 Note how thin the oil aeration pump is. This lightweight gear is where the oil mist comes from. |
How did this compare with the oil inside the lines we had set up to imitate the pressure-fed system? Well, the feed line oil temperature at one point reached a whopping 218° and did not cool more than a couple degrees by the time our journey ended. This represented an incredible peak difference of about 78°(F). Dan was honestly surprised that the oil line temperature did not get any hotter than it did, considering how aggressively I had driven the car, and how little airflow actually gets to a Corvette engine. I reasoned that there must be some good oil cooling systems either in the block or somewhere else in these awesome cars.
IN SUMMARY
In any event, I was convinced by the results of our test that the self-contained oil in the Procharger certainly isn't running any hotter because it's not injected with hotter engine oil. Additionally, the oil in the Procharger is very thin (zero weight) and fully synthetic. Oil that is in an engine is very viscous, in order to stick to the rings and carry the journal bearing loads, but according to any engineer, it isn't the recommended oil for a super high speed gearbox. It's not uncommon for a modern centrifugal supercharger to run three times the gear surface speeds of a high-performance manual transmission. These high speeds create tremendous shear forces and friction losses.
 Centrifugal superchargers are all the rage today. With many certified for use on smog-controlled vehicles, it’s easy to add a significant amount of power to a late-model machine. With that, it’s important to make sure the power-adder does its job efficiently, and that’s what we learned doing the heat test. |
The engineers at Procharger have actually tested the self-contained blowers with motor oil and they run 20° to 30° hotter, yet still cooler than the thermostatically heated oil coming from the engine.
As I said at the beginning of this story, I do love the power produced by a centrifugal blower, and now I feel confident based on this scientific test that showed a direct side-by-side comparison of the two most common oiling systems that the self-contained version is the way to go for added security against melt-down, seizure or overheating. And if I know anything about seat-of-the-pants power, the cooler the blower the more ponies it can produce.
