Turbo tuning and Turbocharging your car

Turbo's work by feeding more air into your engine.  A standard car engine may be for example like the ford CVH 1.6 engine in the "Escort"  There was an XR3! which was 105bhp and an almost identical "turbocharged" version that used the same engine but with a Turbocharger added.  This version made 135bhp instead of 105bhp.  This was badged the "RS Turbo".  It was not a particularly good example of a turbo car but one that most people know!

So in this case it made 30bhp extra with the addition of a turbo. The reason it didn't make more was due to the low boost levels it was set to use.

An engine is fed air by normally by the atmosphere. The pressure of the atmosphere that rushes in as fast as it can is 14.7 pounds per square inch or 1bar.

This statement is overly simplistic but...  If an engine makes say 100bhp at 1 atmospheric pressure (as we are all breathing now!)  Then doubling this pressure (a bar of boost from a turbo) would give twice the power.  We would now have double the air in the cylinders, so could burn twice the fuel!

Things as usual are not this simple! But it makes it easier to understand and think about.  In reality its a case of the further you go the more the expected returns diminish.  Having to run richer, with lower compression ratios as boost increases is one reason but there are others.

Now... How do you fit a turbo to your NON turbo car?  We there are lots of ways!  And its not that hard!   Lots of people do this in the race community and build manifolds etc themselves.  But if you happen to have a car that has a turbo "version" available, then get yourself down to the breakers yard!  You will need:

• The original turbo cars exhaust manifold & turbo.  From a breakers that is often very cheap

• Exhaust from same model

All content and layout (c) John C Williamson, and respective owners, all rights reserved Aug 2003