P2 Supercharger Thread

AlexLTDLX

AlexLTDLX

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Staff member
I know that SQCTS and cmoalem have both jumped on board the P2 blower bandwagon and I took advantage of Speedmaster's black Friday sale and ordered one myself. SQCTS already has his running (direct drive) on low power; cmoalem is going the timing belt route. I wanted to start a thread devoted to using this particular head unit.

Here's SQCTS' build thread:

It Has Begun

Ok I fellow E-Charger comrades, I have startes my build. I chose to go the direct drive route as it just seems the most efficient way of doing it. Below you will find a few pictures of my direct drive setup using the SpeedMaster P-2 supercharger that was recommended to start with and the TP...
www.electrifiedboost.com www.electrifiedboost.com

Here's what cmoalem has found out so far regarding the timing belt drive idea:

And here the latest update:

Particularly interesting for the "belt drive" variant!

So I found the seller boltonbearings UK on ebay and ordered THIS:

1) Timing Belt T5, 5mm pitch, 25mm wide (T5-260 52 teeth)
2) Pulley T5 36T5/12-2
3) Pulley T5 36T5/15-2
4) Pulley T5 36T5/18-2

after a shipping mishap with Royal Mail the guys stood up and sent everything again "registered".

Looky what came today:

View attachment 260
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Yes ... the pulleys need machining to accept the 8mm shaft and some holes for the set screws ...
But it WILL be a clean solution! 🤪

(unfortunately my AliExpress battery order had to be disputed ... shipping "irregularities" by the seller. Waiting for the money to come back now... then need to pick better seller and order again)
Click to expand...

Let's see which drive method works out the best. I'll probably use my bigger TP Power motor to power this unit and use the LMT motor to power my Vortech.
 
Direct drive:



Also true voltage was 50.5 volts for test 2 and 67 volts test 3.

I honestly beat on this thing a for about 2 hours longs run time was about 2 mins straight at about from 65- 75% of full power. It took a beating. The motor made the most heat.

ESC was barely warm and the batteries still cold to the touch. After all that the batteries still measure 3.93 to 4.02 volts on all cells
 
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Just checked FedEx tracking - mine should be here Friday...

Your success with that blower is really encouraging.
 
It's happening:


This one will be powered by my TP Power motor, VESC and probably the same batteries that SQCTS is using (they appear to be far superior to my Zeee batteries). Or I might use the 160 A123 cells I bought for no apparent reason. I don't want to use the LTO cells because they're big and heavy (but deadly...) But frankly, I might also do a compound setup and run both off the same LTO packs - they should have plenty of current capacity to spare (given the APD ESC destruction...)
 
Wow! A lot of comment on youtube! It's sad that a lot of people doesnt understand the idea of an electric supercharger. They need to joint the forum and learn like we all do!
 
I read some of the comment on utube:

hitting surge? ... nah ... it happened on different rpm/current levels, didn't it. (easy to check as well with different "restrictions")

the boost/needle dancing is not the cause, it's the effect, I would say.

6 pole motor on the VESC ... what is your motor timing? (and ... can we live with a constant timing?)

Cables? ... well you ran the same cables (even longer motor wires) and higher currents with simpler ESCs ... maybe its just the way the VESC is trying to sense motor positon through back emf on this sensorless mini beast. (which leads us to the topic again: for the VESC I predict a sensored LMT 2 pole would be it!)

(have you tried other modes than "current restricted"? I know that gets you into different waters with the VESC ... I can understand you being cautious here!)
 
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well looking at it the boost gauge it's all over the place too.. Im interested in the hole for the air coming out it is pointing down into the board with a slight gap? Im guessing that it's causing some thrust /and backpressure causing the osolation. I would try

1) Pointing the outlet UP where it's less restricted..

2) Remove the 90 altogether to see if it stops

Could be caused by a slight expansion contraction of the rubber 90
 
For the boost gauge, I dont think is the result of the spikes or even surge. I think it's just the turbulences of the way how this is mount. I had surge with mine with the needle mouving like crazy on the boost gauge but I had a surge sound with it and nothing similar I can hear there.
 
Well if he wants to find out the cause he has to try some things .. Also like others have said he should try removing the current limits altogether / make them beyond where they will get hit... Because my understanding of how the limits work you'd expect them to cause oscillations ...
 
Lol. Yeah, the comments are interesting for sure; some are a bizarre mix of insulting and plain ignorant - "Because you say motor current is higher than battery current shows you don't know what you're doing..." is today's favorite. I'm with WB on the gauge bouncing. It's not only getting vibrations from the mechanics of the thing being hard mounted to it, but I'm sure there's some pulsing involved. Ever hear a big positive displacement-blown engine idle? Literally every time the lobes mesh and shoot in a bunch of air, the idle surges. Frankly, it's annoying to drive. Soft-mounting with a length of rubber hose will be the first thing I try. Though I'm not really worried about it and I don't think it has any correlation to what's going on, it's just a crap gauge. It would be nice to have a clearer number for boost, though. In fact, thinking about it, I think it bounced around a lot when I was testing one of the old blower setups I built back in the day.

