Afternoon, So, I recently went from the glorious high non-technical days of the 1960's (Owned 2 Mini's, well one mini and one Hornet) to the super powered digital future of a 2001 Suzuki Van (Good gravy, its got a radio, and power steering!). Having only owned front wheel drive cars from the 1960's (I don't care if one of my Mini's was an 1982, they never changed a damn thing on them during their life) and now owning a 2001 rear wheel drive van, I got some questions on how things work. Not specific to my van things just general things, so I thought I'd ask you nice people. 1) How do you attach a rev counter to a modern car? On a Mini you just plum it into the coil, ground the dial and away you go. Modern cars have all these pesky wires, lost spark system and I really have no clue. I don't drive my car like an utter loon, but I am used to having an rev counter. 2) What does a catalytic converter do? I get it cleans something from the air, but what? Do you need one either? I'm going with MOT man frowns on not having one, but ignoring MOT can you just ditch it? 3) Rear drive and suspension; So, my van is rear drive, with an axle and springs. My head tells me the distance from gearbox to axel is going to change when the suspension goes up and down? So wouldn't the drive shaft need to move in and out to compensate for the different gap? 4) I know turbo chargers tend to have to be suited to an engine size (big engine, big turbocharger, small engine, small turbocharger), but can you use any supercharger on any engine if you get the pulley size correct? Can you over spin a super charger or does it just keep working happily up to a internal RPM? All I got for now, ta for any info.
Normally there is a signal output from the ECU (Engine Control Unit) that feed a RPM signal to the instrument cluster. That signal may be missing if the car never came with a rev counter, though. Modern cars still have ignition coils, though. Nowadays it's usually one coil per cylinder, but some cheaper cars may have a single coil as well. If you have a diesel engine you need to find a sensor that feed that signal (Cam sensor, for intance) Having that said, getting used to driving without a rev counter is probably a better bet. You'll learn how the engine works best after a while anyway. The CC chemically remove some of the dangerous stuff from the exhaust. (Google for the advanced chemical explanation. ) The engine will usually work without it, but the back pressure will be different if it's removed. If you are doing any engine tuning, you may gain some power from removing the CC, but on a stock engine there isn't that much difference. You could somewhat increase fuel consumption by removing it. Depends on the geometry and type of suspension. If you have a solid rear axle there will be some movement on the drive shaft. If those cases the shaft may move a bit. Usually there is a spline on one end that allow for this. If you have independent rear suspension the drive shaft doesn't move much since the rear differential doesn't move. In those cases there will be drive shafts from the diff to each wheel that take up the movement (Exactly the same as in a front wheel drive) Not too sure about superchargers. But I guess they follow about the same rules as turbos. Too small, and they will be restrictive, too big and the pressure will simply destroy the air supply system to the engine. If they are much to big the engine won't even be able to turn the supercharger.
Super chargers tend to be the same as turbos, but the difference is that they are direct drive rather than working off spent exhaust gases, which means no lag. They also have to matched up according to the size of the engine and the configuration (V8 in line 4 etc). Because of the way they are made they tend to be quite big and can be a nightmare to mount in a small or tight engine bay. But if you want decent power gains and want it to be instant, thats the way to go.
Most modern vehicles will have the ECU report the engine RPM to the dash, some in a more complex way than others, but it's not an easy upgrade unless you can pull the clocks out and replace them with some from the same car but a higher-spec model (i.e. one with a rev counter), as most cars/vans will share the same/similar wiring looms allowing later upgrades. 2001 is probably about the changeover period where most cars/vans started going from a twin-coilpack setup with a wasted spark to per-cylinder pack systems. To be honest both methods have drawbacks, neither of them will be very unreliable. If you have a car with two Lambda sensors (one before and one after the Cat) then you'll cause trouble removing it, otherwise it can be removed without problems until MOT time. Not really worth bothering with on a standard car. The suspension will be designed to minimise forward-backward movement of the axle, and at least one universal joint on the prop will keep it from breaking up. Yes, in principle, you can supercharge any engine as long as you get the pipework and pulley size correct. You can over drive a charger, hence pulley sizes, but that's something you have to look at depending on model and how much boost you want.
