1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:02,760
Speaker 1: Streaming TV shows and movies directly to your home is

2
00:00:02,759 --> 00:00:05,560
Speaker 1: a breeze with Netflix. As a Netflix member, you can

3
00:00:05,600 --> 00:00:09,040
Speaker 1: instantly watch TV and movies on your PC, Mac, mobile device,

4
00:00:09,160 --> 00:00:12,440
Speaker 1: or television. Get a free thirty day trial membership. Go

5
00:00:12,520 --> 00:00:15,200
Speaker 1: to Netflix dot com slash stuff and sign up today.

6
00:00:15,880 --> 00:00:18,919
Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com

7
00:00:18,920 --> 00:00:30,600
Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi Marshall Brain with today's question. Is

8
00:00:30,600 --> 00:00:35,000
Speaker 1: it possible to build a cheap, do it yourself supercharger

9
00:00:35,120 --> 00:00:39,640
Speaker 1: for your car out of a leafblower? So let's start

10
00:00:39,720 --> 00:00:43,360
Speaker 1: by talking about what a supercharger is. A supercharger is

11
00:00:43,400 --> 00:00:46,920
Speaker 1: something you normally find on high performance street cars or

12
00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:50,520
Speaker 1: race cars or something. It's basically just an air compressor,

13
00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:53,360
Speaker 1: and the idea is for it to compress the air

14
00:00:53,560 --> 00:00:57,240
Speaker 1: going into the engine so that the air inside the

15
00:00:57,280 --> 00:01:00,320
Speaker 1: cylinder is at a higher pressure than it normally would be.

16
00:01:00,720 --> 00:01:03,639
Speaker 1: And since there's more air in the cylinder, you can

17
00:01:03,680 --> 00:01:06,440
Speaker 1: put more gas in the cylinder and burn it and

18
00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:09,319
Speaker 1: get more power out of an engine. So, if you

19
00:01:09,360 --> 00:01:13,360
Speaker 1: have a normally aspirated engine an engine without a supercharger,

20
00:01:13,920 --> 00:01:17,600
Speaker 1: it can process a certain amount of gasoline and produce

21
00:01:17,640 --> 00:01:20,280
Speaker 1: a certain amount of power. Because of the amount of

22
00:01:20,319 --> 00:01:23,080
Speaker 1: air that gets into each cylinder. If you were to

23
00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:26,120
Speaker 1: double the amount of air in each cylinder, then you

24
00:01:26,160 --> 00:01:28,679
Speaker 1: can burn twice as much gas and the engine can

25
00:01:28,720 --> 00:01:31,920
Speaker 1: produce in theory, twice as much power, and it can

26
00:01:31,959 --> 00:01:34,960
Speaker 1: do that even though the engine really hasn't gained that

27
00:01:35,040 --> 00:01:37,759
Speaker 1: much weight. You know, normally you would have to double

28
00:01:37,800 --> 00:01:41,360
Speaker 1: the size of the engine to get double the power. Here,

29
00:01:41,800 --> 00:01:44,520
Speaker 1: you add the supercharger, which is a fairly small piece

30
00:01:44,520 --> 00:01:46,720
Speaker 1: of equipment, and you double the power of the engine.

31
00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:50,040
Speaker 1: So you really increase the power to weight ratio of

32
00:01:50,080 --> 00:01:53,480
Speaker 1: that engine quite a bit. Okay, so I've been interrupted

33
00:01:53,480 --> 00:01:55,920
Speaker 1: here by someone in the background who's asking what the

34
00:01:55,960 --> 00:02:01,440
Speaker 1: differences between a supercharger and a turbocharger. So a supercharger

35
00:02:01,760 --> 00:02:04,880
Speaker 1: gets its power usually from a belt that's attached to

36
00:02:04,960 --> 00:02:09,000
Speaker 1: the engine, so the engine is directly powering the air compressor.

37
00:02:09,040 --> 00:02:12,120
Speaker 1: In a turbocharger, there's a turbine that's attached to the

38
00:02:12,160 --> 00:02:16,080
Speaker 1: exhaust system, so the flow of exhaust gases is what

39
00:02:16,240 --> 00:02:20,080
Speaker 1: provides the power for the air compressor in that case.

40
00:02:20,160 --> 00:02:23,839
Speaker 1: And there are advantages and disadvantages to the two different systems.

41
00:02:23,880 --> 00:02:28,440
Speaker 1: But supercharging is a very popular and common way to

42
00:02:28,639 --> 00:02:32,400
Speaker 1: boost the performance of an engine by compressing the air

43
00:02:32,440 --> 00:02:36,280
Speaker 1: that goes into it. So the problem with a supercharger

44
00:02:36,440 --> 00:02:39,320
Speaker 1: or a turbocharger is that it's not that easy to

45
00:02:39,400 --> 00:02:43,040
Speaker 1: add one on to an existing engine. They're pretty expensive,

46
00:02:43,160 --> 00:02:45,560
Speaker 1: like thousands of dollars. You have to do a lot

47
00:02:45,600 --> 00:02:49,120
Speaker 1: of plumbing work with the uh intake or the exhaust

