fbekholden.com

The Victorian FE/FC Club auction has some rather cool Norman manifolds for sale:

http://forum.fefcholden.club/index.php? ... ic=26063.0

Not genuine, but it would save someone a hell of a lot of work to make them.

Cheers,
Harv

Ladies and Gents,

Every now and then something unusual comes along. This was one of those weeks.

Some time ago Matt purchased a Type 65 Norman. He had weighed the bare supercharger, and came up with a very low number – 10.8kg. This sounded a bit funny to me, as Gary’s Type 65 was a hell of a lot heavier – 20.5kg with the carb hanging off it.

The Type 65's were made in four different formats:
a) Air-cooled Standard models, having a cast iron finned casing and a steel rotor.
b) Water-cooled Standard models, having a cast iron casing with a water jacket welded on, and a steel rotor.
c) Lightweight models (LW), which change to an aluminium casings (cast iron or steel lined), having an integral cast water jacket yet retained the steel rotor.
d) Super Lightweight (sometimes labelled as Super-Lite), having aluminium casings, tufftrided cast iron or steel liners and a lightened tufftrided steel rotor. The Super Light Weight rotors were made from steel, initially milled from a billet, then with steel flat bar electric stick welded in place with the whole assembly then machined… no small task! A kerosene-fired forge (with a Type 45 supercharger blowing air through it) was then used to heat treat (normalize) the rotors (I own that Type 45 forge blower ). A Super Light Weight rotor, in an early Type 65 casing, is illustrated in Eldred's Supercharge! booklet:



In an advertising brochure, Eldred listed the Type 65 Standard models as weighing 25kg, the Lightweight models as weighing 16kg, and the Super Lightweight as weighing 13kg.

Gary's Type 65 is a Lightweight model, and weighs 20.5kg with the carb and drive pulley on. Eldred reckoned it should weigh 16kg, not 20.5kg. There is perhaps a kilo or two in the carb and manifold, so close enough.

What caught my attention about Matt’s is that it weighs 10.8kg. Allow a few kilos (as per Gary's) would suggest that the machine may have be a Super Lightweight, with the funky rotor.

Some mechanical investigations by Matt shows something cool – his Norman has an aluminium rotor, with the bare rotor weighing in at 5.6kg. Ian’s standard steel Type 65 rotor weighs 9.6kg - 4kg more than Matt's.

Matt’s ally rotor, shown below, is the only ally Norman rotor I have seen (other than the later 3-vane ones made by Mike), as almost all Eldred’s are steel.



The ally rotors are noted in a number of places:
From the Blow! For Go article, Australian Hot Rod November 1966:
“Eldred has made up several in forged aluminium on special requests but says that a considerable amount of research has proved conclusively that the steel rotor has up to eight times the life of it’s alumium counterpart, so steel it is”.
From the Blowers for Holdens! article, The Australian Hot Rodding Review January 1967:
"The new series has steel vanes rather than the previous alloy, to cut down the wear factor"
From the GO! With Safety brochure:
"The steel rotor is used in preference to an aluminium one as it's wearing qualities are very much superior. Naturally, it is heavier, but because of its comparatively small diameter the additional weight is of little disadvantage when accelerating."
From a Pricelist, June 30th 1968:
Owing to the poor wearing qualities aluminium rotors will not be supplied with any of these units. The 'Tufftrided' steel rotor is only fractionally heavier than aluminium and has at least 12 times the life".
From Eldred's Supercharge!:
"This type of supercharger has also got a bad name as many of them are made with aluminium rotors, both for reasons of lightness and of cost. Unfortunately this material has very poor wearing qualities as well as causing high frictional loads. The steel rotor has almost eight times the life of its aluminium counterpart and involves much less friction. Also the steel rotor can be nitrided by a new low temperature process which more than doubles the life again, as well as increasing the resistance to fatigue stresses. The steel rotor can be made almost as light as aluminium by a rather complex machining process."

All up Matt has a pretty unique, very early rotor.

Cheers,
Harv (deputy apprentice Norman supercharger fiddler).

