How safe is supercharger on engine

[rsn48]

I have been contemplating adding the Downing/Atlanta supercharger to my 318i; I don't have to tell you guys the E36 318i is a bit on the slow side, especially with an auto trany.

I have been talking to a friend of mine and he gives a host of reasons why I shouldn't supercharge the 318i. The top of his list of reason as to why not to supercharge is that it will destroy the engine prematurely. The car is a 94 however it has only 50,000 miles on it so I see it as being "relatively new" in terms of mileage.

I know with turbo charging if you goose the pressure up to high, you can crap out the engine; however my understanding of the Downing/Atlanta supercharger is that it is on the "conservative" side of increased pounds of forced induction.

What say you, how "safe" will the 318i engine be with the new supercharger added on?

[victell]

Mercedes, Ford and GM are currently using these Eaton blowers on OEM application. And their powertrain warranty supports these engines.

[Alex]

i wish someone would awnser this question so bad im needing to know too i have a 1984 318i would supercharging it be good? bad? or just ugly? also doesn anyone know anything on the turbinator supercharger at www.turbinator.com would this be good or bad?

[Boru635]

increased power output will shorten the life of the engine... think about it...
That said, I have 40K miles on my twin turbo M30 with boost (160K total) I run upwards of 20psi boost making 375+whp and well over 400wtq with no internal engine mods except ARP head studs.
I can't say how well the 318 engine will deal with increased intake pressure but a low boost, be it belt driven or turbine driven supercharger, should deliver many miles of duty... assuming it is tuned properly.

Sweeney

[stuartyp]

fuel saver (as seen on TV). It's a round metal thing with fins set at an angle that you place into the air intake tube of your engine. It is supposed to improve fuel mileage by swirling the air and thereby giving you better fuel atomization.

It will actually do some small bit of good on throttle body injection cars where the fuel is injected at the throttle (Like cars in the 1980's and a few trucks still today), but on multi port cars, the fuel doesn't enter the airstream untill the valve basically. By this time, the air would have all but stoped swirling and there is no time left for any swirling air to help anyway. All that's left for a Tornado unit to do is provide a small bit of restriction to the intake systems air flow.

My cousin bought one for his Toyota Mr2 Spyder. Using a G-Tech Pro (not terribly accurate for Hp) I found what appeared to be a 1 hp loss.

Throwing three or four twenty dollar bills out the window so as to make the car lighter will have a more positive effect on your cars performance.

[brads2002]

All that thing will do is restrict air and slow you down
A real supercharger is 5k.
thats a very expensive computer fan.

[Mr.Alex]

[mark93ic]

save the money on the supercharger, sell your car and buy a newer 6cyl 3 series or m3.

[mark93ic]

it's a hunk of crap that's about as useful as shoving a pepsi can into your intake. At this point, there's overwhelming evidence that not only do these gimics not do anything, they actually hurt performance. I wouldn't consider supercharging a '84 318i for one because the supercharger unit alone will far exceed the value of the car and two because unless you've recently rebuilt that engine, I would expect the install to start a downward spiral of failures on the car.

[tinman351]

the eaton unit is rated for about 100k. the benefits of doing the Downing/Atanta kit are that you don't give away your car to the dealer AND take the multi-year kick in the nuts on top of it. i'll recomend the D/A kit all the way! the kit is very complete and high quality. i put mine on at 75k and have almost 105k on it now. not a single issue with the kit or engine. i did a few of Shawn Fogg's mods, added an alcohol/water injection system, and may have a few more plans too(nick g, haltech or electromotive, zex). DO IT!

[robbo08]

i have a 318i e36, and i will agree that it is a bit ov a slow car but i have a manual gearbox on mine, what you need to do is covert from the m40 single cam, to the m44 twin cam 1900cc engine then you can bolt a supercharger strait on to it, make sure it is a low pressure one or you will have to uprate all the internals.
hope this helpd.