Well i'm a 16 year old that lives in Oshkosh Wisconsin(i go to every race at RA, i'm one of the very few open wheel fans my age) but i have to do a project for my auto class and i chose to do mine about turbos. Me always trying to associate my school work with my hobbies i'm going to do it about turbos in race cars, champ cars, indycars or prototypes extc. Could one of you guys possibly explain the difference between a turbo charged DP01 vs. a Honda Dallera just about why the turbo is better and how it effects the car different. Thanks alot everybody for trying to help me out.
Well i'm a 16 year old that lives in Oshkosh Wisconsin(i go to every race at RA, i'm one of the very few open wheel fans my age) but i have to do a project for my auto class and i chose to do mine about turbos. Me always trying to associate my school work with my hobbies i'm going to do it about turbos in race cars, champ cars, indycars or prototypes extc. Could one of you guys possibly explain the difference between a turbo charged DP01 vs. a Honda Dallera just about why the turbo is better and how it effects the car different. Thanks alot everybody for trying to help me out.
In the most simplified terms, a Turbo is an exhaust driven compressor that takes fresh air, compresses it and forces it into the engine creating more power. The normally aspirated Honda takes air into the engine straight from the atmosphire, without being forced.
One is not nesessarily better than the other and each has advantages over the other. A case in point could be: How many of todays production cars are turbocharged vs how many are not?
With the current fuel situation, we could very well see a resurgance of turbo or supercharged cars on the street.
A supercharger does the same thing as a turbocharger, only it is driven mechanicly instead of via the exhaust.
Well i'm a 16 year old that lives in Oshkosh Wisconsin(i go to every race at RA, i'm one of the very few open wheel fans my age) but i have to do a project for my auto class and i chose to do mine about turbos. Me always trying to associate my school work with my hobbies i'm going to do it about turbos in race cars, champ cars, indycars or prototypes extc. Could one of you guys possibly explain the difference between a turbo charged DP01 vs. a Honda Dallera just about why the turbo is better and how it effects the car different. Thanks alot everybody for trying to help me out.
To try to keep it relatively simple... a turbocharger is usually driven off of the exhaust pressure to spin a impellor that in turns (for all intents and purposes) the normal carbuerator in a normally aspirated engine into a suction machine. In effect, the turbocharger draws in a higher volume of air at a differeing pressure than that of a normally aspirated eingine. Higher air volume means, when mixed with fuel, a higher energy achieved when detonated. Couple that with fuel injection to introduce a precisely measure dose of fuel, and the energy delievered is more efficient. I know that this is an oversimplification but, in effect, this is what a turbo charger does.
Now, to the question of a turbocharger being better... there are many who will say that it isn't. There are some that will say that it is only a case of liking the exhaust note etc. I can give you one major drawback that a trubo has that a normally aspirated engine doesn't -- and this is truly a hinderance on road courses and street circuits... TURBO LAG! It takes the turbo a certain amount of time to spool up and deliever the right air volume and pressurization. NA engines have the power available right then and there.
Now, for the record, I like the turbo sound. I also like the NA engine note. To each his own. I can live with both.
I will throw you a curverball and ask you to look at yet another induction alternative: Supercharging! Whereas the airflow from a turbo is brought on by an impellor -- driven by the exhaust pressure, the supercharger has a direct source for its 'impellor' -- direct drive from the crankshaft. Thus there is no lag on a supercharger.
Excellent explanations. I'd just like to add a little about power delivery even though its already been touched on. NA engines provide a linear power curve, which means that the power delivery is relatively smooth throughout the power range. A turbocharged engine give an abrupt jolt of power once the turbo is spooled up.
Also note that turbo lag is almost a non issue in the Cosworth engine and is much more noticeable in the average turbo'd road car.
I like too turbo engines better, but not the ones CCWS used. They had already large displacement engine and turbo was there just for the fun not performance. What I would like to see is 1.5 to 1,8 liter engine, real turbocharged, little lag and 750 HP. Basically the last F1 turbo engine concept, except more reliable.
I was reading the Foyt Fan Q and A and came across this yesterday.....
Now that the series is unified there are a lot of "experts" saying the Indy cars should switch away from normally aspirated motors to turbos. I find that interesting since F1 dropped turbos several years ago. Since AJ has driven and owned both, which are better overall and why? I like the normally aspirated as I think they sound more like a real race car, not a vacuum cleaner. (Mike, Coppell, Texas)
A.J. has been pretty busy lately, so we asked our engineer Mike Colliver to answer this question. He wrote: “In general: Normally aspirated are simpler engines to install and maintain - have less "packaging issues" for the mechanics, etc. In general they are heavier and more reliable. They turn less RPM to achieve their top horsepower.
I would consider them "closer" to a production based engine even though they are specifically designed for racing.
Turbos are smaller displacement, lighter and make similar or more horsepower depending on how much turbo boost you want to run. They usually run more RPM and are slightly less reliable. They can change the top horsepower relatively easily by changing the "boost" level. This is what makes the "more power rule" that was used by CART easy to achieve. I would consider them more of an exotic thoroughbred "true" racing engine.
My personal favorite is the turbo as I love the crisp sound, "big" throttle response and higher pitch that they produce.”
