I was lookin around the net due to boredom and came across this little article that was posted in a 2003 issue of 'battle of the boost' magazine.
http://www.ststurbo.com/turbo_vs__supercharger
From my understanding turbo's are more efficient than superchargers all around, except for at low rpms and their notable turbo lag, something the article failed to mention. But looking at the graph in the article, it shows the turbo putting out 50 more 'horsepower' than the superchargers up the whole band except for the centrifugal, which kicks in at 6000 rpm. If the facts in this article were true, then why would anyone buy a supercharger? Oh, also I noticed that the peak power for this engine is around 4000-4500 RPM, which leads me to believe that it's probably a higher displacement engine made for low-mid end power. If I'm not mistaken, the 2200 from my cavi puts out it's peak at 6200 RPM stock right?
So I don't know, I've allways believed that superchargers will put out more power than turbo's at a lower rpm, and the opposite at a high rpm. eg: Low-end torque = S/C, high-end torque = turbo.
Oh, and from my understanding aren't turbos HIGHER maintenance with lower reliability since they spin faster?
Lets look at the source of that article... its a remote mount turbo company trying to sell turbo systems to people who typically S/C their cars.
S/C's are great on high displacement vehicles, they have a very linear boost curve. Turbo's have a non-linear boost curve. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, you just have to research (at a non-biased information source) and pick which is best for you.
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Reliabilty - They both have downfalls, but with advancements in both systems they have become more reliable. You look at a GTP for example, some last till 120k miles+ with no issues, and some need lots of work. Another vehicle is the sunbird GT turbo.. my friend owned one and it ran great till 110k miles and was hit by drunk driver, other need constant repair. Alot to do with "reliabilty" has to do with proper warm up, cooldown, maintanence, and of course "tuning".
You take a look at some newer vehicles (I work at a minesite that uses ford) and the 6.0 L turbo diesel are awful for burning out turbos and misfire issues (on our site) From a distance people say, "the turbos are bad", "VVT obviously doesn't work" , but with a little history you can see that I work on the north coast of canada and all our fuel is hauled up once/year, so it does get pretty dirty, and the trucks idle 20 hrs/day to stay warm.. which is still not warm enough, and they carbon to hell and the VVT sticks causing "overboost" situations ripping 90% of our turbos in half. Now is that a turbo flaw or the "usage" being extreme.. I would say all facts in, the turbo is fine, but at -60 to -80 celcius in winter.. things are bound to break.
I realize that is a little off topic.. but the manner in which an item is used, and maintaned will dictate how long it lasts.
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^^Nah, those turbos suck, my uncle barely had 3000 miles on his truck and one blew on him...
ANYWAY, turbos are all around more efficient than superchargers... The reason why superchargers are still around is that they are a little easier to package (ever looked at the header area of some v8 sports cars? Generally speaking, not a lot of room for a conventional turbo setup there... As for lag, that depends. I drive a VW with a K03 turbo. The inlet is litterally smaller than the outer diameter of a can of coke... There's no such things as "lag" on my car, but it also peters out in the top end. So if you want 800 hp out of a 1.8 liter, yeah, the consequence is that there will be some lag down at the low end because any turbo big enough to make that kind of airflow, will take longer to spin up before it actually starts generating that much air. Superchargers make boost proportional to rpm, and so are not prone to the spikes and weird power curves that turbos can tend to have.. They also don't really have to worry about overboost, since they can only make so much boost at so much rpm with a certain pulley size. On a turbo, a wastegate can fail, you can overboost, and blow @!#$ up. Its not common, but it can happen. Turbos I believe are also more sensitive to tolerances in the manufacturing process. Basically, there's a lot of reasons why both are still around...
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I havent read this whole thing but the term most people think of when using lag is actually the threshold. Threshold is when boost starts to build, and lag is the time it takes from the threshold to get to full boost.
This is a classic argument and the in pretty much every case but one a Turbo will be more efficient however in the case of a whipple supercharger, those are more efficient than turbos
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Rodimus Prime wrote:This is a classic argument and the in pretty much every case but one a Turbo will be more efficient however in the case of a whipple supercharger, those are more efficient than turbos
what's special about Whipple S/Cs? and what are they "more efficient" at? (producing power or... what?)
bottom line on turbo vs. S/C argument is that it depends on the application and goals; factor in all
your variables and you find out which is better for
you, but that doesn't mean it's the best for someone else.
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Simple answer: The reason turbos are more efficient is because they use energy from the exhaust that would have otherwise been "wasted." Supers use the energy from the engine itself to create power. Hence, why a properly matched and tuned turbocharger setup at a given pressure above ambient will generate a higher peak horsepower than any supercharger setup at the same pressure.
To my understanding, a whipple is just a twin screw design which would of course outperform an eaton, because of it's closer tolerances. But it still uses power from the engine making it highly unlikely that it would outperform a turbo...maybe accross a good portion of the powerband (which might be what you are getting at) but not for peak horsepower on a 4 cyl.
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