Garrett Turbo

Leaftech asked:


Automobile racing is one of the most popular sports in the world, and certainly has its place among the most watched sports in North America. Every year, thousands of people watch what is happening on the NASCAR and CART circuits and every year thousands of people seek to emulate the pros.

The history of professional and amateur auto racing probably goes back to the days when the automobile was first invented and the first competitive spirit jumped into his driver’s seat, while his friend jumped into their car. Since that time, the sport has been refined and marketed to become the past time that it is today, and that has meant a lot of change along the way.

The turbocharger

One of the big changes that revolutionized auto racing was the introduction of the turbo charger. The charger itself was actually invented in the very first years of the 20th century, and began showing up in practical applications (specifically ships and locomotives) around the 1920s.

Turbochargers increase the amount of air drawn into the piston of an engine at each stroke, thereby increasing the power boost that the engine supplies to the vehicle in motion (more air equals more fuel). Turbochargers use the rotation of the crankshaft as their power source, using the heat produced to power in the extra air. They are said to be more efficient than superchargers, which draw power from the engine itself.

The turbocharger and auto racing

The first use of a turbocharger in auto racing was in the late 1970s, when auto producer Renault of France introduced the turbo charged engine into their Formula One vehicles. This was a relatively late development given the long history of the turbo charger, but up until this point racecar developers believed the technology was not fuel efficient or reliable enough to power a successful racecar.

Renault proved critics wrong, however, by using a turbocharger that provided a significant boost to the speed of the car with the use of a fairly small engine. By the early 1980s, all Formula One cars were equipped with turbo chargers.

Turbo charging and the driver

Aside from increasing the speed a racecar could hit in a short amount of time, the skill needed to use a turbo charger in an engine also meant a new breed of drivers were needed. This development was not just limited to professional circuits like Formula One; amateurs all over the world found that successfully racing a turbo driven car meant an increase in timing ability, reflexes, and even strength.

The introduction of the turbo charger changed auto racing forever. Today, there are several styles of auto racing that do not allow turbo chargers, but even so, the very fact that there has to be litigation against these innovations is an indication of their far reaching impact and application!



Tim Brewer

Carazoo.com asked:


Engine is the heart of any automotive. Whether it is a passenger car, a two-wheeler, or a commercial vehicle, all automotives need engines to run. It’s the engine that generates power and transforms the fuel energy to kinetic energy of the wheels. Therefore, it is very important to monitor and maintain the performance levels of the engine.

Here are best ways to improve engine performance:

Engine Displacement

Engine displacement is defined as the total volume of air and fuel mixture that the car engine draws during one complete cycle moved by the piston from the top dead center to the bottom dead center. Dead center is the position of the piston when it is farthest or nearest to the crankshaft.

To improve engine performance, it is very important to increase engine displacement. This is because if the engine draws higher volume of air and fuel mixture, it will definitely generate more power. This can simply be done by increasing the size of the cylinder or by adding more number of cylinders to the engine. These cylinders play a significant role in the car engine as both compression and combustion takes place in these cylinders. Therefore, if the size is more, more mixture can be fused it, which in turn will generate higher power output. This improves engine efficiency.

Engine Compression Ratio

Compression ratio is the degree to which air and fuel mixture in the internal combustion engine is compressed before ignition. Increasing this ratio is one of the best ways to increase power and torque, thereby improving engine performance.

Higher compression ratio enables the car engine to extract more energy from the given volume of air and fuel mixture. It also causes better mixing of the power. This in turn, produces enhanced power during ignition and extracts more useful energy from the withdrawn power.

Intercoolers

An intercooler is a device used in car engine to cool the air between successive heating stages. Air outside is comparatively hot and therefore it is very important to cool the air before fueling it into the engine. Later compressed air raises the temperature due to high pressure generated by the movement of the piston in the engine.

Hot air expands less during combustion and reduces the amount of energy generated. The air should always be cool before it enters the engine cylinder and that’s why intercoolers are usually placed in the most of the turbocharged and supercharged cars.



J.Wade

Justina Mathews asked:


For quite some time, the only way that engine designers knew how to make power was by adding displacement. The bigger the engine, the more power it could make. While this type of design was acceptable in the 50s and 60s, as technology moved on and fuel became more expensive, it became clear that smaller motors could be made to develop healthy power too.

There are plenty of imports out there with 4-cylinder motors in the 2 liter range. If you have one of these engines, then you know that while it might be fun to drive it in the higher rpm range, it does not have a lot of grunt down low, and it tends to run out breath pretty quickly in top gear. You might have seen some sporty-looking compacts zoom by you on the highway and heard a distinctive “pssh pssh” sound when they shifted gears. That is the sound of a turbos blow-off valve. A what?

A turbocharger is a device that crams more air into your engine by compressing it as much as possible. A quick lesson on how engines make power: they take air and fuel, combine them together, and then ignite that mixture to create an explosion that turns your cars crankshaft. This generates horsepower. Now, if you can figure out a way to get more oxygen into that mixture before the spark plug fires, then you can add an extra amount of gasoline and create an even more powerful explosion. Thats what a turbocharger does, through compressing air so that it contains more oxygen per cubic foot than the air around us in the atmosphere.

In order to do all of this compressing, a turbo has to spin pretty fast actually, really fast. Most turbos spin above 20,000 rpm, and this allows the blades inside the device to compress air incredibly quickly. Turbochargers are really efficient devices, as they are driven by the exhaust gases of the engine itself. These gases exit the engine at great speed, and this speed is translated into the high rpms of the turbo itself.

However, this design is also the source of one of a turbochargers greatest downsides turbo lag. Since an engine running at a low speed does not produce a significant amount of exhaust, when you mash the gas, it takes a little while for the turbo to spin up to maximum power. The time it takes between the pedal being depressed and full power being available is known as lag. This can be a frustrating experience when running the stoplight grand prix, as some turbo cars are a bit slower off the line than their more torquey opponents. Once that turbo kicks in, though, all is forgiven.

A turbo can be a great way to add some real punch to your imports engine, but its important that you take the time to install everything properly, and make sure that your fuel delivery system is up to the demands of all that extra air rushing in. Turbochargers add extra pressure to many engine components, and its far better set things up well at the beginning than it is to have to call a tow truck to take your baby back to the garage.



Francis