Whipple Superchargers manufactures some of the largest positive displacement superchargers on the market, all the way up-to 5.0-liters of twin-screw goodness.
Here’s a question for you. What’s efficiency? What exactly does it mean, and how does it benefit anyone? The word ‘efficiency’ at times can be another one of those terms that is constantly thrown around these days to act as a bridge. A bandaid, if you will.
Like that time you went to Best Buy, and the salesmen tried to sell you a new laptop by telling you how “efficient the cloud” makes your life. Hook, line, and sinker, right? Well, not really.
In the context of forced induction, what role does efficiency play? Is it that, say, a supercharger makes boost? Or, is it how much boost it makes? What about how the supercharger makes boost? Let’s take for example, Whipple Superchargers. They’re a household name for manufacturing some of the most powerful twin screw (commonly referred to as positive displacement blowers) superchargers on the market today. In fact, they even have a saying; The Whipple Difference.
But what exactly is, The Whipple Difference?
It starts with, you guessed it, efficiency. Only in this context, the word efficiency is used to describe how boost generated from a Whipple twin-screw supercharged is delivered.
Whipple Superchargers provides its twin-screw style blowers for many OEM manufacturers, including both Ford and GM.
If you’re familiar with the design of a twin-screw supercharger, then you’ll already know what makes them efficient at force-feeding your engine with boost. While some ‘overhead blowers’ (yet another name for these style of superchargers) can generate heat from normal operation, twin-screws are one variant that are less susceptible to suffering from heat soak as a side effect of this.
Now comes the fun part, efficiency. The power delivery on a twin-screw supercharger is, quite literally, second to none. That’s because of how efficient an overhead blower like the Whipple twin-screw supercharger design delivers power.
From a flick of the throttle, instant torque is rewarded as a response regardless of what RPM the engine is at, and it pulls through the entire range to create a flat torque curve.
Furthermore, the internal design of the Whipple twin-screw supercharger is where this efficiency begins. There’s an inlet and an outlet phase to this design with both a male and female compression screws. As cool-charged air passes through the pair of screws, it is compressed with more force than the forging of Thor’s hammer, resulting in a cascade of pure boost ready to be used at any given time.
Coupled with the fact that many of these supercharger applications available from Whipple are emissions compliant and virtually maintenance-free; you’ve got yourself one heck of an efficient blower.
So what’s the takeaway from this? Well, it’s pretty clear that there’s a reason why so many OEM applications, like the Ford Mustang Cobra Jet and the Chevrolet COPO Camaro, use a Whipple Superchargers twin-screw designed blower. But the question is, can you see The Whipple Difference?