(I know, I know. You can’t actually spin up a supercharger like that, but it’s still fuckin cool.)
Technically you could design a supercharger with a clutch (like the one for the car’s A/C compressor) , but it’d be dumb because there’s no good reason not to have it active all the time.
Superchargers come with massive parasitic losses, in many cases 10-20%, and there’s a decent handful of cars with clutches on the supercharger pulley. The MR2 is one.
This kind of makes me want a Previa. And not for the first time, either: it’s a thought I have at least once a year or so. Maybe I should finally act on it.
The main reason, aside from the fact that I actually kinda like minivans, is that I want to be able to tell people I drive a manual-transmission, supercharged, mid-engine, AWD car. And then after they try to guess what kind of Italian supercar it is, I can say “Nope! It’s an old Toyota minivan! 🤪”
It’s just unfortunate that AFAIK you can’t get all three of those features (manual, supercharger, AWD) on any single Previa – the trim levels were arranged such that they only ever came with at most two of the three. So I’d have to get a automatic '97 S/C AWD and then do a transmission swap on it.
I definitely haven’t spent countless hours thinking about how you could have a mechanically activated clutch on a supercharger pulley. Nope. Not at all.
Technically you could design a supercharger with a clutch (like the one for the car’s A/C compressor) , but it’d be dumb because there’s no good reason not to have it active all the time.
Superchargers come with massive parasitic losses, in many cases 10-20%, and there’s a decent handful of cars with clutches on the supercharger pulley. The MR2 is one.
Welcome to the future
https://www.autoweek.com/car-life/diy/a1821861/if-you-want-actuate-your-supercharger-mad-max-heres-correct-switch/
This kind of makes me want a Previa. And not for the first time, either: it’s a thought I have at least once a year or so. Maybe I should finally act on it.
The main reason, aside from the fact that I actually kinda like minivans, is that I want to be able to tell people I drive a manual-transmission, supercharged, mid-engine, AWD car. And then after they try to guess what kind of Italian supercar it is, I can say “Nope! It’s an old Toyota minivan! 🤪”
It’s just unfortunate that AFAIK you can’t get all three of those features (manual, supercharger, AWD) on any single Previa – the trim levels were arranged such that they only ever came with at most two of the three. So I’d have to get a automatic '97 S/C AWD and then do a transmission swap on it.
I definitely haven’t spent countless hours thinking about how you could have a mechanically activated clutch on a supercharger pulley. Nope. Not at all.