I'm a sophmore majoring in mechanical engineering. I am required to complete a senior project. This project can be basically anthing I want. So i figured why not do something that I can enjoy. I've decided that I would like to add some form of forced induction to my 1987 Camaro. It has a brand new l98 from jasper engines (4 bolt main) with stock intake, aftermarket headers (not sure what they are), smog equipment removed, and something is done to the transmission (it shifts awesome).. (honestly it's hard to tell what all has been done to the poor thing, because I bought it used and the guy that had it before me wasn't to gentle with it)

So here is the brunt of the post. Should I go turbo or supercharger? I would prefer to keep stock internals if possible. The whole thing will be DIY and on somewhat of a budget, which leads to the next question. How much whould this project cost? I don't care about time or labor involved, because it's for my "baby" and my dad owns a garage, so most tools i would need are at my disposal.

Thanks in advance

 

turbo or supercharger is up to you really.

Turbos are better all around but there are some cool things you could do with a little eaton blower

For cheap...i'm making my turbo system for about 1000 dollars. that doesn't include a swap from carb to EFI or the upgrading of the fuel system though.

twin .60/.63 T3's from manual tranny 85-86 T birds would work best... if you can only find smaller, you could go with the .42/.48 ford/volvo/chysler/saab turbos

what would really be intersesting would be to mix those two lines up a bit. put the big .60 compressor with a .48 exhaust side.

Make your headers out of modified exhaust manifolds like Kenton was the first to do, followed by kingta0n, myself and others.

Blower could be interesting as well

twin M90s from T birds could be really cool like saturn5 has done on his malibu...and cheap too. you can puick them up for less than 250 each. each blower gets mounted over the valve covers.

you could do a single M112 as well mounted on top of a modified LT1 intake like Rooster (?) has done.

look around, do some searches and decide what you are most interested in.

if its turbos, get TURBOCHARGERS BY HUGH MCINNES and add that book to your colelction. I've read it cover to cover several times now.

 

I could say superchargers but there is a lot more to write about turbochargers. The bibliography is good , and you can dazzle them with the awsome math involved when you submit the paper on your project.

If you have the ability to do light fabrication, then this is the route for you. Because you can go from build your own turbo manifold.

If not you can buy a complete kit, something that wasnt available just a short time ago. also you have a choice of single or dual.

 

The fact that you installed a turbo system won't impress them. What will impress them is your hypothesis and examnination of emissions changes, tuning solutions, heat management/dissipation, fuel/mileage control that is enhanced by using a turbocharged system.

The supercharger would allow you to do most of the same stuff excpet for the heat. Taking the exhaust somewhere in the engine compartment other than down the bottom and to the back is bound to affect how some other system works. Making that system maintain its design parameters while in an adverse environment would make for interesting reading.

I have read that engineering is all about doing for $10 what the average guy can do for $100.

Good luck!

Jason

 

thanks for the replies they've been a lot of help.. the whole thing is still pretty far off but i figure the sooner i get started the easier it will be and of course the sooner i will be driving a forced induction f-body :lala: I'll be sure to let you know what's happening when i get started

 

jamr0D,
That's exactly what I did. Check out http://www.skulte.com/turbo.html for the end results (yeah, I got an A, but the prof. was too scared to go for a ride!). The most important thing is to do the theoretical design first, and then have the actual real world experiment. Then you analyze why it's different, how to optimize it, etc... Slapping on some forced induction has nothing do do with engineering if you're just bolting on parts. Depending on your time and budget, you could go into water injection, hp vs boost vs backpressure vs intake temps vs whatever else neat you think of. What school are you going to, and do they have a Formula SAE team (if not, you can start it...).

 

i'm at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.. we don't have a SAE team but main campus does..

 

Ah nice to see another Boston engineer here. For my senior project at NEU I built a caner/tumor tissue anaylzer, nowhere as fun as a TT build.

Its nice to see tufts and NEU ranked almost the same for undergrad engineering programs.

 

Hhmm....not meaning to hijack your thread or anything, but I'm an ME student as well. I know that we have to do senior design projects, but I was unaware that we could actually do it on our own cars. Maybe for my senior project I could do a FI swap on my car and list the improvements made, etc.

As for you and your project, I think the bigger question to ask first is how much down time can your car have to do this? I'd kinda want to vote for a turbocharger, but since you're gonna have to report all the data, it might be a bigger task than you expect for a DIY and a senior project. I do like the idea though, and you do have quite some time to plan fabrications, cost, shop time, etc. Nightrider87 has a good point: start reading up on it if you have a lot of unanswered questions about turbos. Good luck, and keep us posted.

 

I am also a Mechanical engineering major this thread is right up my alley. I am a senior and am currently working on a single turbo set up for my 91 Z28. This is my senior design project. Here is a preliminary drawing of my design. I realized today that I need to revise my design due to the lack of space for the down pipe. Tell me what you guys think.

 

Here is the actual header, I will need to modify the last exhaust tube and log portion to allow the down pipe to fit as tight as possible.

 

How about turbocharging the car now, and as your design project, plan for a few optimizations. Do CFD on various exhaust/intake designs, quantify how downpipe size affects backpressure/HP, and basically prove how you can engineer a system and have the numbers corrolate to the real world trials. Go Boston!

Andris, not watching any stick and ball sports...

 

I see you're using Solidworks .... great software, I use it every day.
Anyways, the only suggestion I could give is trying to run the cross-over pipe in FRONT of the engine and coming straight up into the larger tube. This would give you more room for you downpipe and have a better flow path into the turbo.
Other that that it looks pretty good. Definatly use Cosmos floworks if you want to impress the professor. DON'T just flow your final design, do some prelim designs to show some comparisons.

 

Yeah I like solid works alot, easy to use.
Do you mean run the crossover pipe right into where the wastegate pipe is exiting? As far as the crossover pipe goes I don't see how to route it all the way accross the front of the motor due to space limitations. could you elaborate further? The primary goal with this project is to retain all of the stock accesories, this is also the most challenging. Thanks for the input
JPrevost.

 

You should still be able to run the crossover infront of the k-member and steering, low and over up where the existing wastegate pipe is. The drivers side manifold could go straight towards the front of the car, then down, then over, then up. This will give you a lot more room for the downpipe seeing as it would be the only pipe between the engine and firewall.
Did you already measure your hood clearance? It's hard to tell from the render if the turbo is sitting too high for the hood. There are a few other examples for single turbos on this site, do a search and look for the paperclip

 

I have done a quick estimate of my height, Its probably too high, not a big deal to edit the feature. I like your idea about the crossover pipe I am going to look into that a little further. thanks for the advice.