Turbolators

[onegammyleg]

I thought ide break this away and make a new thread.

ZugyNA said ?Somebody test this...please....? http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/P...001736/c-10101

Ted Hart said ?Turbulators! Fancy name for rubbish! Save your money?

When you look at the cutaway drawing its design is revealed.
It is an exhaust tip that has a butterfly valve which is held closed with spring tension.
As engine RPM's rise so does exhaust flow , this simply put blows the valve open.
The idea behind it that it is a self regulation valve that adjusts the backpresure of the exhaust system.

But does it increase FE . ? (8.3 % was the quoted improvement)

I expect yes , BUT !!! , under very certain conditions.

Assume for a moment that your car and another car are of the same weight , size and air drag.
Yours was designed with a super economy 4 and the other car has a fire breathing 8 cylinder 400Hp engine.
Both of these cars when driving down the road at 35 mph will need about 30Hp (roughly).
Yours probably will need a little more accelerator than the other car , but both will be making the 30Hp.

The difference is , is that to achive the far higher HP in the 8cyl car he has perhaps a wilder camshaft , bigger head ports , far larger diameter exhaust and low restriction mufflers.
At the low exhaust flow rates when making 30hp the 400hp 8 cylinder might be overscavenging the cylinders causing poor FE.
Your economy 4 also is making the 30hp but all of the correctly sized engine and exhaust parts are humming along happily at this speed.
Both cars remember may be making 30Hp but the 8 in this example likely will be using more fuel to do so.


So add the Turbulator to your small car and what happens .?
Probably no change in FE will be noted.

Add the Turbulator to the 8 and what happens with that .?
Maybe the addition of a little back pressure to this car will improve the FE as overscavenging could be reduced.

If he was getting 20Mpg around town it could go up to the manufactures tested claim of 21.6Mpg - Woopeee , lets break of the champagne !

[onegammyleg]

All engines will continue to scavenge during overlap.- whether overscavenging or underscavenging (due to low exhaust velocities) occurs is up to individual investigation.

True , engines with wilder cams are more likely to suffer from poorer FE than milder ones for this very reason , but it need not be limited to ones fitted with aftermarket cams.

Some stock cams can be quite big.(hp versions of corvettes have quite large cams.)
Also an excesively large exhaust may reduce exhaust velocities and lessen the scavenge effect.
More waste gasses then stay in the chamber which allows less fresh air/fuel mix in.

If the engine is overscavenging then raw fuel and air get drawn through the head into the exhasut.
In carby cars and single point injection this can happen , but in a multipoint efi system the efi programmers may have the injectors OFF during the time.- unless they have chosen to cool the exhaust valves with raw fuel.

So both excessive scavenging and underscavenging is a concern to FE chasers , but it is almost nothing to be concerned with with a car that is intended for good consumption in the first place.

An engine with a large cam need not have bad FE.
My Fiat 128 was making almost 100hp per litre and economy improved by 10mpg over stock.
Its camshaft had 292 degrees duration (40 thou) which gave a usable power spread from 3500 to 8500rpm.
It used to pull those revs in top gear easily.
Tire rubber consumption was excessive tho.

[ZugyNA]

Yet the question as to whether the Turbulator works or not...still remains.

The only way to answer that question is to test one on a car.

Even then....you could only say that one improves mpg or not on that particular car only.

Though if a gain were to be seen on one car...it might be a reason to test it on others?

And the opposite is true.

--------------

An interesting and inexpensive test might be to use something (a potato?) to restrict an exhaust and test for mileage...but using a very low throttle opening...maybe restricted to that opening required for cruising at 55 in top gear?

Need to take care though...too much restriction might blow out your muffler?

[Silveredwings]

$84!?!?!

[onegammyleg]

$84!?!?!

Yup . maybe the guys good with match could guestimate how many ka-jillion miles it would take to pay that one off - assuming it worked that is.

[Ted Hart]

Originally Posted by onegammyleg

I thought ide break this away and make a new thread.

ZugyNA said ?Somebody test this...please....? http://www.jcwhitney.com/autoparts/P...001736/c-10101

Ted Hart said ?Turbulators! Fancy name for rubbish! Save your money?

When you look at the cutaway drawing its design is revealed.
It is an exhaust tip that has a butterfly valve which is held closed with spring tension.
As engine RPM's rise so does exhaust flow , this simply put blows the valve open.
The idea behind it that it is a self regulation valve that adjusts the backpresure of the exhaust system.

But does it increase FE . ? (8.3 % was the quoted improvement)

I expect yes , BUT !!! , under very certain conditions.

Assume for a moment that your car and another car are of the same weight , size and air drag.
Yours was designed with a super economy 4 and the other car has a fire breathing 8 cylinder 400Hp engine.
Both of these cars when driving down the road at 35 mph will need about 30Hp (roughly).
Yours probably will need a little more accelerator than the other car , but both will be making the 30Hp.

The difference is , is that to achive the far higher HP in the 8cyl car he has perhaps a wilder camshaft , bigger head ports , far larger diameter exhaust and low restriction mufflers.
At the low exhaust flow rates when making 30hp the 400hp 8 cylinder might be overscavenging the cylinders causing poor FE.
Your economy 4 also is making the 30hp but all of the correctly sized engine and exhaust parts are humming along happily at this speed.
Both cars remember may be making 30Hp but the 8 in this example likely will be using more fuel to do so.


So add the Turbulator to your small car and what happens .?
Probably no change in FE will be noted.

Add the Turbulator to the 8 and what happens with that .?
Maybe the addition of a little back pressure to this car will improve the FE as overscavenging could be reduced.

If he was getting 20Mpg around town it could go up to the manufactures tested claim of 21.6Mpg - Woopeee , lets break of the champagne !

Hmmm.... Love this "reverse engineering"! Squeeze that science 'till the blood runs ! I'll say no more.... Caio! -Ted Hart