Ladies and Gents,

Looks like another aluminium rotor Type 65 has turned up. Ted’s air cooled cast iron Type 65 (serial number 513, which I have posted previously) also has an alloy rotor, and weighs in at 15kg for the bare supercharger.




Eldred’s weight for the cast-iron casing steel rotored Type 65 was 25kg, though this is probably the water cooled variant (the water jacket adding a few kilos, let alone the steel rotor).

Cheers,
Harv

Ladies and gents,

Attached below a Youtube video (audio only) of recent talkback radio discussion of Eldred Norman (with thanks to Paul for editing and uploading).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6223hO ... e=youtu.be

Cheers,
Harv

Good stuff Harv. Talking of Sellicks beach I used to get my first car, a HK kingswood over the tun down Sellicks hill on the way back from surfing. The valves would be bouncing retarding drive with the strip speedo waving around me too scared to take my eyes off the road. Just a 186 no charger of course sorry bit off track. Something about Sellicks makes you want to hammer.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ladies and gents,

As part of my meth-monster project, I decided that I would fit an aftermarket camshaft to the Norman-blown grey. Whilst the bog-stock grey motor cam is fine for normal street use, the intent for the meth-monster is to flog the living hell out of the motor at the drags. After some digging around, I had a conversation with Clive from Clive Cams. The intent was to custom re-grind the cam to maximise valve lift, and increase exhaust duration whilst minimising overlap where possible. The grind that Clive came up with is shown below - the standard grey motor camshaft specs are in black, whilst those for the meth-monster cam are in red:



As we can see, Clive has held both the exhaust and inlet valves open longer. For our inlet valve, we get the diagram below (using the Advertised numbers), with the bog-stock grey motor shown in dark blue and the meth-monster cam shown in pale blue:



For our exhaust inlet valve, we get the diagram below (again using Advertised values), with the bog-stock grey motor shown in dark green and the meth-monster cam shown in pale green:



The increased durations will help the motor breathe, as will the increased valve lift. The only drama here is the increased duration, as per the diagram below:



In a supercharged engine with high overlap, what tends to happen is that the pressurized inlet charge blows into the cylinder and straight out the open exhaust valve. This will give poor economy and poor emissions performance, and can lead to a loss of performance at low engine speed where boost is low. It will also have an increased tendency to bang the blower… my meth-monster relief valve will get a bit of a workout.

Additionally, increasing overlap will also reduce the boost pressure. Imagine that I started the meth monster with 10psi of boost pressure and the standard GMH cam. Fitting the Clive cam will drop boost pressure down to about 5psi of boost.



This will then become a balance - the overlap may be of help at high RPM (like the meth-monster on the drag strip), but will lead to a low boost, sluggish vehicle at low RPM. Will the boost loss be outweighed by the increased duration? Hard to tell without putting the vehicle on the long black dyno.

The table below weighs up the meth-monster cam (in red) against some commercially available grey motor (naturally aspirated) performance cams:



Interestingly, for the same meth-monster service Camtech recommends the Part Number 609 camshaft shown in the table above in blue. Whilst this is very similar in duration to the Clive cam, Camtech’s overlap is larger (64º compared to the 50º for the Clive cam), indicating that Clive has got clever in minimising overlap (targeting earlier exhaust opening and later inlet closing, rather than later exhaust closing and earlier inlet opening). Even with Clive’s magic, 50º is a lot of overlap for a blown motor. Compare for example the supercharger camshafts available from Lunati for small block Chevrolets – the advertised overlap is reduced from a typical factory SBC value of 35º to nil, with even their all-out blower cam only having 25º of overlap.

So what did I end up with? A cam that is going to help with the top end, though is likely to be sluggish down low and lift the relief valve a fair bit. The plan at this stage is to screw the engine together with a stock grey cam, have a play, then fit the Clive cam later. I’ll share the results as they come in.

Cheers,
Harv (deputy apprentice Norman supercharger fiddler).

Cant wait to see the pics or vids, very interesting information. If your hitting the drags in Sydney in future let us know, I'd be keen to check ot out Harv.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

Theres one for sale in Perth ATM , $1700 !

