Good questions, Slade!
We've all read magazine articles that claimed something like, "
with a turbo your engine can actually exceed 100% volumetric efficiency (Ve)..." What they really mean is that a turbo can force
a greater mass of air into the cylinder than the cylinder will see under normally aspirated conditions. That's not the same thing as Ve, so those claims are a bit misleading. Ve is a product of the design of the intake system, including the manifolds, carb/FI bodies, ports, valves, etc., and refers to the
volume of air that can be injested on each intake stroke. (So a 250 CID engine takes in just 125 cubic inches of air during each revolution at 100% Ve, not 250 cubic inches - these are 4-stroke engines, after all.

)
The antiquated design of the Ford log head is highlighted in its lackluster power production. For instance, the true peak SAE net power of a 60's 200 CID I6 is only what, about 90 hp? That's only 0.45 hp per cubic inch displacement. Contrast that with the 170 hp produced by the 2003 Ford Focus SVT's 122 CID engine, which works out to 1.39 hp per cubic inch displacement - more than 3 times the power per cubic inch as an old Mustang engine! A cubic inch in the bore is a cubic inch, pretty much no matter the engine, but the design of the top end determines how efficiently the engine breaths, and hence how much power it can make.
When adding turbos to the mix, it helps to look at the
weight of air forced into the engine, rather than the volume. That's because air has weight and can be compressed, which distorts the idea of a fixed volume. Of course, compressing any gas (such as air) adds heat to the gas, which complicates the equation, but we'll ignore that for now. As I said, air has weight, about 1 ounce per cubic foot (0.0755 lbs/ft^3) under standard conditions. If we boost an engine 1 bar, we are now cramming twice the weight of air (ignoring diabatic effects) into the cylinders as an unboosted engine, yet the volume hasn't changed. If the volume of air hasn't changed (although its weight has), then the Ve hasn't changed, right? That's why I wrote that adding a turbo doesn't change an engine's Ve.
So you are exactly right...Ve doesn't matter! At least not in the context we're discussing. I just used it as an "easy to use" yardstick to answer tatao's question about carb sizing for a draw-through setup. In a draw-thu setup, the carb doesn't see compressed air - it only senses the atmospheric air that flows through it, so CFM is a useful measure for sizing the carb. It still isn't exact, of course, but it's much better than simply guessing.
Hope this helps!
