Compressed Air for boost

[95Maxima719]

Ok so i was talking to my grandpa the other day while working on his small block about boost.... Need for lower compression etc etc

Then he told me about a guy who designed and built a drag car that used compressed air for boost instead of blower, supercharger, turbo, etc....

Nowadays drags cars must be rebuilt after every run because of extreme heat. The guy who built the car ran 20some runs on the dyno and absolutely nothing wrong with the engine...yet he ran the same hp as the other guys whose engine needed to be rebuilt every time..

I was just wondering if anyone has heard of this or has experimented with it...Or if anyone would know how this works

Just a thought i had thanks

[Nealoc187]

never heard of it. the logic is fairly sound - what ever way you get more oxygen into the engine will work, the implementation of it especially in a street car would be problematic to say the least though.

[mywhitewolf]

you wouldn't use compressed air if you had the option of nitrous,

i've done the maths on this as well. and a 55lt (13 gallons?) bottle would give you 7psi for approx 5 seconds at 6000rpm if you pressurised to 100psi. compaired to a 10lb bottle being able to give you a 100shot (7psi equivelent in our engines) for about 30seconds?

In conclusion it would work, but not as well as you would hope

[nalc]

I don't see how compressing the air differently would have a major effect on motor reliability. If you're getting 7psi of boost from a turbo, or 7psi of boost from a supercharger, or 7psi of boost from a compressed air tank, or 7psi of boost from a very large elephant sneezing into your motor, wouldn't it be pretty much the same effect on power (neglecting parasitic loss) and engine durability?

[XeroX]

Im assuming since the compressed air is isolated and not introduced to heat like the compressed air from a turbo...that maybe this would be better? But then again u get a similar effect with an FMIC...so i think the idea of it being more reliable or anything better than a turbo setup is invalid...unless you want to start thinking about points of failure...then there is nothing really to worry about...other than the container and whatever method of valves you have to introduce it to the engine...in essence there are no moving parts...just like an n2o setup...

On the other hand, it is probably alot cheaper than a turbo setup or filling up nitrous bottles...

I think the idea only gets browny points for creativity rather than efficiency

[choray911]

I fail to understand how it could increase power. With NO2 you are injecting 2 oxygen molecules attached to a nitrogen molecule. You are saturating the incoming air with additional oxygen and at the same time freezing the incoming air, hence the power. If you are just using compressed air, there is no saturation of oxygen, the make up of the air is the same. Additionally, there would be no increase of manifold pressure unless you were to block off the throttle body and force the compressed air into the cylinders rather than it exiting through the path of least resistance (throttle body).

I'm not saying its impossible, but it is improbable