December 23, 2013 • 8 mins
Leaf blowers are convenient, but are they living up to their potential? In this podcast, Marshall examines superchargers, explaining how a leaf blower can (theoretically) perform the same duties. Tune in and learn more about hacking leaf blowers.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Streaming TV shows and movies directly to your home is
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instantly watch TV and movies on your PC, Mac, mobile device,
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Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com
where smart happens. Hi Marshall Brain with today's question. Is
(00:30):
it possible to build a cheap, do it yourself supercharger
for your car out of a leafblower? So let's start
by talking about what a supercharger is. A supercharger is
something you normally find on high performance street cars or
race cars or something. It's basically just an air compressor,
(00:50):
and the idea is for it to compress the air
going into the engine so that the air inside the
cylinder is at a higher pressure than it normally would be.
And since there's more air in the cylinder, you can
put more gas in the cylinder and burn it and
get more power out of an engine. So, if you
have a normally aspirated engine an engine without a supercharger,
(01:13):
it can process a certain amount of gasoline and produce
a certain amount of power. Because of the amount of
air that gets into each cylinder. If you were to
double the amount of air in each cylinder, then you
can burn twice as much gas and the engine can
produce in theory, twice as much power, and it can
do that even though the engine really hasn't gained that
(01:35):
much weight. You know, normally you would have to double
the size of the engine to get double the power. Here,
you add the supercharger, which is a fairly small piece
of equipment, and you double the power of the engine.
So you really increase the power to weight ratio of
that engine quite a bit. Okay, so I've been interrupted
here by someone in the background who's asking what the
(01:55):
differences between a supercharger and a turbocharger. So a supercharger
gets its power usually from a belt that's attached to
the engine, so the engine is directly powering the air compressor.
In a turbocharger, there's a turbine that's attached to the
exhaust system, so the flow of exhaust gases is what
(02:16):
provides the power for the air compressor in that case.
And there are advantages and disadvantages to the two different systems.
But supercharging is a very popular and common way to
boost the performance of an engine by compressing the air
that goes into it. So the problem with a supercharger
(02:36):
or a turbocharger is that it's not that easy to
add one on to an existing engine. They're pretty expensive,
like thousands of dollars. You have to do a lot
of plumbing work with the uh intake or the exhaust
system or both. You have to fit it under the hood,
which sometimes isn't that easy, and so on. It's a
it's a big project to add a supercharger or a
(02:57):
turbo charger to an existing engine, and it's not for
the faint of heart. So the question here is could
you use something that's a lot more common and a
lot less expensive and a lot more readily available, like
a leaf blower to accomplish the job of a supercharger
and get more performance out of your engine at a
low cost. And this question is prompted by the fact
(03:21):
that a article made the rounds on the internet a
couple of weeks ago where a guy had taken a
corvette and he had actually put two leaf blowers on
it so that he could increase the amount of air
going into the engine. And this leaf blower supercharger actually
did seem to work. Now it's not gonna work as
well as a real supercharger because leaf blowers can only
(03:43):
produce so much pressure. Uh you might get say one
pound per square inch one p s I or maybe
two p s i at the very most out of
a leaf blower, and that's going to increase engine performance
by say ten percent, which is nothing to sneeze at
if you have a two hundred horse power engine. Now
you have a two horsepower engine. But the interesting thing
(04:05):
is that it is possible and it does actually work.
You can spend you know, two hundred dollars on a
leaf blower, stick it in your engine compartment, increase your
performance by by ten percent. That's that's not a bad
trade off. So what are the problems with this idea?
One problem is that most leaf blowers are incredibly loud
(04:27):
and noisy, and there's no easy way to solve that problem,
so you'd have to live with a certain amount of
noise coming from your blower. The other thing is that
leaf blowers aren't necessarily made to be super reliable devices,
and after you use one for a couple of hours
or a couple of days, it might be that the
plastic impeller explodes and shoots pieces of plastic into your
(04:52):
air intake or something like that, but it is nonetheless
an interesting kind of thought question about producing inexpensive supercharger
like devices that are either electrically powered or small gas
engine powered to increase the performance of your engine pretty inexpensively.
So let's say you were to try this. You go out,
(05:14):
you buy a leaf blower, You stick it in your
engine compartment, and run the air outlet of the leaf
blower into the air intake of your engine, and you
seal it up so you get a good amount of
the pressure coming out of the leaf blower going into
the engine without any leaks. Is it going to actually work?
