Rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about why some cars
are turbocharged and some aren't, now this volvo xc60 is turbocharged and it's
turbocharged for one main reason, it has a 3 liter engine that puts out 325
horsepower, it's an option on this car, you can also get a 3.2 liter a bigger engine but
that engine only has 240 horsepower, because the bigger engine is not turbocharged,
turbocharging does one main thing, it rams more air into the engine, it's the same as
increasing the compression ratio of the engine, it gets more power for the same sized engine,
so in this case, you can have a smaller engine that weighs less but puts out more horsepower,
now since a smaller engine weighs less, it's going to get better gas mileage because there's
less weight that it has to pull around, it weighs less so there's less work that it has
to do, and theoretically by ramming more air into
the engine you also get better gas mileage, but that's in the theoretical world, not in
the real world, because in the real world when someone is
driving a turbocharged car, they tend to give it a lot of gas and that goes against good
gas mileage, so if you drive like the little old lady from Pasadena, and go 30-40 mph all
the time with a turbo you can actually get better gas mileage, most people they end up
driving faster, accelerating faster and then you actually get worse gas mileage, because
as everybody knows, the faster you drive, the worse your gas mileage is going to be,
so even though turbos theoretically get better gas mileage, in the real world they normally
get much worse gas mileage because people drive them faster,
now when I was young mechanic a turbocharged car was extremely rare, back in those days
the metal wasn't as good, the turbos which spin over 100,000 rpm, they would just wear
out too fast, but today the designs are much better than they used to be,
the turbos are more efficient, the metal is better and they can last longer, but they
do cost a lot of money to replace when they finally do wear out,
as an example this 2012 volvo, if the turbocharger goes out, a brand new turbocharger costs $1,700
just for the turbocharger and another $800 labor to replace the thing because of it's
design, now many modern cars are going to smaller
engines with turbochargers to get more power out of a smaller engine, to fight that higher
gas mileage ratings that the government keeps trying to enforce on cars,
especially here in the US, Americans won't accept slow sluggish cars, so if you're driving
an engine that say is 1.2 liters, it's got to have a turbo in order to pull itself around
fast enough, now if you do buy a turbocharger, you have
to be very religious about changing the engine oil, because the engine oil, not only does
it lubricate and cool the engine, it also lubricates and cools the turbocharger,
now as I said the modern turbos, their better designed than the old ones, the old ones if
you drove them real hard, when you went to shut the engine off, you were better to park
it and let it idle for 5 minutes so it would help cool the turbocharger down, the modern
ones don't need that kind of babying, but of course the better a turbo works the
more boost it gives an engine, the more the engine is strained, so your engines tend to
wear out faster with a turbocharger versus a car that doesn't have a turbocharger,
and of course realize it costs a lot of money to make a good turbocharging system, so turbocharged
cars are going to cost a lot more than a non turbocharged car,
so if your not a speed demon that wants to zoom around all the time and just like driving
at normal speeds, hey you might not want to buy a turbocharged car, but with all the modern
pressure on cars to get better gas mileage, with turbocharging, and gasoline direct fuel
injection systems, I think these systems are here to stay for the future,
because people like having cars that zip around really well, and the day of the massive V8
engine that got 8 miles a gallon in town are pretty much gone,
so if you want to have a fun zippy car these days, hey you're going to have to rely on
technology like turbochargers, or you can just be cheap like me and drive a really old
toyota, hey they go fast enough for me and their really cheap to maintain,
because take this volvo as an example, hey these turbo cars are running good when their
running, but volvo's always been on the verge of bankruptcy lately, now the Chinese own
them and they claim that their only going to be making hybrid or electric cars in the
future anyways, so if you never want to miss another one of
my new car repair videos, remember to ring that bell!