I have a pretty good guess as to what's going on, and I'll test it. But basically it has to do with power cable inductance. A little while ago, Frank at Trampa (the VESC people) sent me a link to a video that's rather interesting:

That would also explain why the high dollar APD ESC blew up - the current limits in their software are kind of flaky (like you can't set above 300 amps, even on their 400 amp continuous ESCs) - where the VESC just threw a fault code and shut down, the APD didn't... and burned down.

I have no idea why the almighty Youtube algorithm has decided to lavish it's blessings on me, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. All my stats have suddenly skyrocketed. Hopefully it keeps going and I can quit my job :)
 
AlexLTDLX said:
Lol. Yeah, the comments are interesting for sure; some are a bizarre mix of insulting and plain ignorant - "Because you say motor current is higher than battery current shows you don't know what you're doing..." is today's favorite. I'm with WB on the gauge bouncing. It's not only getting vibrations from the mechanics of the thing being hard mounted to it, but I'm sure there's some pulsing involved. Ever hear a big positive displacement-blown engine idle? Literally every time the lobes mesh and shoot in a bunch of air, the idle surges. Frankly, it's annoying to drive. Soft-mounting with a length of rubber hose will be the first thing I try. Though I'm not really worried about it and I don't think it has any correlation to what's going on, it's just a crap gauge. It would be nice to have a clearer number for boost, though. In fact, thinking about it, I think it bounced around a lot when I was testing one of the old blower setups I built back in the day.

I have a pretty good guess as to what's going on, and I'll test it. But basically it has to do with power cable inductance. A little while ago, Frank at Trampa (the VESC people) sent me a link to a video that's rather interesting:

That would also explain why the high dollar APD ESC blew up - the current limits in their software are kind of flaky (like you can't set above 300 amps, even on their 400 amp continuous ESCs) - where the VESC just threw a fault code and shut down, the APD didn't... and burned down.

I have no idea why the almighty Youtube algorithm has decided to lavish it's blessings on me, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. All my stats have suddenly skyrocketed. Hopefully it keeps going and I can quit my job :)
Click to expand...
Right time right place maybe? Between you and Torqamp and very few others, no one has ever done this for real.
 
BenchworxGarage said:
A few years ago I disassembled, inspected, and planned to flow test one of these because I have a large nist certified flow stand. I never did end up flowing it, but I did write about what I found in depth and provided a ton of pictures. You can find that on my Facebook page at the following link.

https://www.facebook.com/1532265127094156/posts/1954801811507150
Click to expand...
wow, I would have probably chickened out if I had found your facebook post before (wondered a LOT why I could not find much regarding P2 Supercharger googling)...
while I can confirm those 22000 max rpm bearings still being used: mine did not show most of the rough edges you found in 2017.
And against their claim it is not a "Gilmer" pulley but a metric T5 (trapezoidal, 5mm pitch) pulley, which is on the impeller shaft. Gilmer drives use a different pitch and belt widths , typically!
I think their old 3.6:1 step up helical gear box (which always is "unavailable") has a output shaft accepting a standard gilmer drive pulley ...
It all started in that other thread:

Here is the supercharger I would start with...

If I was starting my particular project from scratch, here's the blower I would've started with. Relatively cheap, basically a Vortech knockoff but with a MUCH friendlier impeller drive mechanism to modify - no need to worry about oiling, and you could use a small gilmer belt to drive it (that...
www.electrifiedboost.com www.electrifiedboost.com

Ouch ...

sooo here we have @AlexLTDLX, @SQCTS and myself trying to make this thing work.

While @AlexLTDLX and @SQCTS already have spun theirs (less than halfway) up, mine is still pending some preps.

Bearings can be swapped ... but Alex seemed "confident enough" earlier in the other thread.
 
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That is a good read. I haven't checked shaft runout (though I suppose I could - and probably should, now - with a dial indicator); but I'm not worried about the bearings. The bearings Vortech uses (which are angular contact bearings) aren't rated for anything close to 50,000 rpm either. I think it's because these spend so little time spinning that fast that it's not an issue. And we're not spinning it all all when not in boost.

Mine also appears to be cast better than the Vortech parts I'm using on version 1 of this thing. There is some core shift in the outside of the discharge, but oddly not on the inside. In any event, I don't think the videos convey how scary this thing is in person. There's a reason there's two large pieces of lumber and two layers of matting in between it and the car. I've been thinking of some kind of blast shield myself.

For the record, I've been able to hold 7 kW so far (solved the problem - video coming soon) and we've been able to hold 66,000 eRPM - 26,840 impeller RPM (keep in mind the pulley step up ratio of 1.22:1). Version 1 had a better impeller, but otherwise all specs are pretty much the same. We ran tens at 27,000-28,000 impeller rpm in our drag test. I feel, conservatively, 32,000 impeller rpm would match (or exceed) that level of performance. That gives me an eRPM target of just under 80,000. We're not that far away from it. Then I'll remove the restrictor and do some max load testing. If it survives all that, it's going on the car and off to the dyno we go. Then the track.
 
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