How a turbo charger works

Loads of those diagrams have been pulled from Garrett literature.

Seeing this makes me nervous!!

how_turbo_works08.gif


Welcome to my industrial placement!! :eek:

;)
 
What I find difficult to understand is why turbo's cost so much these days...

I mean, they are used in everything from smarts to artics, surely the cost of these should have come right down my now?

:eek:
 
Dr Who said:
What I find difficult to understand is why turbo's cost so much these days...

I mean, they are used in everything from smarts to artics, surely the cost of these should have come right down my now?

:eek:
Click to expand...

They still have exotic materials used in their construction which are difficult to work with and the whole thing has to be machined and balanced to tiny tolerances which takes time. I rather not have a cheapo chinese turbo letting go at 100,000RPM and taking out the rest of the engine with it....
 
Dogbreath said:
They still have exotic materials used in their construction which are difficult to work with and the whole thing has to be machined and balanced to tiny tolerances which takes time. I rather not have a cheapo chinese turbo letting go at 100,000RPM and taking out the rest of the engine with it....
Click to expand...

What he said. Plus I think you'll find standard replacement turbos are a fair price unless you get them from a car main dealer.
Its only when you start looking at uprated turbochargers that the big expense comes in, because the dealers selling them know you will pay for the performance advantages they offer.
 
there are ways to get them cheaper..for example in i bought an Innovative Turbo Systems T3/t4 60-1 with an inconel turbine wheel for 150 USD....it had 20k miles on it and had blown the seals.

I shipped it off along with another $150 for a complete rebuild and rebalancing and had a basically new $1100 turbo for $300.

Not a shabby turbo either, inconel is a pretty interesting material and the owner I bought it from made 312whp (358 bhp) on only .6 bar on a 2.0 ls/vtec with only 9:1 compression ratio. Pretty good when n/a it dynod at 170whp

Unfortunately I had to sell it along with the rest of my custom kit and my car before I moved here :(
 
Dogbreath said:
They still have exotic materials used in their construction which are difficult to work with and the whole thing has to be machined and balanced to tiny tolerances which takes time. I rather not have a cheapo chinese turbo letting go at 100,000RPM and taking out the rest of the engine with it....
Click to expand...

There are some exotics in there but not as many as you might think....

Turbine wheels - Nickel Super Alloy
Compressors - Aluminium
Bearings - Brass
Shafts - Steel
(Diesel) Housings - Cast Iron

For petrol engines the housings will be Inconel, welded stainless plate or in the case of the Smart cast stainless - obviously these add cost! ;)

As for the construction, the electron welding and balancing is surprisingly quick and all computer controlled. At Garrett, there was a large amount of fairly unskilled manual construction which is probably where a lot of the cost comes in (and why they've moved the plant i worked at to eastern europe).

For things like VNT/VGT all the vanes were added to the vane ring by hand then welded by machine. Sooooo many fiddly bits and if one weld is bad the whole thing is scrapped! :rolleyes:

Saw *lots* of broken turbos and its very rare for anything to escape the housings but an engine ingesting an aluminium compressor vane can cause significant damage. Most of the failures were tiny tiny inclusions in the compressor wheel formed during casting. Needed the electron microscope to see some of them!! :eek:
 
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