It’s a Type 75 Norman, and I have seen a photo of it years ago, covered in dust. Someone has pulled it out from under the bench and cleaned it up for sale. It is the second Type 75 that I know of (the only other one is the one that I own). This one is not clutched (mine is), but for someone wanting a period-correct Eldred machine, it would be a good start.

The Type 45, 75 and 90 were developed as a family of superchargers, often referred to as Series 2 (Series 1 compromising the Type 65 and Type 70). The Type 45, Type 75 and Type 90 were manufactured by Eldred whilst still living in Adelaide. Using Eldred’s measurement process, the Type 45, Type 75 and Type 90 had a capacity of 45, 75 and 90ci/rev respectively. Using the modern measurement system gives 83 and 149ci/rev respectively for the Type 45 and Type 75 (I have not been able to find a Type 90 to measure). Interestingly, when using the modern method the Type 75 (149ci/rev) has a larger capacity than the Type 110 (145ci/rev). This is due to the placement of the inlet and exhaust ports, which is not accounted for in Eldred’s method.

The target market for the Type 45 was engines up to 107ci (smaller than a Holden red motor), whilst the Type 75 and Type 90 were targeted at the 186ci Holden red motor and 225ci Valiant slant-6 engine respectively. This means that the one for sale is period-correct for a red motor (EH, HD, HR, maybe HK). The Type 45 was sold as a blower-only package, with manifolding being made by the end-user to suit the specific application, whilst the Type 75 and 90 could be purchased as a package, utilizing the original vehicle’s carburetor. Note however that some Type 75 installations swapped Valiant Carter carburetors on to Holden 186ci engines, probably due to the 111/16” Holley 1920 or Carter BBD carburetors (235 or 260 cfm@3”Hg) being of greater capacity than the replaced Holden single barrel 15/32” Stromberg (210cfm@3”Hg), albeit less than a WW-series carburetor (280cfm@3”Hg) fitted to the HR “S” 186ci engine.
Type 45, 75 and 90 superchargers have steel rotors, radially finned alloy casings with a cast iron liner, steel end plates and integral inlet and outlet manifolds (all other Norman superchargers have separate inlet and outlet manifolds). Type 45’s have seven radial fins, whilst Type 75’s have twelve (I do not know how many fins a Type 90 had). Type 45’s and Type 75’s had “45” and “75” stamped (not cast) into the housing (I’m not sure if Type 90’s did but suspect so). The Type 45 is air cooled, whilst the Type 75 is water cooled with no welsh plugs.

An article was written for Australian Hot Rod magazine in November 1966, titled Blow for Go! Norman Style. The article has a lot of technical detail, and is very likely to have been written in consultation with Eldred… giving confidence it is factual. The article refers to two models, a Standard (no clutch) and DeLuxe (clutched). The one for sale is a Standard (mine is a DeLuxe). The article notes three sizes:
• the size shown in the article, which is a Type 75 supercharger.
• a 4” shorter size designed for engines up to 1750cc/107ci (the Type 45 supercharger), and
• a 2¼” longer size for engines up to 4000cc/244ci (The Type 90 supercharger).

Looking at the article detail, the Standard and DeLuxe have a hard-chromed steel liner. Note that this is interesting, as Mike remembers that none of Eldred’s supercharger liners were chromed or surface treated. The majority of Eldred’s liners were made from cast iron diesel truck sleeves. At one stage, Eldred managed to secure some chilled cast iron sleeves from Repco. These were found to be too hard, and Eldred reverted back to the normal cast iron sleeves. Also of note from the article:
• steel rotors (aluminum had been tried but had only 1/8th the life of a steel rotor). The Type 75 had a rotor of 4½” diameter, bored 2”,
• cast-iron end plates (aluminium had been tried but wore the rotor ends). The Type 75 was 13/8” (inclusive of the fins). Note that this is different to the earlier Type 65’s and Type 70’s, which have aluminium end plates,
• an internal diameter of 5½” and an overall width of 12” for the Type 75,
• four ¼” vanes lots to average 2½” depth, with ½” of support at the base of the lobe slot,
• a 1½” long boss for the pulley drive key back to the front bearing on the Standard, with no boss on the Deluxe (the pulley for the Deluxe being mounted on ball races).

