Turbocharger vs. Supercharger
Turbocharger vs. Supercharger
October 31, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Article
Supercharging and turbo-charging your engine will get you the same thing: more horsepower. Both work by increasing the amount of air that goes into the combustion chamber, resulting in a more powerful explosion. However, they both do it in very different ways.
A supercharger works by taking power from the engine via a belt/pulley system. The belt turns an impeller inside the supercharger that forces more air into the combustion chamber. The benefits of having a supercharger, is that it’s very straightforward to use, and the power is there whenever you need it. Also, a cool feature about it is that it doesn’t require special cooling or maintenance. It’s easily more reliable than turbochargers.
A supercharger also provides a smooth boost throughout the entire power-band, which results in more predictable handling and power at low, as well as high RPM’s. The downside of supercharging is that it uses a small amount of power from the engine all of the time (because of the pulley). Ironically, the more power the supercharger produces, the more power it pulls from the system. But the net result of having a supercharger would most likely turnout better than not owning a supercharger at all.
A turbo charger works much like a supercharger, where it forces more air into the combustion chamber. However, instead of being driven by a pulley/belt combo attached to the engine, the impeller is spun by exhaust gasses from the engine. When the engine is at rest, the turbo charger impeller is idling, because there is little pressure in the exhaust that is released from the engine. As the engine is revved, more exhaust pressure hits the turbo charger’s impeller causing it to turn, which puts more air in the combustion chamber, which also increases the exhaust pressure by hitting the turbo impeller. Hopefully you can see where this is going at this point. The faster you go the more power the turbocharger produces.
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Once you've learned where the left pedal's biting point is, it's hard to get your launch wrong, with the superchargers offering a fairly linear power and more »