Quote:
Snapey wrote:
This may be a US thing so I don't understand, but why blow through a carb with a Paxton or similar supercharger when you can suck through a better and lower profile manifold with a Rootes style unit?
There are several possible reasons.
The Paxton or McCulloch supercharger was designed as an add on accessory. It was easier, or more convenient, to blow through the existing carb. Other centrifugal blowers have been set up to suck through but these were OEM installations.
Centrifugal blowers have several advantages over Roots type. One is they are more efficient, and produce more boost on less parasitic drag. Another is they are more compact.
The centrifugal job has the disadvantage that boost is not linear. They tend to have little or no boost at low speeds and overboost at high speeds. Paxton overcame this with his variable speed drive. It allowed the blower to run slowly when not needed, to go into high when needed, then back off to maintain a constant 4 or 5 pound boost at all speeds.
The Paxton was a successful effort to make a blower that was adaptable to all kinds of engines. Roots type installations are bulkier, more expensive, less efficient and must be tailored to each engine. I dare say that in the nearly 60 years since it was introduced the McCulloch and its successor the Paxton blower have been used on more engines, and more different engines, than any other.
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