My FE/Performance Project

[imzjustplayin]

Originally Posted by theholycow

Ah, but the turbo doesn't work on exhaust heat, it works on exhaust velocity. There have been discussions of scavenging exhaust heat too; to do so, you would change the exhaust gas's density, producing more pumping loss (though I don't recall if there was any data showing whether the recovered heat outweighs the increased pumping loss).

You can go ahead and argue with wikipedia but knowing how electric generators at power plants, a jet turbine and a turbo fan works, I'm going to have to say that you're mostly wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboch...ting_principle

They don't work purely off of exhaust gas movement but on the actual heat of the exhaust gas. I know it's hard for you to conceptualize but it's been well established that this is how these things operate. Funny thing actually, it was the development of turbochargers during WWII for Turbo props that led to the development of the Jet engine and then later on the Turbofan engines.. (Turbo fans are much more efficient jet engines...)

Originally Posted by theholycow

Forcing more air into the engine requires you to put in more fuel. More air, more fuel, more power. Now you have to back off the throttle, introducing extra pumping loss at the intake (in addition to the turbo's pumping loss at the exhaust).

Yes this is true, however in order to quickly win this argument, I'm going to point out that diesel engines experience not only a performance improvement but a fuel economy improvement by going turbo charged. If you buy pretty much anything with a diesel engine today, it's going to be turbo charged due to the increase in efficiency by the utilization of a turbo charger. Gasoline engines are more complicated to talk about but the principle still stands, it's just that it's easier to talk about the benefits of turbos with diesel engines.