And the question there comes down to the computer that's
(05:36):
controlling your engine, the e c U or the engine
control unit inside your car. There is a computer that's
controlling the fuel injectors that are pumping the fuel into
each of the cylinders, and that e c U can
be either unsophisticated or sophisticated. A sophisticated one will look
(05:56):
at the amount of fuel that's going in and the
amount of oxygen that's coming out in the exhaust stream,
and it can adjust the amount of fuel depending on
the amount of air that's coming into the engine. So
with a sophisticated ECU, what's gonna happen is you blow
more air into the engine. The e CU detects that
(06:17):
there's more air available, it pumps more gasoline into the
cylinder to take advantage of that extra air, and presto,
you get more performance out of your engine. Automatically. The
e c U handles the whole thing for you. And
since there's not that much boost here, you know, one
or two ps i, there's not that big of a
(06:37):
change that the e CU is having to handle. If
you have a less sophisticated ECU, it's not going to
do that. It doesn't have the mental capacity to look
at the oxygen coming out in the exhaust stream and
adjust the fuel and so on, and so you're gonna
end up with no additional power, probably and possibly with
(06:57):
a lean fuel mixture in the cylinder, which could cause
the image engine damage. So you would want to check
your ECU before you tried this and make sure that
it's sophisticated enough to handle what you're asking it to do.
If you do that, and if you take some kind
of precautions, say a screen or something that's going to
(07:17):
catch any plastic that gets blown into the engine. If
the UH leafblower catastrophically fails, then if you're the experimental type,
this might be a fun experiment to try, just to
see what would happen. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, does that how stuff works dot com
and don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog
(07:37):
on the house stuff works dot com home page. You
can also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at
brain stuff hsw The house Stuff Works I fine app
has arrived down at it today on iTunes. Audible dot
com is the leading provider of downloadable digital audio books
(07:58):
and spoken word entertainment. Audible has over one hundred thousand
titles to choose from to be downloaded to your iPod
or m P three player. Go to audible podcast dot
com slash brain Stuff to get a free audio book
download of your choice when you sign up today.
Streaming TV shows and movies directly to your home is
a breeze with Netflix. As a Netflix member, you can
instantly watch TV and movies on your PC, Mac, mobile device,
or television. Get a free thirty day trial membership. Go
to Netflix dot com slash stuff and sign up today.
Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com
where smart happens. Hi Marshall Brain with today's question. Is
(00:30):
it possible to build a cheap, do it yourself supercharger
for your car out of a leafblower? So let's start
by talking about what a supercharger is. A supercharger is
something you normally find on high performance street cars or
race cars or something. It's basically just an air compressor,
(00:50):
and the idea is for it to compress the air
going into the engine so that the air inside the
cylinder is at a higher pressure than it normally would be.
And since there's more air in the cylinder, you can
put more gas in the cylinder and burn it and
get more power out of an engine. So, if you
have a normally aspirated engine an engine without a supercharger,
(01:13):
it can process a certain amount of gasoline and produce
a certain amount of power. Because of the amount of
air that gets into each cylinder. If you were to
double the amount of air in each cylinder, then you
can burn twice as much gas and the engine can
produce in theory, twice as much power, and it can
do that even though the engine really hasn't gained that
(01:35):
much weight. You know, normally you would have to double
the size of the engine to get double the power. Here,
you add the supercharger, which is a fairly small piece
of equipment, and you double the power of the engine.
So you really increase the power to weight ratio of
that engine quite a bit. Okay, so I've been interrupted
here by someone in the background who's asking what the
(01:55):
differences between a supercharger and a turbocharger. So a supercharger
gets its power usually from a belt that's attached to
the engine, so the engine is directly powering the air compressor.
In a turbocharger, there's a turbine that's attached to the
exhaust system, so the flow of exhaust gases is what
(02:16):
provides the power for the air compressor in that case.
And there are advantages and disadvantages to the two different systems.