48
00:02:49,120 --> 00:02:52,040
Speaker 1: system or both. You have to fit it under the hood,

49
00:02:52,080 --> 00:02:55,120
Speaker 1: which sometimes isn't that easy, and so on. It's a

50
00:02:55,280 --> 00:02:57,920
Speaker 1: it's a big project to add a supercharger or a

51
00:02:57,919 --> 00:03:01,120
Speaker 1: turbo charger to an existing engine, and it's not for

52
00:03:01,160 --> 00:03:04,480
Speaker 1: the faint of heart. So the question here is could

53
00:03:04,520 --> 00:03:07,160
Speaker 1: you use something that's a lot more common and a

54
00:03:07,160 --> 00:03:10,880
Speaker 1: lot less expensive and a lot more readily available, like

55
00:03:11,080 --> 00:03:15,080
Speaker 1: a leaf blower to accomplish the job of a supercharger

56
00:03:15,200 --> 00:03:17,840
Speaker 1: and get more performance out of your engine at a

57
00:03:17,919 --> 00:03:21,400
Speaker 1: low cost. And this question is prompted by the fact

58
00:03:21,480 --> 00:03:24,040
Speaker 1: that a article made the rounds on the internet a

59
00:03:24,120 --> 00:03:26,640
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago where a guy had taken a

60
00:03:26,680 --> 00:03:29,720
Speaker 1: corvette and he had actually put two leaf blowers on

61
00:03:29,800 --> 00:03:32,480
Speaker 1: it so that he could increase the amount of air

62
00:03:32,560 --> 00:03:36,960
Speaker 1: going into the engine. And this leaf blower supercharger actually

63
00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:39,040
Speaker 1: did seem to work. Now it's not gonna work as

64
00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:43,000
Speaker 1: well as a real supercharger because leaf blowers can only

65
00:03:43,080 --> 00:03:47,480
Speaker 1: produce so much pressure. Uh you might get say one

66
00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:50,640
Speaker 1: pound per square inch one p s I or maybe

67
00:03:50,760 --> 00:03:52,960
Speaker 1: two p s i at the very most out of

68
00:03:52,960 --> 00:03:56,240
Speaker 1: a leaf blower, and that's going to increase engine performance

69
00:03:56,280 --> 00:03:59,520
Speaker 1: by say ten percent, which is nothing to sneeze at

70
00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:01,440
Speaker 1: if you have a two hundred horse power engine. Now

71
00:04:01,480 --> 00:04:05,040
Speaker 1: you have a two horsepower engine. But the interesting thing

72
00:04:05,120 --> 00:04:08,840
Speaker 1: is that it is possible and it does actually work.

73
00:04:09,440 --> 00:04:12,880
Speaker 1: You can spend you know, two hundred dollars on a

74
00:04:12,920 --> 00:04:16,520
Speaker 1: leaf blower, stick it in your engine compartment, increase your

75
00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:19,719
Speaker 1: performance by by ten percent. That's that's not a bad

76
00:04:19,760 --> 00:04:22,640
Speaker 1: trade off. So what are the problems with this idea?

77
00:04:23,160 --> 00:04:27,480
Speaker 1: One problem is that most leaf blowers are incredibly loud

78
00:04:27,600 --> 00:04:32,120
Speaker 1: and noisy, and there's no easy way to solve that problem,

79
00:04:32,279 --> 00:04:34,680
Speaker 1: so you'd have to live with a certain amount of

80
00:04:34,680 --> 00:04:37,440
Speaker 1: noise coming from your blower. The other thing is that

81
00:04:37,600 --> 00:04:41,520
Speaker 1: leaf blowers aren't necessarily made to be super reliable devices,

82
00:04:41,600 --> 00:04:44,400
Speaker 1: and after you use one for a couple of hours

83
00:04:44,560 --> 00:04:47,200
Speaker 1: or a couple of days, it might be that the

84
00:04:47,320 --> 00:04:52,120
Speaker 1: plastic impeller explodes and shoots pieces of plastic into your

85
00:04:52,400 --> 00:04:56,200
Speaker 1: air intake or something like that, but it is nonetheless

86
00:04:56,200 --> 00:05:02,320
Speaker 1: an interesting kind of thought question about producing inexpensive supercharger

87
00:05:02,440 --> 00:05:06,760
Speaker 1: like devices that are either electrically powered or small gas

88
00:05:06,839 --> 00:05:11,240
Speaker 1: engine powered to increase the performance of your engine pretty inexpensively.

89
00:05:11,880 --> 00:05:14,200
Speaker 1: So let's say you were to try this. You go out,

90
00:05:14,480 --> 00:05:17,320
Speaker 1: you buy a leaf blower, You stick it in your

91
00:05:17,320 --> 00:05:20,440
Speaker 1: engine compartment, and run the air outlet of the leaf

92
00:05:20,480 --> 00:05:23,000
Speaker 1: blower into the air intake of your engine, and you

93
00:05:23,040 --> 00:05:25,800
Speaker 1: seal it up so you get a good amount of

94
00:05:25,839 --> 00:05:28,040
Speaker 1: the pressure coming out of the leaf blower going into

95
00:05:28,080 --> 00:05:31,719
Speaker 1: the engine without any leaks. Is it going to actually work?

