Anyone looked into this? daft idea? I was just looking through a practical performance car mag and super chargers made me think it might be an alternative to using a turbo from an old golf on my diesel truck, no reason other than to be a bit different. What you guys think? I'm sure theres a good reason no one has done it (or hve they?)

I suspect you might get through a few clutches, even more low down torque might put a bit of stress on it.

there's no reason why you couldn't run a supercharger on a diesel so long as you can advance the pump timing whilst it's on boost, you could use an injection pump from a turbo car which has a vacuum operated boost advance mechanism like on a land rover td and some of the psa engines

the only thing wrong with supercharging on a diesel is that you need massive boost pressures(in comparison to a petrol engine) to make it worthwhile.. the sad fact is that it is far more efficient to have a turbocharger because you are re-using wasted energy for free, a supercharger always puts a parasitic loss on the engine because it's belt driven..

edit: thank for the nice picture there octynik, don't know why that's relevent but hey!!! i'm worked on those engines btw when i was at alstom for a while, they have gigantic paxman turbo-diesel engines

As Tom says, the basic reason why no-one still does supercharging on diesels (AFAIK) is that a turbo is very nearly free power, where a supercharger absorbs somethng like 10..20% (IIRC) of the engine output. Running the figures on the VAG 1.9D, a supercharged engine using the 110 injectors and cam would make about the actual figures of a 90.

And ref the HST set: I don't see why it's relevant either; I'd have thought a Deltic was more to the point?