There are some guys in my Town that have been building turbos for quads,sleds and bikes. the prices are very good and I got to thinking. Would a turbo on the 99 vfr do harm or good and i wonder what you would notice. Bad handling,would acceleration be that much better. I have never seen a turbo on a VFR before so what do you guys think would it be a good or bad thing to do. Snakeman
Snakeman, Jan 8 2008, 12:22 PMThere are some guys in my Town that have been building turbos for quads,sleds and bikes. the prices are very good and I got to thinking. Would a turbo on the 99 vfr do harm or good and i wonder what you would notice. Bad handling,would acceleration be that much better. I have never seen a turbo on a VFR before so what do you guys think would it be a good or bad thing to do. Snakeman
Only turbo VFR I ever saw was a 3rd gen in Europe - done up by some engineering students in a grad program. Had twin turbos where the airbox used to be - think they had to modify the underside of the tank to make it all fit. If I remember correctly they got 220hp out of it...
If they REALLY want they can experiment with Murphy next winter - it's getting a teardown anyway.
Baileyrock, Jan 8 2008, 03:34 PMWow, must have just crawled out from under that rock snakeman to miss the most talked about and hit thread on VFRD ever???
Toro-Charger.
(IMG:style_emoticons/oldemoticons/tongue.gif)
Well, technically he asked about a turbocharger as opposed to a supercharger.
Due to the V4 configuration, installing turbos on the VFR is a very challenging project, because of how the exhaust manifolds from the two banks of cylinders are so far from each other. Ideally the Turbo is connected to where the 4 exhaust runners meet to get maximum boost, but where is that? Right under the sump where you'll have problems installing even something as thin and small as a sandwich. That's why a supercharger makes more sense. The next supercharger project should look into a Roots type unit on top of the throttle bodies. You might have to relocate most of the gas tank somehow to do it, but it will eliminate a lot of the pressurized intake plumbing and might prove to be a little more efficient than a cetrifugal/remote (from the throttle bodies) unit as used by Toro, but will be a harder to package. BTW, it's interesting to note that the Dutch(?) VFR turbo project installed their two turbos under the gas tank!?? I don't think the gasoline in the tank would like living next to cherry red hot turbo units for too long!
Baileyrock, Jan 8 2008, 03:34 PMWow, must have just crawled out from under that rock snakeman to miss the most talked about and hit thread on VFRD ever???
Toro-Charger.
(IMG:style_emoticons/oldemoticons/tongue.gif)
Well, technically he asked about a turbocharger as opposed to a supercharger.
Very good point! (IMG:style_emoticons/oldemoticons/rolleyes.gif)
My bad!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/oldemoticons/cool.gif)
SAFE-T, Jan 8 2008, 12:34 PMIf they REALLY want they can experiment with Murphy next winter - it's getting a teardown anyway.
What's on the agenda? A Torocharger?
He hasn't finished it, nevermind coming up with a price but maybe by next winter. The bike is going to get some kind of makeover.
If it took BLS about 6-9 months to price and produce the lowering pegs than it might takes longer for Toro to get his charger ready to ship... (IMG:style_emoticons/oldemoticons/sad.gif) I hope I am wrong because I want one.
Beck, Jan 8 2008, 04:26 PMDue to the V4 configuration, installing turbos on the VFR is a very challenging project, because of how the exhaust manifolds from the two banks of cylinders are so far from each other. Ideally the Turbo is connected to where the 4 exhaust runners meet to get maximum boost, but where is that? Right under the sump where you'll have problems installing even something as thin and small as a sandwich. That's why a supercharger makes more sense. The next supercharger project should look into a Roots type unit on top of the throttle bodies. You might have to relocate most of the gas tank somehow to do it, but it will eliminate a lot of the pressurized intake plumbing and might prove to be a little more efficient than a cetrifugal/remote (from the throttle bodies) unit as used by Toro, but will be a harder to package. BTW, it's interesting to note that the Dutch(?) VFR turbo project installed their two turbos under the gas tank!?? I don't think the gasoline in the tank would like living next to cherry red hot turbo units for too long!
Beck 95 VFR
A turbo is extremely challenging to integrate sucessfully on this bike. I know of 1 VFRD member who added a turbo to his '02 and got very similar results to mine (I'm not going to mention his name as 1) I don't want him bombarded with messages, and 2) it didn't work out so well for him & he no longer has it on his bike). Every time I think about a way to effectively package a turbo, I come up scratching my head. It's a plumbing/exhaust nightmare, but I'm sure it is possible with enough time and money. If you don't mind having a turbo, pipes, or air filter sticking outside your fairing, it becomes much easier, though.
