Car Mods

freestyler105 said:
Basically, I'd like a brief explanation of the pros, cons, and legality of the following things:
- Superchargers
- Turbochargers
- Nitrous
- Cold Air Intakes

I read a little bit about all of those, I understand what they do, but I haven't gotten a good explanation of the cost, performance gains, reliability, effects on the car/engine, etc.

Superchargers/turbo cost the most ranging in the thousands to set up. Gains are most noticeable, safe for the engine to some extent (depends on your setup). I have one on now and it's great. There's tons of info. about this, but will take forever explaining. Superchargers are argued to be the safest on cars than turbo. Some can argue vice versa due to intercooling. Shrug. I just like the SC because it's instant boost right when you floor it. I have a roots blower and works off of the main drive belt so response is instant. Under normal driving load, it doesn't do much. But under full throttle, watch out. Boost.....

Nitrous, well that's cheap boost. Will it affect engine reliability? Theoretically not. With moderate doses, proper set up, and used by someone that understands the system, it should not have any adverse effects. In some cases the opposite could be argued.

But one day its inevitable your engine will break, they almost all do if you drive it like you hate it! No engine goes forever. If it has nitrous fitted it, will be blame. It may well be nothing to do with the nitrous and usually isn't.

CAI, well, that's just super duper uber safe. If not properly set up, you may get the "Check Engine Light" on at the most. Easiest to do of all the upgrades, no significant gains in HP, but does allow the car to breathe a little easier. The MAF still controls the air flow. Better to get an ECU upgrade. CAI can't be installed on it's own and expect a boost in performance. It just sounds good half the time :p and looks too darn good. Oh, it's dirt cheap too. Engine reliability, 100%.
 
Alright.....first off, Turbos and Superchargers:

What they both are is forced induction and what that means is simply that they force more air into the cylinders which in turn requires more fuel. And more air + more fuel = more horsepower.
Turbos are basically the most efficient power adder you can have. It uses the exhaust gases to spin the impeller on one side of the turbo, which spins an impeller on the other side of the turbo which draws air into the turbo and compresses it. Most times it'll go through whats called an intercooler to cool down the air because compressing air creates heat and you want the coldest air you can get. Cold air is more dense.
Superchargers are basically the same thing, except instead of running off the exhaust, it mounts to the engine and runs off a belt. Superchargers are a little less efficient since it runs off the engine so it puts a little bit of drag on the engine which causes a couple of hp loss. But you really don't notice it since the supercharger adds so much.

Now, nitrous:
I don't know why you guys are knocking nitrous.
Nitrous is a very efficient power adder. What it does is inject nitrous oxide into the cylinder which basically is like adding oxygen. It makes the air-fuel mixture more oxygen rich and, in turn, more explosive, adding power. It only lasts as long as you hold the button, but it can add anywhere from 50-200 hp. But, it can do damage to your engine if you use it too much, or too long at a time.

Cold air intakes:
You guys are knocking this too, why?
A cold air intake is basically a piece of pipe that goes where you stock intake would be and it has a free flowing air filter on the end. What it does is it draws in cold air from the fenderwell, and as we learned above, cold air is more dense and more air and fuel means more hp. The cars computer will sense this cooler denser air and it will adjust to add more fuel. Stock air intakes are pretty restrictive, with all kinds of bends and restrictions, and usually just a paper filter that doesn't flow that well. Cold air intakes are basically mandrel bent pipe that will give you the best flow possible allowing the engine to breathe easier.

Hope I've cleared some of it up for you.
 
That's true of the superchargers. Some of it is lost because the belt has to drive all the other accessories. Sucks big time, but the boost it generates makes up for it. At least for me anyways. Turbos "recycle" the exhaust so to speak. Pretty neat, but can get really hot too.

Nitrous is all right as long as you don't use too much at one time. It's boost is great and very noticeable, but it can put a toll on the motor too. Compared to a turbo setup, nitrous adds tremendous pressure to the motor. Turbo takes time to work up to the boost while nitrous is instant. Now the same holds true for superchargers, but it's controlled with the additional ECU or in my case, I have a TRD piggyback. It doesn't strain the motor as much.

CAI are ok. I wouldn't having one on. Just that with the SC, I can't at the moment unless I go water injection.
 
TRDCorolla said:
CAI, well, that's just super duper uber safe. If not properly set up, you may get the "Check Engine Light" on at the most. Easiest to do of all the upgrades, no significant gains in HP, but does allow the car to breathe a little easier. The MAF still controls the air flow. Better to get an ECU upgrade. CAI can't be installed on it's own and expect a boost in performance. It just sounds good half the time :p and looks too darn good. Oh, it's dirt cheap too. Engine reliability, 100%.

