you can see that with the small blower installed but not running, I was getting -1.9 psi @ 5700 rpm. Now with the bigger pulley I'm getting -2.2 psi at similar rpm.

With the stock intake tube, before I got 0.67 psi @ 6400 rpm. Now I'm getting 0.38 psi. I'll post new numbers with the e-blower running like this to see the difference.

Here are the associated logs.
trackLog-2013-May-07_21-11-29 2.7-Pulley-Stock-Intake.xls
trackLog-2013-May-07_20-35-41-2.7-Pulley-Small-Blower.xls

Update: May 9, 2013

Well... I'm disappointed that nobody was able to make it out yesterday, but that's partly my fault for having it on the night of a Leafs playoff game. I'd thought the game was tonight. I'm going to try to arrange for someone to come see it before I take the car off the road on Saturday. If you're interested, drop a note in the guestbook immediately!

That aside... I'm about done with my testing now, and I'm calling this a ROUSING SUCCESS!!! Tonight I went out and got some final numbers with both the small and large blowers. The smaller one offers a bigger kick at lower RPM's and is probably the one you'd want for a mostly stock car that's not likely to be able to handle much boost at high RPM's. These numbers are all with the 2.7" pulley on the M45 with the bypass tied open, so it's almost entirely out of the equation. In the future, I'm going to put this on another car to see the results, but from my perspective, I've solidly proven that this thing is working as advertised. Well... I don't think it's actually been advertised yet... but it's working as Rob told me it would.

To summarize the results from tonight, the small blower is making a maximum of 5.02 psi @ 2200 rpm and drops linearly down to 1.69 psi @ 6300 rpm. The larger one goes from 4.30 psi @ 2000 rpm and drops to 2.85 psi @ 6300 rpm. That's NEARLY THREE POUNDS of boost at redline!!!

This one's definitely no scam, guys! And this has been a hell of a fun week!

Here are the associated logs from today.
trackLog-2013-May-09_20-22-00-2.7-Pulley-Small-Blower.xls
trackLog-2013-May-09_20-22-00-2.7-Pulley-Big-Blower.xls

Finally... with regard to longevity... I'm going to give it the ol' college try either tomorrow or Saturday to run it down, but so far it's always been there whenever I've mashed the pedal. I could try to pull some tricks like shutting it off whenever I let off the gas to stop it from charging, but I'd really have to put some effort in. It recharges quick enough that you just don't need to worry about it. I'm sure it would be an issue on a lapping day, but in some QUITE spirited driving, I just haven't been able to run it down yet.

Update: May 12, 2013

I apologize for the very brief update today, but it's been a busy weekend. I'll provide more thoughts and analysis later in the week.

I'm quite sad to have to put the car away again. I've had a lot of fun with it this past week. My final three tests, besides taking a bunch of people for rides and test drives, were to test it with the 2.7" pulley and the M45 untied.

So these numbers are with the M45 working along with the e-blowers. I tested with the stock intake tube, the small blower, and the large blower. The quick and easy interpretation here is that the small blower can't keep up with the M45 at the top end, and shouldn't be used, while the larger one worked like an absolute charm!!

As mentioned in the previous update, these tests have been a huge success. I'll go into more detail later, but after this final set of tests the quick and dirty of my conclusions will be: 1. It definitely works. 2. I prefer the small one on my engine without the supercharger. 3. Working in tandem the big one is the much better (and only) choice.

I'll go into details on the reasons for those conclusions later this week.

Here are the associated logs from yesterday.
trackLog-2013-May-11_13-07-47-2.7-Open-Bypass-Stock-Intake.xls
trackLog-2013-May-11_13-07-47-2.7-Open-Bypass-Small-Blower.xls
trackLog-2013-May-11_13-07-47-2.7-Open-Bypass-Large-Blower.xls

Update: May 14, 2013

So all my testing is done and the car is once again in storage. I've already mentioned that the kit worked like a charm, so now it's time to analyse the numbers a bit and put things in perspective.

