I have heard many times by a variety of guys tha the 5 major blades or wicked wheel "Bite" more air than the stock 7 major blades. One of the guys who was telling me this was Shawn at R&S Diesel Performance....but he probably doesnt know what he is talking about.....he only has 3 800+ HP diesel pulling trucks....lol! Jody is cool, great guy and great tuner. I have talked to jody a few times, he is sharp as a tack....but I wonder if he may be mistaken on this one point?

 

The worst harm that I was going to suffer was from my wife telling me to fix that noise.

 

We are on the same page. I put in the WW before the guages, so I can't give you any boost numbers that I may have gathered. All I can tell you is my surge was cured with it, even if it did cost me a couple of LB of boost.

 

my take on this subject is that since the wicked wheel has only 5 large blades, the vacuum pulls more air into the space between the back of the previous blade and the "biting edge" of the blade in front of it. this is what i believe cures surge, and the 5 smaller blades help move that air. with the stock wheel having 10 equally spaced blades, it is more effective at moving air at the lower boost levels. i think this because at lower boost, there is less vacuum in the intake pipe, thus meaning that less air is sucked into the space between the blades per revolution. more blades= more air pumped. once you speed the turbo up to a certain speed, the time for the air to shoot between the blades is less, which makes me think that less air can be pumped at higher turbo speeds. the WW has half the amount of blades that "bite" the air, so this makes me think that there should be twice the amount of time for the air to be allowed to shoot between the tips of the blades. to me, this makes sense that it eliminates surge, because the positive displacement of the turbocharger keeps the air flowing out of the nozzle and not back through the compressor shroud, due to the fact of not being able to keep sucking air in and pushing it out.

make sense?

 

My wicked wheel makes 27-28 lbs of boost with a Banks big hoss and a 6-gun tuner on a 7.3 PSD. It moves air in sick ways.

 

It would be interesting to have a camera pointing at the intake during a time of stall. I would fully expect to see the same sort of fogging that happens on the tops of fighter jet wings when they pull a high G turn.

 

Glad we're on the same page. And, an intake camera would be nice to see. I doubt it would be that tough to rig something up.

 

Your explanation has good logic behind it, but I don't necessarily agree with this statement about the stock wheel pumping less air at higher turbo speeds. Look at how many fins are on a jet engine's intake fan. They're packed in there tight, and all of the same size and shape too.

 

Well, if we're going to compare numbers , my stock wheel can easily see 30+ lbs of boost, and has been on the edge of 35 lbs several times. This with a Predator (85hp tune loaded) and a Banks 6-Gun. Injectors are stock and fuel system only has the Hutch mod done. Well, it did at that time anyway.

I usually try to keep it under 25 lbs though, at least until my new turbo goodies get here.