Turbo vs. Supercharger - Which is Best?

the dodge challenger demon is supercharged [Music] the nissan gt-r is turbocharged [Applause] why what's the difference i mean why did dodge choose a supercharger for their flagship tarmac slaying v8 but when nissan wanted to dominate the racing world and created godzilla they chose the humble turbo instead are turbos better than superchargers well today we're gonna find out this is ideal cars this is trav and today we're getting boosted not that kind let's get into it [Music] okay so first off i want to clear up some verbiage n a no not like the miata stands for naturally aspirated which just means you have an engine that breathes all on its own and aspiration is just a fancy word for breathing now in normal land to make more power you need more air and to get more air well you just build a bigger displacement engine makes sense right more volume more air can go in and there is no replacement for displacement right wrong i'm going to let you guys in on a little secret see both the turbocharger and the supercharger are really in fact displacement modifiers and if you add a displacement modifier like say a turbo or a supercharger you're really adding forced induction aka forcing more air into the engine without having to make the engine bigger that's not natural so why would you want to do that well basically because most engines are air limited stoichiometry tells us that you want 14.7 parts air to one part of fuel so every time you add one molecule fuel you also need to add about 15 molecules of air and as you can imagine it's pretty easy to shove more fuel into an engine but it's actually super hard to shove 15 times that amount of air and side note for you super nerds yes the correct way to measure all this is actually in moles but this is ideal not your snoozefest ap science class enter the supercharger and the turbocharger which we call turbos to make it easy see those are really just air compressors which is why we often call them compressors hey i love it when things actually make sense by compressing the air we can squeeze way more of it into the engine and that means more fuel and that means more boom where they differ is in how they actually go about compressing the air we're going to keep this simple because oh boy it's quite the rabbit hole with no end once you start looking at the different types in each category basically a supercharger uses mechanical energy to compress the air and that's to say your engine's spinning so you rob some of that spinny power to run the compressor usually it's done with a belt that comes off the harmonic balancer or crank pulley just like the alternator and other accessories a turbo well a turbo's a little different see while a supercharger takes energy from the crankshaft of the engine to do its job a turbocharger uses the velocity and heat energy from the exhaust that's already screaming down the exhaust pipe we call that boost can you guess what comes next that's right it's a pros and cons list everyone loves a good list superchargers are pretty neat because they make boost instantly it's run mechanically off the engine so if the engine's running it's running too if you find yourself say drag racing you want the instant response when you press on the skinny pedal the downside is is that you have to rob some engine power to make that power and if you aren't careful you could theoretically end up in a scenario where your engine can't actually power the supercharger and it's really insane like the roots blower bolted to the top of a top fuel car needs somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 horsepower just to run you basically need an entire veyron just to move the supercharger on a top fuel car and the 2.7 liter unit strapped to the demon well it saps more power than an entire miata just to get its blades turning and once they are it would starve the entire cabin of the car of air in just 800 feet on a drag strip yeah luckily it breathes from outside the cockpit instead but so what nothing in this world is free right well except subscribing to our youtube channel so do us a favor and go ahead and get that done now don't worry it won't hurt if only there was a way to take some waste product of the engine and turn that into power instead of robbing power from the crankshaft right well good news that's where turbos come in now don't get me wrong turbos do have one or two major drawbacks see they take time to spool up and start compressing the air and the bigger the turbo the longer it takes there are ways to offset it sure like toyota for instance is a huge fan of using a little turbo that basically powers a bigger turbo so that the turbo lag is nearly eliminated [Music] but mostly if you want power from a turbo you're gonna have to wait for it wait for it however they are way more efficient since they work by scavenging escaping exhaust that would otherwise just be completely wasted well you're basically getting free energy but they're also more complicated and that's pretty much the biggest downside see turbos need space and a bunch of tubing since the exhaust and the intake have to be connected to it and they need oil pressure and return lines and a way to get rid of boost when they don't need it through diverter valve or off valve which are the things that make the cool turbo noises and you're rerouting the air intakes so you'll probably need to figure that out there's just a lot more work involved getting them up and running compared to bolting a supercharger on and hooking a belt to it so to sum it up superchargers are easier to install but can only make a limited amount of boost and rob power from the engine turbos on the other hand turn waste energy into power but are definitely more complicated the efficiency is really the key here a big engine that already makes a ton of power doesn't suffer as much from the power robbed by the supercharger whereas a smaller engine is gonna feel that a lot more and benefits a lot more from the efficiency of a turbo you know like a hellcat engine is big and powerful already so it's easy and sort of makes sense to supercharge it but something like the rb26 in a gtr isn't super powerful on its own so it really benefits from a turbocharger or two but if we had to choose one which is better truth is it's just way easier to make a ton of power with a turbo superchargers just have a bunch of limitations first you couldn't just bolt up a hellcat supercharger to your civic there's literally no room and your pitiful little b16 doesn't make enough power to turn the pulley so you'd have to source an itty-bitty supercharger but then you're making way less boost than an equivalent turbo sorry guys from a practical standpoint the turbo is a better way to make power they're just more efficient which is one of the reasons it's really easy to find turbocharged cars pretty much everywhere these days ford honda even fricken kia is strapping small turbos onto all their cars so that you can get some extra power without having to burn a ton of the extra fuel required for a bigger engine so why do some companies like dodge and chevy still go with the supercharger mostly because that allows their car to behave how people expect remember a supercharger makes instant power that means if you do go drag racing you can launch off the line like no one's business and if you have a large displacement engine already you really aren't going to be suffering from a lack of power down the track either in the old days you didn't even find turbos on big engines with the larger displacement it didn't much matter if you robbed some power to run the supercharger the efficiency just didn't factor into it in fact a lot of dragsters are still that way they make so much power that you've left the realm of efficiency long ago but that's changing too as technology offsets the limitations of the turbo if you can build the revs and spool a turbo you know like you have launch control then you're building boost right off the line too but basically to drive home the answer to the first question we asked if you already make a bunch of power a supercharger is an easy fast way to add even more power which is why cars like the challenger and the mustang are perfect candidates for a supercharger now if you don't have an engine that already makes a ton of power just like squid's delica that's super high efficiency of a turbo is going to take you a lot further which is why group b cars limited to a 2-liter engine and godzilla which had a relatively small inline-six were turbocharged now we haven't really talked about what you should think about buying if you're thinking about adding forced induction to your car and i hate to break it to you but that's because you probably don't have much of a choice like i said before superchargers aren't very common anymore and since most companies choose the turbo that means if you want to say add forced induction to your new mark v supra well you're going to be using a turbocharger simply because no one makes a supercharger for it and if you do have a choice you have a car that you probably already know everything about and you don't need some goon on the internet telling you what's better for you to do just remember to get oil moving around before firing up the car on its on its first run and that's it hey watch us on tick tock at ideal media check out the ideal.media blog and stay safe out there people this is trav thanks for watching this episode of launch control i'll see you guys next week you

Channel: Ideal

Views: 1,513,063

Keywords: turbo vs supercharger, turbo vs supercharger sound, turbo vs supercharger vs procharger, turbo vs supercharger brz, turbo vs supercharger race, turbo vs supercharger donut, turbo vs supercharger mustang 5.0, turbo vs supercharger miata, turbo vs supercharger drag race, turbo vs supercharger compilation, turbo vs supercharger frs, turbo vs supercharger how it works, turbo vs supercharger vs nitrous, turbo vs supercharger vs procharger sound

Id: 0JHX8P0EEJs

Length: 10min 34sec (634 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 14 2022