Supercharging a B series engine with that high of a compression ratio would
seem pretty risky to me. However, when surfing, I ran across this fellow:
john.crawford@aquila.com
Who has a 58 A for sale with a Judson Supercharged 1622 installed that he
races. Maybe he has more information or recommendations. I have not
talked to John (a medical doctor, I believe) so I don't know if he would be
receptive but his car does look interesting. If you plan on replacing the
pistons anyway, I think you will find that custom Venolia slugs are not
that much more expensive than stock replacements.
The crossflow head is interesting but I don't know how well it would work.
Head design is pretty complicated and low volume specialty products are
definately hit or miss. As to which would make more power, even the
crossflow head still relies on atmosphere to push air in but a supercharger
rams it down the engine's throat. Plus a supercharger looks cool while a
crossflow head probably looks like an Iron Duke. Personally, I'd still go
for a normally aspirated 1800 with a decent cam and a goodly overbore.
Someone else asked about Wankel combustion cycles. Yes, a Wankel does have
three combustion areas on each rotor. Each of these combustion areas fires
once each revolution so a two rotor Wankel fires six times each revolution
of the rotors. It should be noted that the output shaft turns faster than
the rotors, however so you don't get six bangs for each output revolution
but some smaller number.
Since Wankels don't have a bore or a stroke, you hear Wankels described as
having "equivalent displacement." I believe that this is calculated by
subracting the minimum volume of each cumbustion area from the maximum
volume and multiplying be the number of combustion areas. Dividing this
number be the minimum number would give compression ratio.
Orbital and other are continually trying to improve the two cycle engine so
that it can be used in cars. At one time Orbital even had some funding
from one of the Big Three. I believe that I read somewhere that that
funding was pulled after Orbital had missed several important development
milestones. Diesel two strokes, on the other hand, are very common in
large trucks. In fact, the "71" series of superchargers so popular with
hot rodders (6-71, 8-71,etc.) were originally forced intake pumps for
General Motores 2-cycle diesels. To my knowledge, no-one has ever put a GM
2 stroke diesel in an LBC.
Regards
Bill Eastman
61 MGA
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