rev up your engines today I'm gonna talk about how you can
maintain the turbocharger in a car so that it
last as long as possible now this is a 13 year old Volvo with a 5 cylinder
turbocharged engine turbo still works perfectly fine coz it's been taken care
of it's got one hundred ninety seven thousand eight hundred ninety five miles
on it they use a turbocharger that takes exhaust gas to spin blades back in
here is a turbocharger the exhaust gas spins there and then the inside of the
turbocharger Rams air and that rams it to this big tube that goes down into the
intercooler that's in the front of the engine if you look at air you can see
the intercooler fins it looks just like a radiator only it's the cool air that
the turbocharger rams it, then on the other side the compressed air goes down
and goes into the intake rammed under the engine to give it more power now at
the heart of the system is the turbocharger itself and here's tricks to
make it last as long as possible first when you start a turbocharged engine
cold, do not race the engines up allow the engine to warm up for five to ten
seconds so that the oil and the engine starts flowing through the turbocharger
realize that your engine oil on most turbocharged design is also the oil that
lubricates the turbocharger so you want to start the engine up run or five to
ten seconds before you have a rub the engine up because you don't want to rev
up the turbocharger when it's not fully lubricated with oil very simple and a
corollary of this is do not rev the engine up and give it full power full
rpm until the engine oil is warmed up so you want to drive it around a few
minutes before you rev it to full power you know you start it up you going
someplace don't get it and floor it and go as fast as you can after say four or
five minutes the engines warmed up enough that the oil has got its
consistency just right and then you can go full power and the third thing is
also oil related, use high quality oil and change it a lot
here's where full synthetic oil is best full synthetic oil works under hotter
temperatures guess what your turbocharger does
the turbocharger uses hot exhaust gases to spin itself it gets super hot this is
where synthetic oil is best you got a turbocharged car definitely use full
synthetic oil and changing a lot me I changed it every five to seven thousand
miles and realize that if you're driving at high speeds really fast with the
turbo some turbos will actually almost start to glow from the heat they get so
hot so if you're driving it hard make sure when you come to a stop and you're
gonna shut the engine off wait about thirty seconds so that the oil can flow
through it and some of them are also water-cooled and so the coolant can flow
through it to stop any built-up heat from damaging the turbocharger now years
ago before you shut them off you let them idle for thirty Seconds to a minute
the metallurgy is better than it was when I was a younger mechanic but still
you driving it hard before you shut it off wait thirty seconds or so with it
idling so they can get rid of excessive heat that might have gone when you drove
it hard and speaking of cooling it down you got a good turbocharged system that
has an intercooler like this Volvo make sure the intercooler is working
correctly that this Volvo the intercooler is inside here what's going
to happen if you drive out in the country at night all the time bugs are
gonna get in there or if you're in the city plastic bags could get in there you
want to make sure that it's clean hose it down with water if there's bugs on it
and that there's no plastic bags or anything that are restricting flow to
the intercooler and always check the intercooler line this is plastic they
can crack then when you go down to the bottom it's rubber down there and on the
other side that's plastic too and there's rubber in the front
check all the rubber and the clamps now generally if the plastic cracks are the
rubber comes loose or just falls off or rots and has holes in it it's not gonna
run right because that's where the turbocharged air is going and that's
gonna mess with the air fuel mixture if it's got air leak signs a good idea to
check them every once in a while anyway it's a simple thing you can do yourself
that's this many modern turbochargers are also water-cooled make sure ya clean
coolant these turbo charges spin at thousands and thousands of rpms if
they're water-cooled they got water seals and the oil lubrican
you know our cool ones have oil seals if you have dirty coolant for dirty engine
oil dirt its friction it will lead up the seals replacing that can cost
thousands of dollars and can also be a royal pain in the rear end because
they're bolted onto the exhaust system all they had heat a lot of times that
metal is practically welded on and rusted and when you start taking it
apart pieces off and break then you got to end up changing exhaust parts of
their rotten and crack when you take them apart you want to make that system
last as long as you can without having to take it apart and replace it by
keeping the coolant and the oil clean and of course if you do want to get
better gas mileage with the turbocharged vehicle you don't want to accelerate
harshly all the time turbocharged engines get better gas mileage than a
non turbocharged engine but this advantage is totally negated if you're
always flooring it and the turbo is kicking in full force and the engines
accelerating as fast as it can then you're gonna get much worse gas much I
have had little old ladies get phenomenal gas mileage with turbocharged
cars and I've seen young teenage guys get horrendous gas mileage as low as
five miles a gallon in a turbocharged car cuz they were driving it like a
lunatic realized a turbocharged cars the power is there if you really need it
when you floor it but if you drive more conservatively and you'll get better gas
mileage and of course the turbo charge yourself a lasts longer than two if it's
not strained as much oh you know a bit more about turbochargers on your car how
you can make them last as long as possible without having throw whole
bunch of money into it because they broke down prematurely, so if you never
want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell