Supercharged Austin seven engine advice

[shane]

Can anyone offer a complete newcomer to Austin sevens with advice on building a supercharged engine for a single seat special. Any advice drawings, specs what to avoid etc would be appreciated.

[Malcolm Parker]

If you are a complete newcomer to Austin 7's, the best advice I could give you would be to forget the idea of a supercharged engine in your special.  An engine with a new crank, better pistons, cam etc will give you plenty of power and torque together with reliability.  It will also be much easier on your wallet!
Remember, 33BHP in a light Austin special is 100 BHP per ton.  If you want silly performance you could buy a bike engined Lotus 7 type kit car for the cost of building a supercharged Austin 7 engine.

[shane]

If you are a complete newcomer to Austin 7's, the best advice I could give you would be to forget the idea of a supercharged engine in your special.  An engine with a new crank, better pistons, cam etc will give you plenty of power and torque together with reliability.  It will also be much easier on your wallet!
Remember, 33BHP in a light Austin special is 100 BHP per ton.  If you want silly performance you could buy a bike engined Lotus 7 type kit car for the cost of building a supercharged Austin 7 engine.

Hi Malcolm thanks for the advice. I am completely new to the prewar stuff.

[Zetomagneto]

If you are a complete newcomer to Austin 7's, the best advice I could give you would be to forget the idea of a supercharged engine in your special.  An engine with a new crank, better pistons, cam etc will give you plenty of power and torque together with reliability.  It will also be much easier on your wallet!
Remember, 33BHP in a light Austin special is 100 BHP per ton.  If you want silly performance you could buy a bike engined Lotus 7 type kit car for the cost of building a supercharged Austin 7 engine.

Hi Malcolm thanks for the advice. I am completely new to the prewar stuff.

To give you an idea of cost there was a supercharged engine on eBay at £18000 if you do the maths that's a reasonable price.

[Austin in the Shed]

I believe Pigsty would build you one for less than that price.
I recon you could build one yourself for less than £7k.
Malcolm is right that you could build something different for less money.For a seven though It was said to me "Once you have driven a 7 with a supercharger you won't to drive anything else"
The torque is certainly worth the extra complication.

[Ruairidh Dunford]

£18k seems a lot of money for an engine - what are the maths for that price please Zetomagneto?

[Alan]

I think 18k is not far off for a replica works blown engine, but I think A supercharged engine could be assembled for very much less if you used an Aisin blower, for example. It wouldn't be correct but it would do the job.
However, I'm with Malcolm. A properly put together unblown engine will give you more than enough to think about for now.

[Ruairidh Dunford]

A friend of mine sold an entire car (blown works replica) for less than the figure quoted above to a Forum member only a few years back.

It was clearly an absolute bargain.

[Reckless Rat]

Drifting a little off thread, but has anyone ever considered fitting a turbocharger to a seven engine? Whilst I accept there are always likely to be problems, small turbochargers are readily available and all that would need to be fabricated would be the manifold/turbo/exhaust interface and a carb-turbo-inlet. A standard side draught manifold (of which there are many available) could serve as a basis for such a mod, or am I dreaming? I haven't been on the Hogmanay juice yet either.

[Colin Reed]

Hi Shane,
                  Are you starting from scratch or do you have a single seat car ready just to drop the engine into.
                  I am assuming it will before some form of racing if that is the case you will need the Regs to make sure that you comply.

All the Best Colin