One More Reason Turbochargers Rule
[ November 19th, 2008 ] By: Charles Smith Posted in » Ramblings
It has been getting cold around here and sitting still in a car does nothing to help keep warm. Luckily I drive a WRX and that means it is turbocharged. Besides the added torque/power it makes, one really nice thing in the winter is that my car heats up faster.
Turbos spin really effing fast, and most turbos are cooled and lubed by the engine oil. The turbocharger is transferring heat from the exhaust gasses and its own spinning into the oil. This beautiful heat transfer results in warmer overall oil and so your cabin heaters work that much faster.
Oh how I do love my turbocharged car. There is one caveat, with the turbocharged car you have to be much more careful about running the engine hard (especially when it is cold) and shutting off the engine too soon after running hard. If the turbo gets very hot from running hard, shutting off the engine shuts off oil flow to the turbocharger. The oil left in it can burn off/cake in the turbo (BAD!!!).
November 19th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Forced induction is cheating! A well-built motor can breath by itself. Don’t get me wrong though, the whole performance/mileage compromise is awesome.
I guess what I’m trying to say is you can turbo/supercharge a POS engine (Thunderbird SC) and get descent power. It doesn’t lend any credit to the engineering that went into the power plant.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:01 am
The old expression is “there’s no replacement for displacement” is sort of the mantra for the musclecar crowd.
Supercars and exotics are actually getting smaller and smaller engines putting out more and more power… twin turbos is still the way to go for the uber schnell cars… why? Because when you get into truly ludicrous speeds you dramatically increase the power requirements to overcome drag. This is why a Veyron (twin turbo) needs 1000hp to go 250mph, but a Carrera can cruise at 160 with 350hp.
vehicle weight is extremely important - not only for the power-to-weight ratio, but for overall balance and handling. A NA engine built to push a Veyron to 250 would have to weigh over 2x what the current engine weighs, since it not only needs to produce tons of power to get to that level of performance, but the weight increases with the size of the engine, so it actually has to work against itself… it may need to pump out 1200hp just to obtain the same speed.