BOOST POWER FROM ENGINE. Review on Tips on Turbochargers

Almost all diesel cars have this jargon affixed to their models. Turbo is something that always turn on the idea of'MORE POWER' into our minds. Some think of more fuel efficiency - some think of less.Lets See.ALSO WE WILL SEE WHAT NITROUS OXIDE IS coz this has also created a lot of stir from the movie DHOOM.

What is a turbo?

Turbo is a device that can provide more power to a car. A cars engine produces power to put the vehicle into motion. How? It takes air and then burns fuel(petrol, diesel or gas) in it to increase temperature. Increase of temperature= Pressure and this pressure is POWER. So, the engine needs air - just as humans do.

TURBOS HELP THE ENGINE TO BREATHE. Imagine you being given a pump that gives you air. Wont that be nice? Your lungs wont need much effort. Also you will be getting more air! Just like that the engine gets more air with a turbo. BASICALLY TURBO IS AN AIR-PUMP.

How does the turbo get its power?

Exhaust. The engine uses effort to throw out the burnt air. This effort of the engine is used to power the PUMP. Thats enuf of tech. info I guess. so.

what can you expect from a vehicle wid a turbo?

1. Power Boost: More air into the engine means more fuel into the engine= more power when burning the air. Therefore, MORE POWER is a result.(expected power boost is around 20-30%)

   
   




2. Fuel efficiency: Somewhat. You can expect some more fuel efficiency with a turbo.

   
   

But these cant be much explained with proof - coz if the vehicle's engine has a turbo, you are not likely to find the same vehicle with the same engine without a turbo(same fuel I mean).

If turbo is so nice, why dont all vehicles have it?

Most vehicles dont need as much power as the turbo can give.

SOME TRUTHS:

Turbos cant provide power at low RPM(i.e. when the engine is not revving much). Since Turbos are powered by exhaust, at low RPMs the exhaust is not enough to power the pump.

Turbos do provide a considerable amount of boost when the RPM is high.

Turbos can be RETRO FITTED. In US there are aftermarket turbos. That means, people can install a TURBOCHARGER even when the engine did not come with one.

In India, the turbo and aftermarket products are not very popular. BUT, I managed to installed a thing like a turbocharger on my old 800 with help from my local mechanic.It worked fine.But it is not street legal.

OTHER WAYS TO BOOST POWER

1. SUPERCHARGERS - Same as turbocharger. But they dont use the exhaust to power the pump. It is connected to the flywheel(the thing that supplies power from the engine to the rest of the powertrain i.e. gearbox and differntial and finally to the wheels).

2. Free flow exhausts - Engine uses a tremendous amount of power to throw out the burnt air. This power cannot go to the wheels. When a free exhaust is put, the engine then requires much less effort to exit and thus final POWER INCREASES.

But it also results in increased noise from the engine.

3. Nitrous OXide- If you have read the first part, you should know that engine burns air with fuel to produce power. To be able to burn the air properly OXYGEN is necessary. Normal air has 25% or so of oxygen. Nitrous oxide has 57%(app.) oxygen. Thus the combustion is more powerful.

You release the oxygen in sodium chlorate by heating it. It turns out that nitrous oxide(N20) works exactly the same way. When you heat nitrous oxide to about 570 degrees F(~300 C), it splits into oxygen and nitrogen. So the injection of nitrous oxide into an engine means that more oxygen is available during combustion. Because you have more oxygen, you can also inject more fuel, allowing the same engine to produce more power. Nitrous oxide is one of the simplest ways to provide a significant horsepower boost to any gasoline engine.

Nitrous oxide has another effect that improves performance even more. When it vaporizes, nitrous oxide provides a significant cooling effect on the intake air. When you reduce the intake air temperature, you increase the air's density, and this provides even more oxygen inside the cylinder.

The only problem with nitrous oxide is that it is fairly bulky, and the engine needs a lot of it. Like any gas, it takes up a fair amount of space even when compressed into a liquid. A 5-liter engine running at 4, 000 rotations per minute(rpm) consumes about 10, 000 liters of air every minute(compared to about 0.2 liters of gasoline), so it would take a tremendous amount of nitrous oxide to run a car continuously. Therefore, a car normally carries only a few minutes of nitrous oxide, and the driver uses it very selectively by pushing a button.