But supercharging is a very popular and common way to
boost the performance of an engine by compressing the air
that goes into it. So the problem with a supercharger
(02:36):
or a turbocharger is that it's not that easy to
add one on to an existing engine. They're pretty expensive,
like thousands of dollars. You have to do a lot
of plumbing work with the uh intake or the exhaust
system or both. You have to fit it under the hood,
which sometimes isn't that easy, and so on. It's a
it's a big project to add a supercharger or a
(02:57):
turbo charger to an existing engine, and it's not for
the faint of heart. So the question here is could
you use something that's a lot more common and a
lot less expensive and a lot more readily available, like
a leaf blower to accomplish the job of a supercharger
and get more performance out of your engine at a
low cost. And this question is prompted by the fact
(03:21):
that a article made the rounds on the internet a
couple of weeks ago where a guy had taken a
corvette and he had actually put two leaf blowers on
it so that he could increase the amount of air
going into the engine. And this leaf blower supercharger actually
did seem to work. Now it's not gonna work as
well as a real supercharger because leaf blowers can only
(03:43):
produce so much pressure. Uh you might get say one
pound per square inch one p s I or maybe
two p s i at the very most out of
a leaf blower, and that's going to increase engine performance
by say ten percent, which is nothing to sneeze at
if you have a two hundred horse power engine. Now
you have a two horsepower engine. But the interesting thing
(04:05):
is that it is possible and it does actually work.
You can spend you know, two hundred dollars on a
leaf blower, stick it in your engine compartment, increase your
performance by by ten percent. That's that's not a bad
trade off. So what are the problems with this idea?
One problem is that most leaf blowers are incredibly loud
(04:27):
and noisy, and there's no easy way to solve that problem,
so you'd have to live with a certain amount of
noise coming from your blower. The other thing is that
leaf blowers aren't necessarily made to be super reliable devices,
and after you use one for a couple of hours
or a couple of days, it might be that the
plastic impeller explodes and shoots pieces of plastic into your
(04:52):
air intake or something like that, but it is nonetheless
an interesting kind of thought question about producing inexpensive supercharger
like devices that are either electrically powered or small gas
engine powered to increase the performance of your engine pretty inexpensively.
So let's say you were to try this. You go out,
(05:14):
you buy a leaf blower, You stick it in your
engine compartment, and run the air outlet of the leaf
blower into the air intake of your engine, and you
seal it up so you get a good amount of
the pressure coming out of the leaf blower going into
the engine without any leaks. Is it going to actually work?
And the question there comes down to the computer that's
(05:36):
controlling your engine, the e c U or the engine
control unit inside your car. There is a computer that's
controlling the fuel injectors that are pumping the fuel into
each of the cylinders, and that e c U can
be either unsophisticated or sophisticated. A sophisticated one will look
(05:56):
at the amount of fuel that's going in and the
amount of oxygen that's coming out in the exhaust stream,
and it can adjust the amount of fuel depending on
the amount of air that's coming into the engine. So
with a sophisticated ECU, what's gonna happen is you blow
more air into the engine. The e CU detects that
(06:17):
there's more air available, it pumps more gasoline into the
cylinder to take advantage of that extra air, and presto,
you get more performance out of your engine. Automatically. The
e c U handles the whole thing for you. And
since there's not that much boost here, you know, one
or two ps i, there's not that big of a
(06:37):
change that the e CU is having to handle. If
you have a less sophisticated ECU, it's not going to
do that. It doesn't have the mental capacity to look
at the oxygen coming out in the exhaust stream and
adjust the fuel and so on, and so you're gonna
end up with no additional power, probably and possibly with
(06:57):
a lean fuel mixture in the cylinder, which could cause
the image engine damage. So you would want to check
your ECU before you tried this and make sure that
it's sophisticated enough to handle what you're asking it to do.
If you do that, and if you take some kind
of precautions, say a screen or something that's going to
(07:17):
catch any plastic that gets blown into the engine. If
the UH leafblower catastrophically fails, then if you're the experimental type,
this might be a fun experiment to try, just to
see what would happen. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, does that how stuff works dot com
and don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog
(07:37):
on the house stuff works dot com home page. You
can also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at
brain stuff hsw The house Stuff Works I fine app
has arrived down at it today on iTunes. Audible dot
com is the leading provider of downloadable digital audio books
(07:58):
and spoken word entertainment. Audible has over one hundred thousand
titles to choose from to be downloaded to your iPod
or m P three player. Go to audible podcast dot
com slash brain Stuff to get a free audio book
download of your choice when you sign up today.
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