K-series Engine

[seb goss]

Hello everyone,

I am rather new to this game, and i have little knowledge. But could someone tell me if it is possible to turbo or supercharge the k-series?

[oilyhands]

Yes it is possible to do both, as it is faor *any* engine. Turbo Technics do a supercharger conversion and BBR a turbo conversion, neither is cheap and both require mods to the bottom end to decompress the engine (shorter/ shortened rods, better pistons), the BBR conversion uses more than 1 bar boost so requires additional modifications to get the bottom end to stay together (liners, block mods, change of engine brace, heavy duty studding, dowelling of crankcase to bearing ladder etc.).

 

How deep are your pockets? The TT conversions are 190BHP for the 1.8 and a bit more for the VVC, the BBR conversion can go up to 340BHP.

 

I'm not sure whether these have been successfuly installed in a Caterham, they have been eveloped for the Elise so there may be space/installation problems.

 

oily

[Tarek]

Seb,

Are you sure you want to turbocharge a 7? You can have a whole load of fun without turbolag and it's not as if a 7 needs 300 bhp! I'd consider other upgrades first.

[murph7355]

TT weren't looking at Caterham installations when I called last year (call 01604 705 050) as Elise business was booming (and not showing any signs of slacking).

 

Things may have changed now, but they were also only looking at 1.8s so it's unlikely they'll have anything suitable for a 1.4 right now.

 

I decided that turbo'ing wasn't worth looking at owing to lag/heat issues etc. (which Supercharging largely avoids). And neither are especially cheap if done properly.

 

To be honest I'm glad I went with normally asp' performance increases in the end (race car for the road feeling, the 'k' is a lovely engine for revs etc.).

 

C7 AJM

[Mike Bees]

The 1.8K was designed with supercharging in mind (hence the rather large big end journals on the crank), but a supercharged version never made it on to the market. Whilst the crank journals were well up to the job some other bits weren't - look at the list of mods BBR make to beef it up for blowing.

 

Mike

[Roger King]

Of the two choices here, I would opt for supercharging (after all a 7 is all about instant responses), but if you are after a serious power hike be prepared for some serious upgrade work to the bottom end - forged pistons, studs instead of through bolts, lower compression ratio, extra piston cooling, reinforced liners, etc, etc.

 

Then there is the perennial problem of induction charge cooling. If you compress air (which is what forced induction does), you will increase it's temperature (even if you manage to do it adiabatically, which is impossible). When air gets hotter, it becomes less dense which means that a given volume of air at a given pressure will have less mass. As it is the mass of air that flows through an engine that determines it's power output you can see that it is necessary to cool the intake charge to increase it's mass and therefore improve performance (and that is apart from the undesirable effects that a heated intake charge can have on combustion). This cooling would normally be provided by an intercooler or charge cooler, but the problem on a 7 is, where do you put such an item? They aren't exactly small items, being similar in size to the water radiator and I feel that this is the major item that needs addressing if forced induction is to work successfully in a 7. Although it is generally a lesser problem with supercharging than turbocharging.

 

Fact is, that in my experience, the biggest obstacle to a forced induction engine working successfully is getting the installation right. Just because something works on the dyno where it is relatively easy to control temperatures, does not mean that it will work installed in the chassis. Think back to the days of Formula 1 turbo cars. Some teams ran successfully with engines that other teams had constant unreliability with. Knowing a few people who were involved with the engine side of things at the time, the one thing they all said was that some teams couldn't be convinced of the necessity of correct installation and cooling.

 

If you run only a mild amount of boost, you can do away with the intercooler, but you will only get a mild power boost. In this case it would probably be easier to take the conventional tuning route of throttle bodies, gasflowing, cams, etc.

 

I know that this is only my personal opinion and it may be that someone has the solution to the above. If anyone has, I would be interested to hear from them.

[Red SLR]

I agree with RK. But, I think the costs involved with the 300bhp mod are very big.

 

I would go to someone like Minster and get them to do some work for you.

 

Simon.

 

X777CAT