With the current hot rodding love affair with turbocharging in full swing, it is important to see the domestic history of exhaust driven compressors. That tale starts with the currently dead Oldsmobile brand. In 1962 and 1963 they offered an all aluminum 215ci engine equipped with a Garrett T5 turbo which made 5psi of boost.
Said engine was rated at 215hp and 300 lb/ft of torque. Because it also had 10.25:1 compression, detonation was a major problem during the developmental stage of the engine. The solution was to equip the engine with “Turbo-Rocket Fluid Injection”. The “Turbo Rocket Fluid” was a mix of distilled water and alcohol that was injected into the intake tract to cool the air charge headed for the cylinders, thus reducing detonation…until the bottle ran dry. When that happened, the car had a “limp” mode that prevented the engine from getting a full 5psi of boost.
Less than 10,000 were made over the two years and many of those ended up with four bbl carbs on top of them when people got fed up with problems related to the turbo and injection systems. Looking past all the issues, this advertisement for the engine is awesome.
Who’d have guessed problems would rear up such a simple system?
