Supercharge 4.0

Wouldn't you need a new chip in the ECU?

More info on Why not to Supercharge from a good and trusted friend of mine.

Why (We) wont touch anything with a ( certain type of )supercharger. We could easily do a chip for the ( certain type of )supercharger, but there are a lot of good reasons for us not to & not to sell you one! This is just another good reason why,, I had a 4.6HSE (GEMS) melt a piston on the Dyno. This cost me a lot to sort out, but I learned a lot from it and hopefully I can prevent my friends from making the same mistakes.

The wreckage of the engine was analyzed by (A certain Company), Europe's leading supercharger specialist. His summary was that the system "could never be set up properly in its present form" and is "unsuitable for the purpose for which it is sold".
Perhaps now is a good time to look here!! (you will find Pics and info here)
All of these seven major failure modes were exhibited in the engine, which had the system fitted for 9000 Miles:

1. Extremely poor air distribution within the inlet manifold, leading to major mixture errors between cylinders. (This also confuses the GEMS adaptive engine management system).

2. Cylinder bore washing on rich cylinders.

3. Trappingof piston rings and gudgeon pins in some cylinders caused by piston collapse under chronic long-term detonation.

This would have led to a small end seizure and a rod through the block within another 2000 Miles.

4. Early stages of head gasket failure on most cylinders, possibly influenced by item 3 above.

5. Severe camshaft wear, which is probably largely responsible for oil loss by crankcase pressurization. This has been observed in other supercharged engines, although the connection (if any) is unclear.

6. Insufficient engine breather capacity, leading to oil entering the bores past the piston rings and lowering the Octane rating of the fuel, hence exacerbating the detonation problem.

7. Large quantity of oil leaving the breather system. Because of the breather arrangement this almost exclusively went down the number two cylinder inlet runner, causing detonation problem.

Simply rebuilding the engine could not cure items 1-3. Over seven years working with several hundred Rover V8 engines, I have never seen so many major problems in one instance. It is clear that the ninth injector is required mostly to fuel the front four cylinders, which perform the bulk of the work. Because of this the conversion is also extremely vulnerable to failure of the ninth injector system, which will guarantee the destruction of the engine in seconds.

Bearing in mind that these faults take several thousand miles to develop, you can have no knowledge of what state the engine is in when you apply a chip upgrade. So when it blows up your customer would blame you for it, and I expect you would get a call from his lawyer/attorney/solicitor/leech/other parasite

(Sorry Lawyer's No Insult intended.)

So, "I" had to pick up the tab on my own because I made the change that destroyed the engine (by fuelling it correctly!!!), despite the fact that it would have blown up within 2000 more miles. Ironically I was only working on it because the original supplier could not cure the chronic pinking problems.

You may also be interested to know the power figures. A standard 4.6HSE makes 205 BHP on our Dyno. This one made 225BHP (with over 10% CO) when it came in. When I had set it up it made 255BHP just before it went bang. We can achieve this with cam, heads and chip.

Hope this is some help to you. My advice is don't get involved - Keep Selling your successful 4.6 stage 3 or 4.8, 5.2's instead! After all 334 bhp from your (5.2Efi stage 4) is a real engine so stay with it.> MARK

I acually got this info off of a good Land Rover site.

http://www.rpiv8.com/homepage.htm

parthog said:

Found a supercharger on Ebay,
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/e...&item=7955006715&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MEWA:IT

Says it'll fit the 4.6 or 4.0 Bosch engine.

Can this thing be put on the 4.0 and what effects will it have? Can the injectors handle extra flow to make the power?
No claims on the ad, doesn't tell compression ratio etc., so ??

Any experience with supercharging the rover engine? Sounds kind of cool anyway.

- Jeff

Click to expand...

I have never heard a single reputable Rover mechanic say anything positive about superchargers...

It would be interesting to see what kind of chip/software they used for this application. All the damage listed in joeys post clarify why things went wrong.

1. Extremely poor air distribution within the inlet manifold, leading to major mixture errors between cylinders. (This also confuses the GEMS adaptive engine management system).

When a manifold is pressurized there is no such thing as poor air distribution.

2. Cylinder bore washing on rich cylinders.

Depending on how flexible your software is this is an easy fix, simply by slightly over-injecting the engine and playing with the pulsewidth on the injector.

#3 & #4- Control over timing and fuel curves solves detonation.

5. Severe camshaft wear, which is probably largely responsible for oil loss by crankcase pressurization. This has been observed in other supercharged engines, although the connection (if any) is unclear.