96
00:05:32,400 --> 00:05:36,000
Speaker 1: And the question there comes down to the computer that's

97
00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:38,720
Speaker 1: controlling your engine, the e c U or the engine

98
00:05:38,720 --> 00:05:42,800
Speaker 1: control unit inside your car. There is a computer that's

99
00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:46,679
Speaker 1: controlling the fuel injectors that are pumping the fuel into

100
00:05:46,720 --> 00:05:50,520
Speaker 1: each of the cylinders, and that e c U can

101
00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:56,240
Speaker 1: be either unsophisticated or sophisticated. A sophisticated one will look

102
00:05:56,440 --> 00:05:59,560
Speaker 1: at the amount of fuel that's going in and the

103
00:05:59,640 --> 00:06:04,000
Speaker 1: amount of oxygen that's coming out in the exhaust stream,

104
00:06:04,040 --> 00:06:07,120
Speaker 1: and it can adjust the amount of fuel depending on

105
00:06:07,160 --> 00:06:09,560
Speaker 1: the amount of air that's coming into the engine. So

106
00:06:10,080 --> 00:06:13,880
Speaker 1: with a sophisticated ECU, what's gonna happen is you blow

107
00:06:13,960 --> 00:06:17,080
Speaker 1: more air into the engine. The e CU detects that

108
00:06:17,160 --> 00:06:21,120
Speaker 1: there's more air available, it pumps more gasoline into the

109
00:06:21,160 --> 00:06:24,640
Speaker 1: cylinder to take advantage of that extra air, and presto,

110
00:06:24,800 --> 00:06:28,760
Speaker 1: you get more performance out of your engine. Automatically. The

111
00:06:28,839 --> 00:06:31,520
Speaker 1: e c U handles the whole thing for you. And

112
00:06:31,560 --> 00:06:34,360
Speaker 1: since there's not that much boost here, you know, one

113
00:06:34,440 --> 00:06:37,120
Speaker 1: or two ps i, there's not that big of a

114
00:06:37,279 --> 00:06:39,840
Speaker 1: change that the e CU is having to handle. If

115
00:06:39,839 --> 00:06:43,640
Speaker 1: you have a less sophisticated ECU, it's not going to

116
00:06:43,680 --> 00:06:47,000
Speaker 1: do that. It doesn't have the mental capacity to look

117
00:06:47,040 --> 00:06:50,159
Speaker 1: at the oxygen coming out in the exhaust stream and

118
00:06:50,200 --> 00:06:52,360
Speaker 1: adjust the fuel and so on, and so you're gonna

119
00:06:52,480 --> 00:06:57,360
Speaker 1: end up with no additional power, probably and possibly with

120
00:06:57,600 --> 00:07:00,480
Speaker 1: a lean fuel mixture in the cylinder, which could cause

121
00:07:00,600 --> 00:07:03,960
Speaker 1: the image engine damage. So you would want to check

122
00:07:04,080 --> 00:07:07,599
Speaker 1: your ECU before you tried this and make sure that

123
00:07:07,720 --> 00:07:11,040
Speaker 1: it's sophisticated enough to handle what you're asking it to do.

124
00:07:11,800 --> 00:07:14,680
Speaker 1: If you do that, and if you take some kind

125
00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:17,600
Speaker 1: of precautions, say a screen or something that's going to

126
00:07:17,720 --> 00:07:20,520
Speaker 1: catch any plastic that gets blown into the engine. If

127
00:07:20,560 --> 00:07:26,600
Speaker 1: the UH leafblower catastrophically fails, then if you're the experimental type,

128
00:07:26,640 --> 00:07:29,320
Speaker 1: this might be a fun experiment to try, just to

129
00:07:29,320 --> 00:07:33,320
Speaker 1: see what would happen. For more on this and thousands

130
00:07:33,320 --> 00:07:35,880
Speaker 1: of other topics, does that how stuff works dot com

131
00:07:35,920 --> 00:07:37,800
Speaker 1: and don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog

132
00:07:37,920 --> 00:07:40,040
Speaker 1: on the house stuff works dot com home page. You

133
00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:43,000
Speaker 1: can also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at

134
00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:47,800
Speaker 1: brain stuff hsw The house Stuff Works I fine app

135
00:07:47,840 --> 00:07:54,880
Speaker 1: has arrived down at it today on iTunes. Audible dot

136
00:07:54,920 --> 00:07:58,200
Speaker 1: com is the leading provider of downloadable digital audio books

137
00:07:58,200 --> 00:08:01,920
Speaker 1: and spoken word entertainment. Audible has over one hundred thousand

138
00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:04,800
Speaker 1: titles to choose from to be downloaded to your iPod

139
00:08:04,880 --> 00:08:08,000
Speaker 1: or m P three player. Go to audible podcast dot

140
00:08:08,040 --> 00:08:10,400
Speaker 1: com slash brain Stuff to get a free audio book

141
00:08:10,440 --> 00:08:12,600
Speaker 1: download of your choice when you sign up today.