Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Forced Induction Thomas Knight Turbos

Quite honestly, you'd be better off getting either a gas or electric leaf blower and hooking it up to the intake via switch. If it is electric just run a power converter, and if the load is too great for the stock electrical system, get a better alternator....but seriously....an electrical supercharger...?? who the hell thought that up?...and why....just go with a proven mechanical system. ie...S/F Turbo, or if you can find it even thought i dont like them very much is a vortech S/C kit.

My thoughts exactly

Geoff Knight here--invertor of the ESC family of electric superchargers. I think you guys are not looking at my info correctly. Instead of looking for reasons TO try one, you are looking for why NOT to get one. Exactly what occured in the late 70's with turbochargers.
Weight--that is a truly bogus argument against an ESC. Ask youself this question--if your car runs 2 seconds faster in the 1/4 mile and you add 150lb to the weight to do so, how is that an argument AGAINST the ESC? Another point: You are in your car with your girlfriend and your best friend. An arch rival pulls up to race you, but you say 'no, let me drop off my girlfriend and buddy, and I will be back in five minutes--they add 350 lb to my car'!!! Are you going to do that? No, you will run the guy because you really dont CARE that you have the 350 extra lb from them, the 100lb stereo you hooked up in your car last weekend, and the toolbox in your trunk that weighs 50lb. You are forgetting that the ESC raises torque at low rpm to such a level that at NO POINT will your car be slower with an ESC, 0-10 mph, 0-50, 0-100, etc.
I replaced the regular car battery with an Odyssey, and then run 6 Odyssey's for the ESC. At 12lb each, that is 84 extra lbs. The original battery weighed 42lb, and the sound deadening 'tar' under the carpet weighed 70lb and I removed it. The ESC weighs 40 lb, so with a little work, my car weighs exactly what it did when I started.

NOX--The guys I know run 75-150 shots, and NOX is $3.75/lb for known sponsored cars ($4.50-$5.50lb retail). A 75 shot is .7lb per run, so 10 runs of 10 seconds lowers pressure to 1000 psi and the tanks are refilled. ($30/10lb) I dont know ANYONE in Miami who uses less than 2-3 tanks/week. If you know someone who does, they are not SERIOUS racers--just someone with NOX that THINKS he has a fast car. He never actually uses the NOX and never RACES anyone!!!
That is at least $2000 PER YEAR--FOREVER!!! Batteries will last 3-5 years, and will cost $55 each to buy. So $400 in batteries every three years is $130 per year. FOREVER!!

As I state in my site, I never recommend this for cars that have a cheap, high quality supercharger or turbocharger kit available. But being someone who has designed turbo and SC kits since the mid 70's, I know the downsides to every type of supercharger there is. The dirty little secrets are rarely given any time in magazines, but if you design and sell them, you find out quickly that 16% of all turbos fail in a year. One out if six. With NO WARRANTY--EVER. Vortech units last 50K miles if driven correctly and not spun to over 40K. Powerdyne units last 3 years between overhauls. Prochargers are about the same. Paxton units last 30K miles. Dont expect any form of warranty on any of those--simply an overhaul charge or you buy a new one.

The Eaton is the best (Jackson Racing, factory Tbird, Lightning, GM V6, Jag, etc)lasting 150K. That is why I use them. If you transcribe 150K of constant use to 400 seconds a day of electric use, that is 2 million miles. The electric motors last 1000 hrs, and cost $40 each to rebuild after that (24 years at 40 runs per day). So maybe you see why I stopped developing kits with turbos and centrifugal superchargers. I only build kits with the Eaton.

BTW, just so you know, I designed the Cougar Paxton kit in '99 for the 2.5 V6. It was in the Yellow full body Cougar featured in MANY magazines.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is a pretty cool product as I already stated. I also think it would be fun to drive, fun to show and easier to install versus most custom turbo or S/C kits.
However, I don't like the idea of not having it on tap all the time, having to recharge it and having to replace batteries when they go bad.
To me, nitrous is less than practical and a primary reason I sold the kit is the same reasons you pointed out. THis seems a bit better and of course more fun to me, but still has its drawbacks.
I did 75% of my own design work on the turbo kit I've been running and it turned out to be very reliable so far (knock on wood). I am in the process of making some design changes for even more improvements. I will never go back to plain jane cars now that I have owned this turbocharged 3L contour.