I have been discussing this point for a while figured i would see what the club polo lot think about it, seen alot of discussion on turbo's on here, see some people who know what they talk about and could give me a run for my money :p

The discussion is, would it be more beneficial on a 4 cylinder engine to run 4 individual turbo's or to run 1 normal turbo. Assuming that the 4 small turbo's run at 0.5 bar each and the 1 big turbo would run at 2 bar.

I personally think that there would be more drag from spooling 4 small turbos rather than 1 normal turbo and a loss in top end power, although the response will be amazing and the low end torque, but once you reach the limit on the operating band of the turbo it will be gutless..

What you all think?

Dimz

As you can see packaging will be no problem!

Edited 23 February, 201016 yr by don_stavrou

I think the cost would be massive, it would be quite complex to do and surely it would be difficult to setup correctly so they were balanced?

As above with the added complexity, far more to go wrong. Not for me thanks.

probably alot more expensive (turbo rebuilds for example)

i saw that Owen developments setup at the autosport show, i ask one of them "whats the benifits then"

he said "none realy, just doing it for show"

yea thats where i saw it aswell! na just figured its an interesting argument :)

i saw that Owen developments setup at the autosport show, i ask one of them "whats the benifits then"

he said "none realy, just doing it for show"

yes, they show it there every year. Smart Car turbos I believe. They said it was just an engineering exercise.

Waste of time.

Plus dont forget that 4 turbo's making 0.5 bar would make the same power as one bigger turbo making 0.5 bar. Its the mass airflow that will be divided between them, not the pressure.

I dont see much reason why it would be any better low down or anything???? You probably have a total rotor weight of waaaaay more than a single turbo so it would probably take ages to spool them up, especially seen as they each only have one charge of exhaust gas for ever 4 revolutions of the engine, instead of 4 per 4 cycles like a single turbo would see.

I cant see any advantages, I'm sure there probably are some if you dig deep enough. I suppose if one turbo failed it might still be able to limp home on 3 cylinders. Infact scrub that because I've just noticed they all share the same plenum.

I'm also pretty sure that one smart car turbo on a 350cc cylinder is probably a bit over sized. Although I dont know what capacity this is applied on.