Diagnosing Mismatched Turbos at Hot Rod Magazine
What do we do when these are too small for the application?
Greg Banish discusses the challenges of diagnosing and dealing with a turbo sizing mismatch in the latest article for Hot Rod Magazine. In this case, what started out as a properly sized turbo quickly became a problem when other upgrades were made to the engine. Adding more airflow is usually a good thing, but this time it has us struggling to deal with that increased flow in a limited exhaust housing size. We took some measurements to accurately assess the problem. Then we took some more measurements and formed a theory on the bench in the tech center. Finally, we brought all of that to the chassis dyno to see how it really worked. The results were eye opening to say the least.
Using a backpressure measurement during testing really helped us see how much stress the smaller turbines were putting on the whole system. It also explained why we were having trouble getting the desired boost levels even though the compressors should have been big enough for the engine. Putting all of this together follows some of the work we routinely do for some of our consulting clients. These lessons can often be translated to other programs, whether the engine is bigger or smaller than the one tested here.
Spoiler alert: we didn’t completely solve our problem in part 1. We did learn some important lessons that we’d like to share about diagnosing the mismatched turbos and how we can deal with them. We also set ourselves up for a strong comeback in part 2 coming soon.
