I have finally decided what to do to the car, and to that length I have gone and bought an Eaton M45, as fitted to the Merc 230 CLK. I am going to keep the original engine and supercharge it. 5-6psi of boost should work perfectly,provided I sort out the bottom end first. (hardening the crank, balancing all moving parts, etc.)
This is a really good piece of kit, but since it's originally made for another car, it has both inlet and outlet on the same side in towards the engine. The easiest way to package this lot then, is to fit the blowersome 150mm out from the engine, on a custom manifold. Fitting a carb is somewhat more difficult, and the best idea I have come up with is to use a Weber 45DCOE, and here comes the problem: I have to fit this carb ontop of the inlet manifold, between blower and rocker cover, facing forwards. This involves a fair bit of ducting, with a 2-into1 pipe from the carb. Perpendicular to this, a 90 degree elbow going down into another 90 degree elbow entering the blower. Sort of an ¨S¨ with a carb at 90 deg bolted ontop.
The inlet to the blower will then be some 250-300mm long and going through a series of 90 deg bends. I am concerned about the effectiveness of the carb, as the fuel/air has to travel this route to the blower. Any thoughts on this?
The benefit of this setup will be that I can make a fairly effective air intake from the front of the bonnet into the carb. The idea being a sort of DB4 bonnet scoop directly into the carb.
