By comparison to a blower, maybe. But you can have a turbo that spools at 3200 RPM and carries the power out to 8500+ RPM, too. I wouldn't call more than 5k RPM a short powerband. Likewise, my old twin-turbo setup spooled at 2200 RPM, and carried the powerband out to 5500RPM where the stock cam caused the powerband to drop off, not the turbos.
Awesome...see a lot of 8,500RPM+ street driven door slammers do ya?
So realistically, most street engines are making power into the 5,500-6,500RPM range. When you don't start spooling until 3,200RPM or so...and you sign off at the above figures...that makes for an awfully short, violent power band. Just like I exclaimed above.
The most conservative turbo set I owned was an incon twin-turbo 302. The turbos spooled at no-kidding 2200 rpm, and the car made 420rwhp with basic parts - GT40 intake, GT40 heads, a throttle-body, injectors, and roller rockers. It had a stock cam. It idled, and drove like stock, much to the disappointment of many people who asked me to start it up so they could listen to it. It was so quiet, which I absolutely loved! This combo wasn't going to send anyone crying to mommy. Maxed out, these turbos probably would have made in the neighborhood of 600rwhp. It wasn't just "bearable to live with." I drove this car every day, and it was amazingly streetable - at least as good as stock..
So basically, this entire statement backed up everything I said above? Conservatively set up, the car was livable as a daily driver, but limited in its horsepower potential. Where are we disagreeing here?
FWIW though, where you found the car "as good as stock" to drive with that set up, you would have found it better than stock to drive with a PD blower. Where your 302ci OHV started spooling at 2,200RPM I was already seeing 9psi and making 360lbs ft/tq at the wheels with my little 281ci OHC. That makes for a very pleasant driver. INSTANT throttle response. Pull at any RPM. Passing in O/D without downshifting....and this was in a 4,200lb automatic equipped luxobarge. The car didn't feel like a small engine, with a power adder. It flat out felt like a big block transplant. Drivability doesn't get any better than that.
You need to come for a ride in my car. I have a 1200 hp turbo - is that devastatingly high enough to be a "street terror?" It spools at just over 3000 RPM and carries it all the way up to 7k. You make it sound like my car is just "bearable [enough] to live with on a daily basis." I defy any similarly powered blower motor to be as bearable. I have a 228/224 114LSA HR cam that idles comfortably at 800rpm, pulls plenty of vacuum, and got a verified 22mpg with 3.73 gears on the highway, and that's an old school 5.0 getting that kind of mileage, too. That's as good as or better than stock despite higher gearing and lower compression! Yet, with the go-pedal down, it made 762rwhp, so far at 14.5 psi. The only thing that's keeping me from maxing the turbo out is the weak link in the drivetrain, my TKO. What I mean is at 1000rwhp it wouldn't drive differently. I'm pretty sure I'd have a little low-rpm buck at less than 1300 rpm in 1st gear, but I honestly couldn't tell you that for sure. I'd have to go and check. I'm just assuming that based on a similarly sized cam I had in my old n/a 302. Then again, now that I can tune it myself, it wouldn't surprise me to find that the buck is absent.
We have very different idea's what acceptable street manners are. I'd hate driving around a car on a daily basis that didn't start seeing any real power till 3,000RPM. Let me guess. At 3,000RPM you start to feel it spool and by 4,000RPM the tires are flying off the rims? You call that nice to driver? Sure, I guess it's fun for showing off, but it would be a nightmare to live with IMO.
It's much different driving a car that hits hard right off idle and carries to red line, than it is one that feels like a Ford Taurus until 3K, then an F15 after that.
You've learned to live with it and that's cool. But I wouldn’t' consider than anywhere close to as streetable as a PD blower.
Define "run hot." My car will stay between 185 and 195* all year around, even in the 110* summer heat at Fort Benning, GA. Granted, I put a badass cooling system in the car in the form of a Ron Davis Radiator and twin spal electric fans, but I like my a/c cold believe that you can never have too much of a cooling system
I agree with "inconsistent." Heat soak affects PD blown cars too in the same way, though. Neither will be as consistent as an n/a motor. Still, you can be fairly consistent if you bring temps to a standard before each run.
