Hoping I survive today

I'll let you know. I considered a turbo, but being a combination of first engine swap, first boosting and first experience with MegaSquirt (What can I say? I'm ambitious) I felt like supercharger was the safer option. Self-contained oiling, no oil or coolant lines to rupture, the fail mode of a blower is typically just a belt falling off or slipping (compared to where a turbo a vacuum leak can nuke an engine). They also tend to be a little cheaper than a turbo.

But positive displacement blowers build lots of heat, aren't very efficient, chances are you are going to have to hunt down and rehabilitate an old kit. Plus, the positive displacement builds higher cylinder pressures at low RPM, which are rough on an engine. 

So the centrifugal seemed like the best option. Efficiency closer to a turbo, safety of a blower. My only gripe is that the Rotrex is apparently very quiet. 

The biggest difference for an ECU newbie is that it's simpler to tune a centrifugal than a turbo because boost pressure = rpm. Oil/coolant lines are not a difficult problem to solve, you have them all over the car already. Overboost protection should be part of the ECU setup, it's treated like a rev limiter and I assume the MS has this capability. You can also get hardware protection in the form of a "turbo fuse", which turns your bypass valve into a popoff.

Centrifugals have noises of their own, especially at idle. I've also found they take a bit of getting used to on the street, the fact that a steady throttle position means rising boost pressures as you move through the rev range means it has a tendency to lunge forward on you until you get into the habit of backing out of the throttle.

If you're doing a 1.8 swap and the centrifugal has its own drive belt, you may run into clearance problems with your front sway bar. The solution is to move the sway bar mounting brackets forward and (ideally) use a 1.8 bar.

After 4 years on 90rwhp, going to this new engine ought to be an eye-opening experience. It's a '00 engine, bored 0.010 over, with a "squaretop" manifold, Racing Beat header, cat delete and a Rotrex blower.

You may have to discover new throttle positions other than "all of it".

Yeah, when I autocrossed it with 1.6L and 205-series RE71Rs there were often courses where I could drive flat-footed most of the time. This will require a little more finesse. It will likely put an end to letting anyone and everyone take it out for rips as well.

Well, bringing this one back, because it's January 4th again. Let's see if my father and I can thwart destiny again. 

Side note: Looking back through this thread, there is some comedy gold here.

Two words: Bubble wrap.   Or is that one?

(Warning: You could get very hot in a multilayer bubblewrap suit and die from overheating. Also, I have to imagine it will tempt people to hit you for satisfying bubble-pops)

One of us is gonna have to put a hit out on NickD if we wanna see this thread stop being brought back to life every Jan 4. 

In reply to SVreX :

I don't mind this thread coming back. I would much rather have a zombie thread than a zombie Nick.

In reply to SVreX :

Guys, if something happens to me, it was SVreX

It's almost one thirty.  Still kickin'?

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I'm alive but its miraculous anyone around me is, because today has been an absolute E36 M3show and I'm ready to start punching idiots.

If it helps, my Grandfather, his two brothers, his father, uncle and great grandfather all died at age 56. When my father hit 56 he knew he was going to die. He's now 64, and doing quite well. 

NickD said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I'm alive but its miraculous anyone around me is, because today has been an absolute E36 M3show and I'm ready to start punching idiots.

Be careful, punching the wrong idiot can be hazardous to your health!

NickD said:

In reply to SVreX :

Guys, if something happens to me, it was SVreX

Makes me think of Lt. Dan's ancestors dying in every-single-American-war.

I told my parents one of the reasons we didn’t have kids was that I couldn’t bear to send one to school named Wallace Burton Miller the fourth. 

Happy the 5th.

Did you make it?

Crickets. 

Looks like he didn't make it.

Too bad.

At least I have a cool story to tell people now about 4 generations dying on the same day in different years.

I made it. So did my father.

In reply to NickD :

See you next year!

NickD said:

I'm going to start treating it like Arthur Dent in Mostly Harmless, when he finds out he's fated to accidentally kill a guy at a point in time he hasn't reached, so he starts being completely reckless because he knows that he has to survive until that point in time. I can live like a lunatic 364 (or 365, if it's a leap year) days a year, because I can only die on January 4th.

 

On a side note, as a celebration of surviving another January 4th, and an early birthday present, I'm purchasing a Kraftwerks blower kit for my Miata.

Just don't go to Stavro's second restaurant.