Thats true unless you live in like Seattle or something with rain all over the place(in other words lots of big puddles to allow rain to get sucked up with the air, short ram air would be a better choice in that situation which does not provide the cooler air but its better breathing for the engine)...the more rain the better the chance to hydrolock your engine...if you want to keep it under like ~$1000 go intake, exhuast, and an ECU upgrade...that changes some valve timings. and gives it better breathing ability...thats pretty much what I had on my 96' Jetta and it was noticable...I could take my friend that had the same STOCK engine in his Golf (which is lighter) fairly easily...

ohh and one thing about the ECU upgrades...most tend to require Primium gas since it changes the timing it explodes the mixture earlier and premium gas burns slower as to allow more prolonged downward pressure on the cylinders... and with these mods as long as you dont drive like an A$$ you should get better MPG too...

ohh and my .02 on TT, well its not really my .02 its what i have come to learn and hear...they are almost useless for everyday driving...its normally just to minimize the spool time of the turbo because as mentioned before it runs off the exhaust so you need to be revving at a specific RPM to get max PSI from the turbo...

if I am wrong please correct me though cause I am still learning.
 
It might also be better to change out the thermostat and spark plugs too when going FI. Most of the CAI is pretty neat as it comes with two piece of piping. Adjustable so that you can always have short ram intake or regular CAI. It's a bummer if it rains a lot. Here in southern california, it hardly ever rains.
 
I live close to Seattle, so we get plenty of rain, which sucks, so no CAI for me. Actually, no mods for me anyways, I have 40,000 miles left on the warranty, and Dodge doesn't have any factory performance upgrades worth it. The best they got is a cam that adds 2-3 hp. My Neon wouldn't be worth putting money into anyways.

Another thing on going forced induction. You can only run boost so high before you will have to replace your bottom end (crank, rods, pistons) and lower compression, or you will blow your engine.
 
Mine's running just around 7.5 lbs of pressure so it's right there in the normal range. Some people on the Corolla forum are running in the 9's and 10's. Man, they go all out nuts with their cars like you can't imagine. They somehow manage to get custom pulleys made for the supercharger and one guy is trying to get cooling for their roots blower which I think it's almost impossible for our type of design.
 
TRDCorolla said:
Mine's running just around 7.5 lbs of pressure so it's right there in the normal range. Some people on the Corolla forum are running in the 9's and 10's. Man, they go all out nuts with their cars like you can't imagine. They somehow manage to get custom pulleys made for the supercharger and one guy is trying to get cooling for their roots blower which I think it's almost impossible for our type of design.

I saw a video of a 2g Eagle Talon running 35+ PSI on stock internals (they were doing this on purpose). The 2nd dyno run, the motor exploded. I couldn't really tell, but it looked like a part of the crank or part of one of the rods shot through the block.
 
Basically,
supercharger pushes air off the power of the drive belt,
turbo pushes air off the power of the exhaust spinning a turbine (people can do custom kits but it requires a lot of fabrication and planning to fit a turbo manifold [like a header that goes to the turbo] and a turbo in a cramped engine bay)
nitrous oxidizes and is usually injected with more gas (via a "wet" system) to compensate for a different A/F ratio
cold air intake is mostly to free up restrictions in the intake piping, the "cold air" part doesn't really matter all that much once you're moving anyway

The first two options require a lot of money, you're looking at $3K-$4k minimum, plus it may require engine or transmission mods depending on how far you're going with it.
Nitrous is cheaper, but like the other two it may require strengthening your internals or tranny if you have a large shot.
CAI is pretty much worthless (for REAL power, you'll probably get about 5hp, nothing to write home about) unless you're also going to change intake manifold, port & polish the head, change your cams, high flow header with possibly no catalytic converter, catback exhaust. After all that then you'll probably see about 15-20hp from it if you measure before and after.

That, in a nutshell, is all you need to know about these parts.
 
Turbos:
Tommy Boy said:
It uses the exhaust gases to spin the impeller on one side of the turbo, which spins an impeller on the other side of the turbo which draws air into the turbo and compresses it.

Superchargers:
Superchargers are basically the same thing, except instead of running off the exhaust, it mounts to the engine and runs off a belt. Superchargers are a little less efficient since it runs off the engine so it puts a little bit of drag on the engine which causes a couple of hp loss.

Correct, that's the largest difference between the two setups. And as far as being stressful on the engine, of course whether you are using a supercharger or a turbo both are going to produce added strain and wear on an engine as compared to it's stock setup. It's just simply a necessary sacrifice when you want to boost horsepower without installing a larger engine.
 
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