As far as a Roots blower is concerned, they are far less efficient than a centrifugal. I have looked into using a small Screw-type supercharger such as a Lysholm unit as they are much more efficient than a Roots design (but not as much as a Rotrex or turbo) and have excellent low-end boost response. But like you say, it would take major work to get one to fit on this bike and would require mounting the drive in plain view -- if you wanted to hide the belt behind the fairing (if even possible) it would take an extremely complicated system of jackshafts and belts to do so. Even the smallest Lysholm is also much larger than the Rotrex, and the benefit of cruising in zero boost that you have with a centrifugal or turbo is gone once you go positive displacement.
Long story short, I used the Rotrex for a reason, and believe me, my bike has no trouble getting out of its own way no matter what speed you are traveling.
form what i understand the turbo takes more work stronger rods pistons cooling jackets around pistons ,the supercharger requires less internal endine mods than the turbocharger ,if i,m wrong please let me know ,but i like the super charger better.
NYMBYSS, Jan 10 2008, 10:54 AMform what i understand the turbo takes more work stronger rods pistons cooling jackets around pistons ,the supercharger requires less internal endine mods than the turbocharger ,if i,m wrong please let me know ,but i like the super charger better.
Here's the deal: it's all about boost. The Rotrex has a very engine-friendly boost curve (ie. linear in shape), and unlike a Roots/Screw blower or high boosting turbos, peak boost is only reached at maximum rpm, which means that the engine is far less prone to piston-killing detonation, and the additional stresses come on gradually and only when you pin the throttle. Anytime you compress air, you heat it up, and when you compress air to the likes of 10psi (which my bike currently does), the air entering your engine heats to ~210*F -- imagine that hot air entering when your engine is chugging along at low rpms. Not good.
Anyway, anytime you inject more boost into your engine, you're adding greater stresses to your components, thus a power adder that produces the most boost over most of the rev range will be toughest on the engine (positive displacement blowers, I'm looking at you). This is why the centrifugal Rotrex makes for an excellent choice on a street-ridden bike with stock internals, yet when you turn the boost up, they do a pretty good job in drag racing too.
I think the turbo would have to go in the tail-section, which is maybe not too bad on the exhaust side, but you'd have to pull your intake air from somewhere back there, and route it under the seat back to your custom intake manifold. Yech. Of course, for moderate power applications, there's no real reason why the turbo has to use the exhaust from all four headers. The turbo could go in front of the oil pan and just use the two front head pipes. Intake plumbing would still be a mess.
Intercooling or water/alcohol injection would help a lot (turbo or supercharger), but packaging of either is a problem.
If you can fit a supercharger you can fit a turbo, the down side to turbos (as has already been stated) is plumbing the exhaust, you could use the rear exhaust ports as well but would have to route them to the front (best place for the turbo) and then route it back or just use a dump pipe through a hole in the fairing, loud but easy. Another reason for a supercharger is that most you can get today are self contained, unlike most turbos where you will need an oil/water tap, some turbos (such as the Areocharger) are self contained.
As far as a turbo needing more internal work than a supercharger is not true. The centrifugal supercharger (such as the Rotrex and procharger) are pretty much the compressor side of a turbocharger, but are belt driven so lag is not really a problem. There are two kinds of superchargers on the market today, positive displacement and centrifugal, the amount of boost that can be made by a centrifugal supercharger is proportional to the square of the compressor's impeller speed, meaning that boost rises with rpm and power is mostly biased toward the top end.
Roots style are probably one of the worst superchargers, however they are widely used and cheap. Their down side is that they do not compress the air but only move it, the roots style has two counter-rotating lobes that scoop air in and move it past the out side casing so when the air is moved into the intake, since you are opening a chamber of uncompressed air into the intake of compressed air the air that is compressed rushes in and is then pushed back out, all of this turbulence makes the air heat up.
The twin screw type supercharger has two rotors that turn into each other, when the rotors mesh they draw in air and compress it before discharging it into the intake. Because of this some twin screws (such as the Whipple supercharger) reach a peak VE of over 98%.
There are of course other supercharger types, such as the G-lader, But as far as I know only used by VW, *sigh* how I miss the Corrado. Down side to these are how complex it is and how often you need to rebuild them, which is not cheap.
And then there is the Wankel (yes, same as the engine). It was first used by NSU as a supercharger. But failed to really make it anywhere as they shifted to making engines.
End of thread · 19 posts recoveredWayback Machine snapshot 13 Jan 2008