The “WTF?” Files: What Happens When You Make Your Own Homegrown Electric Turbochargers


The “WTF?” Files: What Happens When You Make Your Own Homegrown Electric Turbochargers

To be a fly on the wall in the meeting that resulted in what you see here…oh, that would’ve been some cheap entertainment. The basis for the plan is simple: one pretty much dead-on-arrival 1984 Pontiac Firebird with nearly no brakes, a trip to the local hardware store, two industrial-sized fans, a portable dyno and a dragstrip. What wasn’t included in the meeting, we bet, was how to make a Firechicken look like someone had stolen two of the turbines off of the Caspian Sea Monster ekranoplan and managed to feed the thrust down into a very unwilling 305 small-block. We’re beyond Monster Garage here…this looks like some Inspector Gadget kind of device, if Gadget lived in an RV somewhere in Nevada where he had access to an aircraft boneyard.

So, besides testing the tensile strength of just about everything within the walls of the Malaise-y small-block, what’s the program about here? It’s to see if you are able to actually make some kind of impact with a home-grown turbocharger/supercharger setup. Those two fans do make thrust and when that thrust is vectored into the engine, theoretically there should be a power increase. The question is: how much improvement can you make on a 305 that is cranking out maaaybe 80 horsepower if the weather is right? Did anybody remember to do something about the brakes? And why, of all things holy, did everyone not think to slap “Ram Air” stickers on the sides of the Firebird’s two new oversized nostrils?


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5 thoughts on “The “WTF?” Files: What Happens When You Make Your Own Homegrown Electric Turbochargers

  1. ratpatrol66

    Saw a picture of this last night on the webernet and thought it was a photo shop? Turdos he called them.

  2. 75Duster

    I wish I could be at the Winter Nationals seeing Finnigan shaving the Hoonigans beard off, because the Hoonigans are obviously focused on their ’55 Chevy drag race.

  3. ratty

    Hahahaha… They just need some sponsors now, like Top Paw (they make pooper scoopers), or GlaxoSmithKline (they make Thorazine, the anti-psychosis drug), or Fortress Marine Anchors (since they could use a lot of help in the brake department), or maybe Bugzooka (manufacturer of insect vacuum cleaners, ’cause well, that’s what this car basically is). And of course, Cremation.org, because that’s what they need to do with this turd (but then come to think of it, it’s just gonna just end up cremating itself).

  4. Kevin Brown

    Honestly I think that engine would have made more without those fans on it.. I bet we could have pulled 120 by handing thunderhead289 a screwdriver, vacuum guage, and a timing light

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