By run hot I mean feels like you've opened an oven door set to broil when you pop the hood. The radiant heat and under hood temps from a single or pair of hairdryers staring back at you can be overwhelming.
Heat soak is apparent with either form of power adder, but much, much more so with a turbo car. When the run is over, my Eaton stops producing heat period. It becomes nothing but a glorified air pump. It literally starts to cool itself down. Not quite the case with a turbo though. No, it isn't producing the same levels of heat it was during the run, but it's still having exhaust gasses pumped into the hot side of the compressor in the tune of 600-degree plus, even at idle. That takes a looooong time to bring down to manageable levels. Ok if you have the time to cool it down between runs, or aren't caught for long periods at the light waiting for the other guy to stage. Otherwise...guessing your ET is going to be a crap shoot. On the other hand, I have run back, to back to back on the hottest days of the summer with my car and am always within 1/10 of my average ET's at the track. Of course it runs faster after a complete cool down, but then so does everything....N/A cars included. And my little over spun Eaton runs hotter than most, but it cools down in a hurry. I attribute a lot of that cooling consistency to the Air to Water set up though. In any case, that consistency is how I came in 5th place out of a field of 230 cars at the North Shore Challenge in 2008. You could damn near set your watch by it.
"High maintenance" is a relative term. Sure, more moving parts = more maintenance than an n/a motor. However, once you get the turbo motor together, the only difference is the turbo itself. These things can go for 100,000 miles, without needing a rebuild, though. The rest of the motor is essentially the same as an n/a motor. So, if by high maintenance you mean that you'll have to rebuild or replace the turbo once or twice over the average 150-200k mile life of a regular daily driven street car, then I guess so...
By high maintenance I mean everything shifting around creating continuously leaking joints and flanges, blowing off intake piping left and right, superheating hot side exhaust components to the point where they become brittle and crack. Sure a really well thought out, high quality kit will hold out better than most. But 90% of the so called “complete” kits I see out there are in a sad state of disrepair and probably weren't much good to begin with. You really, really get what you pay for when it comes to buying a turbo kit.
I contend that among built motors, including an appropriate cam, the phrase "the best of both worlds" applies more accurately to turbo motors than any other kind, because n/a, blown, and nitrous motors prefer a lot more cam than turbo motors do. When you're not in the boost, the turbos aren't really doing anything.
Not doing anything but getting in the way you mean?
Turbo(s) are always a restriction, until they are not. It would be nice if they just free wheeled along until called upon, but the sad truth is they're a blockage in the exhaust system until appropriate pressure is achieved to spool the compressor into usable levels. That's as I'm sure you know where the "lag" portion comes from. Sure, smaller turbo(s) will push past this point quicker than most, but it's always there to some degree.
Blowers never lag....ever. Their direct link to the engine prevents this. My Eaton free wheels when running under vacuum and consumes 1/3 of a single horsepower while doing so. It drives exactly like stock while running under vacuum and does not present any obstruction to the exhaust path, or change the driving characteristics of the engine in the slightest.
Now, in regard to your last comment, are you sure that YOU didn't just convince yourself that turbos are hell to live with so that you felt better about your decision to go with a PD blower on your Cougar?
Ha....that's funny you mention that. The president of TCCOA had a turbo set up on his car and it quite frankly couldn't get out of its own way. The drivability was awful and there was no room for any sort of plumbing to begin with. I’m sure a lot of the issue was the design of the kit, but I attribute a good portion of it to there just being too much car to move and too little room to work with. The only regrets I have with my blower set up, is that I didn't go bigger with it. The car drives exactly the way I meant it to. As I said above....like it had a big block engine transplant. Not like a car that feels like it's running a small engine with a power adder.
I'll miss her.
Brian and I are both mods, and like to argue. He just has different tastes than me, and I love giving him a little **** showing him how inferior his tastes are
He'd rather have a blown OHC motor
, and I'd rather have a turboed pushrod, which is obviously much cooler.
Don't worry, we won't get out of control.
Chris
Damn Chris, I see you drank your lunch again. Gotta lay off the sauce man...it'll kill ya.
As for your tastes....I'm confident you'll come around to my way (the right way) of thinking soon enough.