One aspect of a turbo charged system is that the "boost" or the amount of compression the turbo creates can be limited to fit a given need. For instance, you can increase the turbo boost , if you want more horse power, or decrease it, if you want less. This can be helpful, in racing applications to alter the speeds at various tracks, or even at various altitudes, like Denver or Mexico City, where they are much higher. On an normally aspirated engine, you can't do this, unless you play with the fuel mixture, and even that is not as great a change.
The reason a turbo charged system can have "lag" or a delay in the power getting to the engine, is that the exhaust drives the system. At low RPMs it isn't spinning the turbo very fast, so the boost created is low. The more RPMs the more boost and there fore the more horse power. The way around that is a twin turbo system. One light weight turbo that gives boost at low RPMs and the other that gives boost at high RPMs. That gives you power at a much wider range of speeds and very little "lag" I believe Porsche has this on one of their current 911 series cars.
How does this apply in racing ?
On a oval, where the RPMs are always high, the turbo works great. The engine is at 90% or fast it's max RPMs all the time. No need to worry about lag at all. Or road courses, the RPM range varies a lot, so coming out of the corners, the power may come on more suddenly, and the driver has to know how to handle that boost, as it revs up. The Cosworth engines only used a single turbo.
As was mentioned, another benefit of a turbo charged engine is that is acts like a muffler and they are inherently quieter cars. This can be a good thing, for street races, where the surrounding businesses and residents don't need all the noise.
Why do you only see turbos on selected cars, on the road ? More expensive to design and build. They can also have more maintenance costs. However, that is not always the case for race engines. The Cosworth cost less for the teams to run for a year than the Honda engines.
Turbo lag can be reduced by using a smaller turbo which will spool uo quicker or a twin turbo set up which again gets up to speed quicker Newer turbo technology has also reduced this to the point of not really being the issue it was, F-1 walked away from the turbo because of the ridiculous amount of power they were getiing out of 1.5 liters(1,500hp on qualifying fuel),but they were burning some pretty exotic blends that you couldn't spill on anything without destroying it. I think that the turbo sounds better than an NA engine and the Cosworth was an extremely reliable and efficient package
Doesn't this SpeedForum qualify as a place for looking it up?
As an educator, I say no, not unless the provider of the information is a verified professional in the field. Now that's not to say that anyone who may have answered the question isn't a professional racing mechanic but then we don't exactly publish our creds either. Secondly, it's a pretty broad question that shows that the kid most likely hasn't done much research on the subject. How about looking it up in the library, form some basic understanding and then seek a qualified expert for some follow-up questions.
I like too turbo engines better, but not the ones CCWS used. They had already large displacement engine and turbo was there just for the fun not performance. What I would like to see is 1.5 to 1,8 liter engine, real turbocharged, little lag and 750 HP. Basically the last F1 turbo engine concept, except more reliable.
2.65 liters for a v8 is big? news to me. considering most 4 cylinder street engines are 1.8-3 liters (VW had the 1.8t and now the 2.0t, Subaru is 2.5 liter, etc). the Porsche Spyder is a 3.4 liter engine. the 2.65 liter engine was actually pretty small compared to other V8 race engines.
One of the great advantages of turbos on street cars is that they can provide "on demand" power while keeping the fuel burn down when you don't need power.
For example, cruising with my 6.1L, 425hp Chrysler at 65mph...I am turning a lot more engine and friction than I need. A turbo allows you to use a smaller engine that is more economical at lower power outputs (even if the actual fuel mileage delivered at the full 425hp level would be worse, how often are street cars at 100% throttle?).
Hybrids such as the Toyota Prius are, in a sense, using the same "turbo" philosophy. They have a small engine that's fuel efficient coupled to an electric motor that can provide a quick burst of power for pulling away from stoplights, passing people, etc.
Some very good explanations of how each system works above. I thought I’d add a little of my own experience to the fray. I’ve been racing or working on cars since I’ve was 16. I just recently converted my daily driver (95 Camaro Z28) from a normally aspirated car to a turbocharged car. Just as in racing, there were pro’s and cons associated with the switch.
By going to a turbocharged car and selecting the right camshaft, I was able to lower the revs, use the stock heads, valve train and make a lot more horsepower. I order to do this I had to change out the pistons, rods and crank to deal with the additional cylinder pressure created by the turbo. With a normally aspirated engine your typically increase the volume and velocity of the air by using better flowing heads and increasing the RPM.
Each method has it’s pro’s and con’s. There was a cost associated with the switch over that will never be recouped, but the car makes another 200 RWHP over the stock normally aspirated engine. Personally I like the car better since it’s been turbocharged. It drives like a low compression V8 around town, then is like a race car above 3600 RPM. (All the boost comes in between 3000 and 3600 RPM. E-ticket ride)
As far as racing goes, I liked Cosworth’s solution. They lowered the RMP, increased the boost and with the right components, increased the reliability and performance of the engine. Producing a sweet sounding, upwards of 800 horsepower car that was second to one. But……there is definitely something to be said for a high revving V8.
I like too turbo engines better, but not the ones CCWS used. They had already large displacement engine and turbo was there just for the fun not performance. What I would like to see is 1.5 to 1,8 liter engine, real turbocharged, little lag and 750 HP. Basically the last F1 turbo engine concept, except more reliable.
2.65 liters for a v8 is big? news to me. considering most 4 cylinder street engines are 1.8-3 liters (VW had the 1.8t and now the 2.0t, Subaru is 2.5 liter, etc). the Porsche Spyder is a 3.4 liter engine. the 2.65 liter engine was actually pretty small compared to other V8 race engines.
