SuperChager Vs TurboCharger

[Nitrous_Oxide]

Hey hows everything.
I need a bit of help here,could anyone tell me the diffrence between superchargers and turbochargers.and do superchargers have a kind of turbo lag?
thanx for your help.

[thepolarfoxqx]

Ok, here they are:

Turbocharger (short for turbine charger), it uses exhaust gasses passed over a turbine (wind mill if you will), to spin a fan on the intake side which pressurizes air into the engine. They tend to spin very very fast (sometimes more than 100,000rpms) and get very hot (they are cooled by oil from your engine). The lag on these is from the time it takes for the exhaust to get the turbo "spooled" up to its speed.

Supercharger: These devices are a set of fans driven by a belt from the engine. They spin as fast a 30,000 rpms, and are air cooled. It is a much more simple contraption, more or less just a belt driven intake fan.

Turbochargers tend to give more power in the mid levels (say 3,000-5,000 rpms on the average car) - where the turbo is in full efficency.

Superchargers give a lot of power off the line, say up to 3,000 rpms, above there they start to lose efficency and drag a bit on the engine.

Intercoolers are devices that cool air down after it leaves the turbo or superchager, these allow the air to be more dense when it enters the engine - allowing for more power. These are used in most turbos, and high end supercharged cars.

Superchargers do have "supercharger lag" - but it is different that turbo lag. Superchargers are not always engaged, so the breif moment needed for the supercharger to engage and get up to pressure is the lag time. In some cars, the supercharger engaging can be a violent event (though very fun). Turbos on the other hand tend to be more transparrent.

Superchargers (well, except for the ones on AMG cars) tend to make a loud whirring noise like that of a floor polisher.

Hope this helps.

[Nitrous_Oxide]

Thanx for your help.It was really helpfull

[T88TurboStang]

hehe gottal ove the turbo...especially when freeway racing.....hellyea

[thepolarfoxqx]

it depends, a turbocharged car usually does have more top end, which is always awsome, but some newer supercharged cars, especially ones with lyscholm compressors have fair top end as well though.

Turbos are no good for spur of the moment burnouts though.

[izzyloveslizzy]

Fox and T88, since you both seem to know so much about Turbos, I got a question: I'm not sure about this: do you know by how much exactly the milage of a car would decrease if you turboed an engine, by, say 50%? Or does it always depend on the type of motor and stuff like that?

[GIR]

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/turbo.htm
http://www.mercedes-benz.com/e/cars/...t/facts_m2.htm

You forgot about the biturbo.

The biturbo is basicly 2 turbo's after one and other. One if big and the other one is small. The small one doesn't need much power to get up to speed so while the big one is winding up the smaller one is already up-to-speed. thus reducing the affects of turbo-lag significantly.

Because of the (upto) 50% increase of air in the cyclinders theoreticly the engine could burn upto 50% more fuel. But in practice this figure ussualy stays around 20-40% because of several limitations.

[thepolarfoxqx]

audi has a setup where there is one turbo for each bank of cylenders, and they call that biturbo

i think your one with one big and the other small is sequential turbocharging, and is really hard to do well.

[izzyloveslizzy]

What if it was a W? Would they make it a tetra-turbo?

[thepolarfoxqx]

quad turbo, you could use 1,2, or 4 turbos on a W configuration.