Godfrey supercharger

[IN2VWS]

Anyone know anything about these?
This one is supposedly setup for a VW.

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[henry roberts]

hi john, i think it is a kit manafactured and sold by barry ekins of sydney, in the late 60's (rrp $290)

i'm not 100% certain as i have never seen a picture of his vw kit but it looks to use the same type of supercharger he used on some of his kits.

i'll try and get some pics of the articles i have.

edit. the pulley on the supercharger looks the same as well.

[frikendelicious]

Hi John,
very nice supercharger. something different than the usual Judson

jeroen

[henry roberts]

after an hour and a half on the phone to barry ekins i'm fairly sure that the kit shown is one of his vw kits. he is now in his early 70's, is a very interesting guy and knows a lot about superchargers. the elderstatesmen of our hobby are well worth the time to talk to if you ever get the chance.

his initial estimates were that he made 150-200 VW kits but he revised that to around 100 VW kits. he also said that the vw kit was one of the ones he wasn't that proud of due to the primitive intake design. he mentioned that something needed clearencing to fit it but i'm unsure if it is the fanhousing or the cylinger tin.

he originally became interested in superchargers when he bought a supercharged MG circa 1959. the car had previously won the '38 or '39 austrailian GP. he has many facinating stories about fitting superchargers to and road testing various cars as well as curcuit racing his cars and unofficial competition on the streets of the lower northern beaches/harbour suburbs of sydney.

the superchargers were sourced from Marshell-Nordec in the UK (plus some from aircraft repair firms) and were Godfrey blowers. either aircraft cabin pressure units or for industrial applications, both being of equally high quality. he visited the UK in '68 and came back with around 150 superchargers so he must have done a large number of conversions over the years.

he spent about 10 years fitting superchargers to all types of cars and the odd ski boat (waterskiing being his other major hobby).

he had, as he puts it, a "tame pattern maker" and it ended up that barry would provide the pattern maker with two flanges and a piece/ pieces of bent wire and the pattern maker would make up the bucks etc and give him the finished cast manifold. he said that if this wasn't available to him the whole buisness would not have been worth his while due to the time needed to hand fabricate steel manifolds for each different application.

from what i can gather the VW kits used J-100 blowers though i think now he would use the larger K-200.

he also stated that one of the above blowers came in a Mk 12, a Mk14 and a Mk22. with the Mk22 being far less reliable due to a different shaft design.

after he finished the supercharging thing he went on to own a vw service buisness.

unfortunately he gave away most of his supercharger gear years ago and ended up breaking up and burning the pattern boxes, though he has invited me to come and look at/photograph etc what material he has left.

edit: for further info and some clarifacation/revision see the post further down.

[36hplandspeedracer]

Henry, that is some great info on very historic 36hp high performance and rare equipment. Please keep it coming...................

Burly

[John Moxon]

[henry roberts]

i was raised by social historians

i firmly belive this stuff needs to be recorded before it is lost. his vw kits were a just a small part of his contribrution to australian tuning in the 60's, so i hope to get info on all facets of what he did.

i kept notes during the conversation and will take a camera, laptop and scanner when i visit. i hope to take a tape recorder and if i can source one and he is ok with it, a video camera.

[John Moxon]

[IN2VWS]

Thanks Henry, All that info is great!!!!
Hopefully this will be on one of the salt cars for next year....thats the plan for now anyway.
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[CLASSIC CAR GUY]

Great info/history lesson!! Bravo!!

"tomorrows ACVW history can only survive by documenting yesterdays work and achievements!"
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Vintage Volkswagen Sales and Service as well as Classics and Muslcecars all located here in Phoenix Arizona at www.rpmotorcars.com

[TomSimon]

Aussie "Dangerous Dave" Butler has been messing with blown VW's for a number of (recent) years. I got to know him through drag racing vw stuff.

He once sent me a picture of a blown 1776 he build 20 years or so ago. Said the blower was from some aircraft where it previously supplied 'air cabin pressure'. I have some pics around hear somewhere.

[36hplandspeedracer]

Yes, Rick Vesco of the 470 MPH Vesco family once had a 36hp buggy that ran two Rootes style blowers made from the cabin air compressors used on B29 bombers from WW2. Like Barry's kit's, Rick said they acquired ' a box ' of them for next to nothing and they worked like a charm.

It will be good to hear the rest of this tale..................

Burly

[henry roberts]

a little more info.

barry re-revised the number of vw kits he made down to 40-50. he estimates that he supercharged a total of around 400 cars. the year he did the most was 1968. of the other marques the only info i have so far is he estimates he supercharged 25 or so holdens.

the blow off valves he fitted were made by Cisby (edit: this may be Clisby) and bought from McPhersons hardware, then a large hardware store in the CBD of sydney. the valves were, he thinks, originaly made as blow off/safety valves for compressors. Cisby being a maker of compressors and alike.
they were rather in-effective in his opinion, but as he put it, they did save the pressure gauge from being destroyed in the event of a backfire. he considered that a far better solution would be to have two 2" inlet valves and springs between the heads and the supercharger, so a large volume could be released in very little time.

his thoughts on blow off valves were vindicated when he supercharger a brand new holden monaro for a customer who against barry's advice, wanted the set up to be as big as he could possibly have fitted, regardless. barry used a supercharger and manifold imported from the US. the manifold had two large intake style valves as a blow off valve. the supercharger/manifolds/extras and fitting cost 1/2 as much as the showroom price of the car. the owner was a well off parstoralist but within a year the he returned to have the kit removed as the fuel costs "were sending him broke".

the gauges he used were ex aircraft and over the years he used two different ranges. he prefered the one with the larger range but used whatever he could get hold of at the time.
he used copper lines to run to the pressure gauges.

with regard to dimpling the tinware to clear the supercharger, barry confirmed it was the fan housing that need clearencing and followed on that he used to also bulge the back side of the fan the corresponding amount he had dimpled the front so the volume of cooling air to the cyl's was not reduced.

he said, as a generalisation, that 7:1 CR was the magic number that a wide variety of engines liked when supercharged.

the reason that the mk22 blower was inferior to the mk12/mk14 blowers was that the latter two had a solid steel shaft that ran the full length of the rotors where the mk22 did not. (i think from what he said the mk 22 had a steel shaft inset at each end)

he said that with mini's, to keep them cool you needed to remove the thermostat to increase the flow through the radiator. not supercharger related, but as an aside, he told me that with the holden grey motors the thermostat needed to be soldered/braised open and re fitted as if removed the flow of water was pointing at the radiator cap and would just blow it off.

i'm hoping to see him in the next few days so will hopefully have a little more info and some pictures then.

[henry roberts]

a little more to add.

today i talked breifly to one of barry's friends re a supercharger he has.

he basically tried to talk me out of running a godfrey K-200 saying that a toyota SC-14 is far more efficient, heaps lighter and but looks very similar. so similar in fact that CAMS (confederation of australian motorsport) has approved thier use on historic race cars. in his case group L, for historic logbooked with description etc ex period race cars.

btw the Godfrey K-200 is 2 litres per revolution. barry's friend thought that you would need to run it at engine speed or less on a VW.

maybe we should start a discussion elseware about SC-14 superchargers in 36hp LSR? the similarity also makes the possibilities of reproducing the barry ekins kit far more achievable, something i pipedreamed about since i first found out he was alive. i guess that is another thing to talk to barry about when i see him.

edit.

right. it turns out that he used a J-75 for the vw kits. from what i can gather at least some were sold with the mk22 supercharger as that was all he could get at the time.

unfortunately i can't meet up with barry ekin this trip so more info will have to wait till later.