I mentioned below that I preferred the small one to the larger one while running without the M45. Looking at the boost curves, it doesn't really seem obvious why that is. All I knew is that the small one felt more dramatic when driving with it. After talking to Rob, he mentioned that the small one has a much smaller and lighter compressor wheel so it spins up to full boost significantly faster. This isn't evident in the 3rd gear runs I was doing to log data, but I can say that it was noticeable when just driving around and mashing the pedal every now and then. You can actually see the results in the acceleration numbers I'll show in a moment. He told me he's working on a lightened version of the compressor wheel in the larger one, so while I really don't have any complaints about it, that will definitely make a positive difference.

First, however, let's look at the data. Everything I'm posting here has been generated from the data files that have been posted over the past few weeks and are linked below. The most important thing I was looking for in this test was "does it make boost?" and the answer is a resounding "YES IT DOES". These graphs show exactly how much boost they made. Both charts were made from data logged doing a pull in 3rd gear from under 2000 RPM to over 6000 RPM. The first chart is with the M45 bypass tied open, and the second has the bypass untied so the M45 is working in tandem with the e-blowers. On both charts you see results for the small blower, the large blower, and the stock intake tube with no blower installed.

In those charts, it appears that the bigger one is better in both cases, but as I mentioned above, it didn't feel that way while driving it. Since most of your normal driving isn't occurring at the top end of the RPM range, the extra boost the little one provided at the low end was much more usable. Of course, if you're going to the track and doing 1/4 mile runs, then the big one might make sense, but I'd need to do more testing to really pin that down. Now, if he gets the spool up time on the large one to be similar to the small one, then it might be a no brainer, so long as your car can handle the boost.

You can clearly see in the second chart where the small blower can't keep up anymore and is becoming a restriction to the M45. On the other hand, just LOOK at what the big blower does to the boost curve in tandem with the M45! Each of them compensates for the weakness of the other and together I get a nearly flat boost curve of over 8 psi across the board! THIS is why I'll be keeping this thing on the car going forward, even though it's already boosted.

Since I had the data, one thing I looked at was the time it took to do each of those runs. These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt due to the fact that I never intended on measuring them, so I didn't make any effort to control the conditions for them. All of the runs were done in a similar manner, on the way up a highway on-ramp, but I can't say whether I mashed the gas at the same point on the ramp each time. Sometimes I'd wait for a car in front to pull away first, and sometimes I didn't need to. None of them are from the very bottom of the ramp though as I'd have ended up with too much speed to make the turn at the top, so all the runs are fairly similar.

All that aside, I think the numbers are very telling as an indication of the amount of power being provided. You can see that at WOT, the small blower very nearly kept up with the M45! Now this isn't to say it's a perfectly fine alternative to a regular supercharger, but it shows that the power being made here is significant. The advantage to the regular supercharger is that it's making power all the way through the throttle range and not only at WOT, but these numbers are quite an eye-opener for what IS being gained at WOT from the electric blowers. This is why it was so much fun to use. The power is very much there, and comes on at WOT with gusto!

With those numbers in hand, you can't imagine how much I'd love to get the car back to the drag strip to see how she does with this new power under the hood. I wish it could be sooner, but alas, the car is stored for now.

So that concludes this test. If you have any questions, by all means drop a note in my guestbook so everyone can benefit from the answers. I've been involved in ongoing discussions on the TorontoMazda3 forum,J-Body.org, and on MightyCarMods, so if you're involved in any of those, drop by and say hi, and feel free to post more questions. Once Rob has his website up and running, I'll be sure to post a link here so people can go see what he's up to. Meanwhile, you can contact him through his Robftss account on YouTube.

Meanwhile, sometime in the next week or so I'm going to complete revamp this page to make it easier to read for anyone new coming in that hasn't been following the updates. I'm going to go through all my original notes at the bottom and include the answers to all the questions I had originally asked, and will place these updates in reverse order at the bottom. Then, any new updates, will once again be posted at the top as I've been doing so far. So stay tuned to the page update.

As a final note... Some people have shown interested in trying this stuff out, so sometime in the future I'm going to be trying a test install on an RSX Type-S and on a 2.3L Mazda3. And as a bonus, I just found out from Rob that he's going to be updating my blower with the new lighter wheel so I'll be posting about that in the future as well. So the story doesn't end here... but will be on hiatas for now.