E-Ram Electric Supercharger Testing

After hearing much hoopla about the E-Ram Electric Supercharger, I was curious, but I couldn't get much hard data on it - only marketing hype. Check out their website at ElectricSupercharger.com Wayne at Pelican Parts kindly lent me a demo unit to test. I am going to conduct a series of test with it, drive it around a bit, and get the car dyno'd with the device, and post the results here. I'll also have the opportunity to run it on the track in March.

The test vehicle is a 1977 911 targa with a 3.6L C2 engine. This engine is basically stock with the exception of a B&B exhaust, Cyntex chip, and a homemade air induction system using a K&N air filter (model RE-0810) replacing the stock airbox. The engine was recently rebuilt, and dyno'd at 235RWHP.

2/12/2002 - received the unit via UPS. Unpacked it and took some pictures
2/13/2002 - did a couple of quick test runs with the unit:
- I mounted the unit onto my intake without an air filter.
- I triggered the unit by hand with the relay and switch provided.
- My first test was to run it using a battery charger.
- No discernable change in idle with the unit activated.
- With the unit turned off, the fan starts to turn on it's own @ ~5800RPM
- After a few runs of the fan, the overload breaker in the battery charger tripped.
- I hooked it into the car's electrical system, taking power from the small fuse panel on the left side of the engine compartment.
- No discernable change in idle with the unit activated.
- No change in engine speed when close to WOT and unit switched on
- After a few minutes of off-and-on testing the fuse provided with the unit blew, partially melting the fuse casing (see pic below).
2/17/2002 - installation I installed the unit tonight. I fabbed a new intake piece with some 3" ABS pipe and an rubber 3" interconnect to match the one that came with the e-ram. I replaced the fused line that came with the unit with a piece of plain red wire and went straight to the fuse panel in the engine compartment. I used an OEM 25A fuse. For triggering, I made a small bracket that bolts on where the cruise control would go. This bracket holds the switch in a postion where the cruise control link will hit it about 1mm before wide open throttle. From the gas pedal standpoint, this just just about where the pedal touches the floor. I mounted the relay on the left side of the engine compartment above the fuse panel, and tookt he ground fromt he same area. Testing to follow.
2/22/2002 - dyno runs The E-Ram does work, a little. I'm still crunching the numbers, etc, but it looks like a 2-3 HP gain. The torque numbers on these dyno sheets are all but useless - there's something wrong with the way it's reporting torque. These HP gains reported are well within the margin of error for dyno testing. One fly in the ointment was the oil cooler fan which kicked in at inopportune times - inhindsight I should have disconnected it before we got started. I'd also left the stereo on for the whole test - d'oh! A small draw, but a draw nonetheless. One interesting observation was the difference in HP and torque, and how HP went down when the oil cooler fan kicked on, but torque stayed up. My "baseline" run was 234.7/399 - almost where it was (234.3) when I dyno'd it on 12/18/2001. This was with my homemade setup - not the e-ram or e-ram turned off. The best torque figure was 233/412.1 (cooler fan on), the best HP figure was 236.4/410.7 (cooler fan off)