Whist the Type 65 and Type 70 superchargers were largely used on Holden grey motors (along with other engines of similar size), the Type 75 marks Eldred’s change to targeting the Holden red motor. Unlike the earlier Type 65 and Type 70’s, the Type 75 supercharger is mounted on the driver’s side of the Holden engine, with the inlet to the bottom and the carburettor on the steering box. The supercharger outlet is fed across the top of the rocker cover via a cast alloy air/air intercooler.

An additional article was written for The Australian Hot Rodding Review of January 1967, titled Blowers for Holdens!. The article was written inclusive of a visit to Eldred’s workshop in St Peters, Adelaide (the visit must have occurred before Eldred moved to Noosa in 1966), and is again very likely to have been written in consultation with Eldred and likely to be factual. This article refers to a second series of Normans (Series 2). Looking carefully at the Australian Hot Rod and Australian Hot Rodding Review images shows that they are the same vehicle, being Eldred’s HD Holden utility

From the photos, the “NORMAN” casting on the inlet faces up, with the supercharger on the drivers side of the engine bay. The “S”-shaped dogleg pipe is the supercharger discharge, and points the flow of compressed air/fuel up over the rocker cover. This Norman is missing the air-to-air intercooler that used to live over the rocker cover (I’ve never seen a surviving one). The oval-shaped blank plates would normally mount the bypass valve, used only with the DeLuxe models (turn the clutch off, supercharger is no longer driven, and the bypass valve opens to let air/fuel flow from the carb direct to the cylinder head).The big open square flange is the supercharger inlet. Triple pulley is correct.

If someone here buys it, give me a yell if you want a hand.

Cheers,
Harv

link doesn't work - I assume it was snapped up?

D-MAN wrote:link doesn't work - I assume it was snapped up?

No - still for sale AFAIK

Sold!

Ladies and gents,

Sometimes a real gem shows up in the most unexpected places. While Fred was looking through some of the original Wray supercharger paperwork, he found the document below, stapled into an Arnott supercharger instruction book:



It’s a tune-up and dyno card for Mike McInerny’s Wray-blown FJ Holden ute, which I covered in my Wray anecdote. The car was dyno-checked by Mike and John Wray as the vehicle ran the prototype Wray supercharger, and it was somewhat of a guess as to what was going on in terms of output, etc. At the time, Mike and the Wray team were discovering issues with cracking liners, breaking liners, oil lubrication, timing of ignition, blower pressures… often learning and improving the supercharger the hard way.

BP Marleston those days was run by Stan Keen, who had the only workshop on the south side of Adelaide with a dyno. The workshop was only some two miles from Garrie Cooper and Elfins at Edwardstown. Stan would go on to run Stan Keen Dyno from 1968, which later became Turbotune. Turbotune closed in the middle of this year, to be replaced by the High Performance Diesel Service Centre. During the run on the rolling road Mike’s FJ managed to wheelspin the rollers, despite running a big set of Dunlop L section racing tyres on the rear. The factory grey delivers around 70hp at the crank, so the 70hp at the rear wheels of Mike’s ute is perhaps 30% more power (driveline loss). Interestingly, the increase in torque is minimal - the factory grey motor 110ftlb has decreased slightly to 103ftlb (400ftlb at the rear wheels, though multiplied by the diff at 3.894:1).

As Mike points out, any new car would make the efforts on the FJ laughable. But at the time, it was a scourge to many… albeit an absolute slug alongside Wray-blown Robby's Cooper S brick.

Cheers,
Harv

A type 65
Youtube

The video above is a Type 65 Norman that was advertised on eBay in mid 2016. The serial number (481) is stamped on the casing and the carburetor-to-supercharger manifold. The Norman was run on a mainland car with twin 2" SUs/copper inlet trumpets, then put into storage before being sold to Mike in Tassie. Mike re-engineered a lot of the Norman internals, using a "very wise old man" machinist. The rotor has been reshafted, with the shaft length allowing Mike to run the Norman much further rearward than normal in his FJ.

Cheers,
Harv