No comment

7. Large quantity of oil leaving the breather system. Because of the breather arrangement this almost exclusively went down the number two cylinder inlet runner, causing detonation problem.

I don't see how oil in the number two cylinder or any cylinder will cause detonation.


When using a blown application using today's factory installed computers, data cannot be collected from just the O2 sensors. It must be collected from the mass air meter and an IAT sensor.

You could be a genius when it comes to developing a program on a naturally aspirated engine. However, none of the knowledge tuning naturally aspirated applications can be applied in a forced induction environment.

The biggest issue at hand is dealing with the heat generated by using a supercharger. Once you figure that out, then you have to absorb the cost of getting it to run correctly. That's where it can get costly. When your done doing the math 5-8 pounds of boost is not so attractive anymore.

ShaunP said:

There are lotts of blower kitts available here in Australia, some are even done by reputable LR shops so who knows.

Click to expand...

How are the Powerdyne centrifugal blowers? Any experience with them(CAPA)? They seem to be the most popular down under.

I know of one person with a formerly supercharged Rover engine.

When it let loose, he said the inside of the engine looked as though it had been filled with shredded aluminum foil.

These engines are fragile enough, let's just run them the way they are and enjoy what they can do as-is.

I read the information Joey posted a long time ago and it all sounds just like the stuff steve Dinan was spouting when he first put a turbo on a 320i BMW.

the facts are that any motor can be set up with forced induction , do it wrong it will self destruct...do it correctly and it will last a long time.

on some motors doing it right can be starting over where on others it can be just bolting on a blower and remapping the injection and ignition.

knowing what each application needs is where the "ART" of the science of forced induction comes in

What I don't get is Superchargers are a pretty common way of adding horses. It's technology that's been around for along time and well researched. It's very common to add SC's to early british cars, such as my MGB and they are pretty reliable. I understand what makes turbo charging tricky with all the heat produced.

But what makes the Rover V8 the exception and 'so fragile' that it can't be supercharged?

just wondering, have you ever been in a situation where you need a supercharger? rover engines can only go so far. if your looking for a powerhouse for something such as extreme mud bogging then ditch your buick v8 and go for a 350/454. just my .02. if it aint broke dont fix it

Richard,

That's a very good point. My disco is stodgy and slow, but has tons of torque. I'm happy with my current set up. My MG on the other hand, I'm often wanting to burn the ricers off the line.

Nothing wrong with forced induction in a rover v8. Just don't use it to get the brunt of your power increase. A little pressure goes a long way with the right internal mods. To use moderate boost, and keep it reliable, you should be doing the same thing you would on an iron block... ie. pistons and rings built for the purpose, stronger rods, a proper cam, tougher pushrods, rockers, springs and main bearings, not to mention big valves and fuel delivery to make the most of it. Of course, with all that other crap, you'll probably get the power boost you are looking for anyway.

I've seen plenty of rovers packing turbos in the past, now that's a little different, but it's still forced induction. Plus, theres that rover V8 that clocked 7 seconds in the 1/4 mile. You can't tell me he's not packing.

The safest use for a supercharger is to knock that 0-10mph time down that kills the big vehicles, but only a little. And with a decent amount of power on tap allready, that extra second shaved off will be worth every penny... if acceleration matters to you anyway.

Cheers,

Kennith

I wonder if that thing was one of the kits from this company:

http://www.specialvehicles.com/content/view/33/42/

And as for not be able to supercharge the engines, apparently Land rover felt it was ok to do that, as in 1997 there was a special edition Range Rover available from the dealerships with with a blower:

4.6 SSE Edition (by Cameron Concepts): These were supercharged Range Rovers modified in the U.S. by Cameron Concepts (now Special Vehicle Concepts, who still sell customized Range Rovers) who added Eaton superchargers and modified the hood to clear the supercharger. They were not typical modified Range Rovers since all were authorized by Land Rover Special Vehicles and they had a numbered Land Rover Special Vehicles plaque under the hood. Most (if not all) had custom wheels and many other options such as custom leather trim, extra wood and body color painted plastic. The custom ?SSE? logo on the tailgate was created by peeling off the H and replacing it with the S from another new tailgate sticker.

So obviously it can be done, and can be done safely as long as you do it right.

-Stuart

Here is a picture of their installation.

Also here is a 2000 Range Rover with a supercharger for sale:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/e...ory=6295&item=4530255126&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

-Stuart