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Is the Centrifugal Supercharger the way to go on a VW?

The only problem I see with turbo's is routing the exhaust in a VW(nightmare material). On inline motor's this is easy as the exhaust is all on the same side.

Has anyone tried a centrifugal supercharger?

I am thinking of going down this way as although you do lose power driving the pulley, you should recoup this power in the efficiency of the impellor over a roots type supercharger.

The amount of boost available in the paperwork I have seen is the same amount as
turbocharging.

It is basically a belt driven - turbo impeller. There are a number of makes on the market, Rotrex(Danish), Vortex(USA?) and Powerdyne(Australia).

Two other advantages is the size, smaller than turbo(about a third smaller) and the reduced total weight involved.

Paxton also makes a centrifigal supercharger, as I remember, they run about $3,000 just for the blower. If you must have a blower, then a centrifigal is probably your best bet from the point of view of having room to mount it. A Draw thru or blow thru turbo doesn't really take up that much more space, but piping is an issue. One advantage of a turbo is that you can build your own system for about half of what just the blower would cost you.

good luck!
Volkaholic

We are putting together a centrifugal supercharger kit right now, to see how well it works out (I'll keep you all posted). It IS more than a turbo, but has several advantages (in our case, it fits UNDER the stock decklid, and clears all the stock tin with one minor trim).