Once upon a time in the postwar, before the advent of EPA and OSHA and the Consumer Products Safety Commission and weenies in bike helmets and multilingual warning stickers on stepladders, crazy people walked this earth. Good, fun-loving Americans who knew that "instructions" were something you threw in the trash along with the empty Falstaff bottles. A halcyon era filled with manly men who savored the wholesome virtues of a rugged game of un-seatbelted automotive chicken. One of these men was Gene Middlebrooks, who founded Turbonique. [more inside]
posted by dg on Apr 23, 2008 - 50 comments

The Supercharger was a fantastic innovation, but it has its downsides. Volkswagen tried solving them by adding both a Supercharger and a Turbocharger, in their TSI engines, but this solution is relatively expensive. Perhaps the new invention by Atonov has merit. Instead of using a standard Roots supercharger, it uses a more efficient centrifugal supercharger, and adding a small two-speed automatic transmission to the loop, ensuring that the engine operates on boost throughout the rev range.

It may not sound like much, but it may change the way superchargers are working forever, allowing smaller engines with higher performance, or adding obscene amounts of power to large engines
posted by SharQ on May 5, 2006 - 38 comments