Turbocharger in the trunk?

[dcarrb]

I was surprised to see in the current edition of Air & Space-Smithsonian that the old Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter from World War II had a turbocharger and intercooler located aft of the pilot; a long, long way from the 18-cylinder, air-cooled radial engine up front. The routing of the cold air intake from the lower engine cowling backward beneath the cockpit gave the plane it's characteristic "jug" profile.

I'm not into modding but figured this might generate some interesting discussion.

dcb

[SVXer95]

http://www.ststurbo.com/home

[UberRoo]

I don't know about airplane engines in particular, but air-cooled engines frequently have problems with running too hot. Metallurgy 'back in the day' wasn't what it is now. Perhaps those old turbos couldn't handle the heat.

It was actually a fitment & space issue in the Thunderbolt, they wanted as much stuff inline as possible for the best possible aerodynamics with having that ginormous Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine.
There's a lot of rear mount turbo setups around these days but I'm leery of them because of the potential problems with depending on a dedicated sump and oil recirculation pump to keep the oil getting back into the engine.
There's also the efficiency considerations from having the exhaust traveling so far to reach the turbo, and the intercooler piping reaching so far to get back to the engine. With an aircraft or vehicle with a big engine (like a LS1 Camaro and the like) this is less critical but on smaller engined cars like Supras, SVXs, and particularly anything with a 4 cyl will suffer considerable lag because of it.

[87f383]

I'll be in PA the weekend of july 4th... where I will be having a turbo made for my SVX by Blouche Turbo in Lebanon, PA just for the purpose of trying the remote mount.... im a domestic f-body owner too. So I have spent tons of time reading on the remote mounts and have seen a few in real life. They work very well w/ no drawbacks. Even if you dont use a intercooler... the charge pipe running up acts as a roughly 50% effecient heat exchanger... It will take a few months to get everything together...but I figured while up there... i might as well buy a nice made to order turbo for later use.