i have a quick question i just wanted to know which one works the engine harder the turbo or the supercharger? i saw a supercharger that makes about extra 75 hp which is how much i want, but i still want to be able drive the car everyday . dotn need an extra 200hp like some of the turbos are doing. also with the supercharger i hear there are alot of parts that do not need to be replaced where with a turbo you have to upgrade alot of things sorry if i sound stupied but i just need some feed back and info

 

I'm not sure about 350Z FI, but I know a little about FI in general. Superchargers force air in by means of a propeler and belt on the crank pulley. Since they have to be powered by the crank they can add some serious horsepower, but not nearly as much as a turbo application. A turbo is mounted to the exhaust manifold(s) and it's propeler is powered by exhaust gases. It pretty much makes free horsepower where a supercharger takes power to make power. Superchargers are also known to be more reliable, but I'm sure the reliability of both are nearly equal with today's parts. Boost is boost, it just comes into play at different times. Superchargers tend to make more power down low than a turbo, but turbos make awesome top end power since they build pressure (boost). Also with any high power FI application you will need supporting mods. This is usually in the form of fuel upgrades. More air and not enough fuel will cause the car to run lean. You can accomplish getting more fuel by means of an upgraded fuel pump and in high boost applications with the addition of upgraded injectors. It's also good to get tuned. Although it doesn't have to be done it will help the car run much better and more efficiently, not to mention get the most power out of your setup.

I think I covered most of it, but someone feel free to add or revise anything I said. Hope this helps.

 

you don't need 200 extra hp for a daily driver?? I must be doing something wrong then...

j/k. Check out the Forced Induction forum, and you'll be able to find all your answers.

Good luck, and welcome to the forum.

 

Yes you're doing something very wrong! Strip off those APS TT and give em to me now!

 

IMO i think that a supercharger is more realistic for everyday driving. Like Nitrouz said, check out the FI forum and you will find more. Good luck, you will be spending at least $3-4K

 

I would guess the Turbo would put more stress on the engine... For DD I would say the Supercharger would be the better choice. But for me personally I would go with the turbo. The Supercharger tends to give you power at lower RPMs while the Turbo on the other hand would give you full boost at around 3k. I'm sure you could find a lot of infomation on this topic, so search around.

 

Not saying you're wrong, but I would think it would be the other way. The turbo is just building the pressure from exhaust gas, while the supercharger is being powered by the crank. Seems to me like the charger would be putting more stress on the motor, considering both were under the same amount of boost.

 

Honestly I would go with what your saying 03Zilverstone... Only thing is I always hear more problems coming from Turbo's, So I guessed the Turbos put more stress on the engine? I am fairly new to the whole FI thing so I guessed... Please ignore what I said before and go with what 03Zilverstone said.

 

honestly no one is 100% why but it seems as though superchargers are less prone to blowing our motors then turbos. if your not going to build then supercharger would be the safest bet.

 

Again I don't know about 350Z specific FI setups, just the basics of FI. So it seems I stand corrected. I guess sometimes theory and reality can differ.

 

I'd go turbo all the way, but with the PROPER tuning and fuel, either can go a long way, very reliably. Proper tuning is very important for reliablity and integrity of your engine, either SCharger or Turbo would blow your engine up without the proper tuning.

 

A turbo doesn't use "free" power to spin. They rob power from the engine by adding a lot of restriction in the exhaust manifold. Power consumption is similar between turbo and SC, with a slight advantage to the turbo.

Both end up giving back way more than they take of course.

Theoreticaly, a positive displacement SC should be better for daily driving. A Root or Eaton or Lysholm unit will basically feel like your engine has more displacement. Try driving a 5 liter Z.

In practice thought, there has been soo much resources and money invested in turbo RnD that a turbo system will endup making more power, maintain good driveability and still be reliable. Turbo's can't be beat for top HP numbers.

It's a question of personnal preference. Since the SC and Turbo don't deliver their power the same way, a lower HP SC will usually perform the same as a higher HP turbo set up on the race track.

Stay away from the centrifugal supercharger. I can't believe people are using those since they combine the drawback of both the turbo (lag, build boost) and the SC.

 

There are plenty of guys here including myself who started out with a supercharger because we didn' want extreme power from the gitgo...but....many of the previous supercharger owner have now switched to twin or single turbo systems.


Now the question is....how many here started out with turbo and switched to supercharger???? I really can't think of anyone.

I started out with a procharger and get about 400rwhp/389ftlb with the boost cranked up on the supercharger. Now I have a greddy twin turbo and have 525rwhp/525ftlb with no other changed except for the FI system.

 

I agree with Kolia - if you get a SC you need a PD style. If you are looking at a centrifugal SC than you might as well get a turbo.

For reliablity - it all depends on the tune and how you drive the car.

For me - I went TT and installed a boost controller. That way for everyday driving I turn the boost to the lowest setting, than when I really want the power - I just turn up the boost (within a limit).

 

And that's coolest thing about turbo's is being able to easily change the boost without switching pulleys. And there is so much more tq midrange than there is with superchargers. I loved my procharger and the jetlike crazy noise it made, but the power of two turbo's cannot be matched.


And when people talk about reliablity it's so misrelated. All in all I think superchargers are less reliable because all of them have their belts break at some point in time (procharger & vortec both suffer the same problem when trying to get big hp #'s), especially when being spun fast. Good turbo's really have very little stuff to do to them other than keeping oil fresh and not shutting down hot. Tuning for superchagers is easier than it is for turbo which cannot really translate into reliability when shopping between the two kits because tuning will be essential (on a dyno) regardless if the manufacturer includes a fuel system/ecu upgrade or not.

Greddy kits blow sometimes right out of the box
Procharger is famous for their blown engines
Turbonetics has had a few as well

But all of these engine failures are not the fault of the turbo/supercharger. That's why you won't get a good answer when you ask if a supercharger is say more reliable than a turbo? It really just depends on how good the tuner is

 

I know a few people who ended up blowing their engines with turbos who later wished they went supercharger believing that punching all the torque thru the engine contributed to the rods letting go. And there's people in CA who have had a run in with cops with their turbo and are considering switching to a supercharger, though that’s not a reason anyone would want to change

Most turbos aside from the water cooled APS turbos need to be babysat to cool off for 30 sec to 5 min after driving depending on how hard and long you were driving. You can get a turbo timer which will take care of this for you - yet another thing to add to the car. But for daily driving, it isn't at all convenient to go somewhere then have to sit in the parking lot for 60 seconds waiting for the oil to cool the turbos to a safe enough temp that you can shut the engine off and not worry about baking the oil into the turbo

People act like tightening the belts is sooooo hard and suuuch a pain, but really you just do it whenever you change your oil for the most part - unless you're beating the **** out of your car - in which case you probably change your oil more often anyway. You'll also tighten the belt a couple extra times when the belt is brand new though which you’ll have to do every 10-15k miles for a new belt

Changing the pulley isn't really hard. In some cases it's probably easier and less expensive than changing the wastegate or wastegate spring out on a turbo kit. The vortech (and possibly soon the stillen) give you the capability of actually changing the entire blower to a bigger one - that's the same sorta flexibility of changing the turbos on a turbo kit.

Superchargers don't get near as hot because they don't spin as fast as a turbo. A turbo might spin at 120-150k rpms while a SC spins at 50-65k rpms (or 80k in the case of the ATI). The SC uses every bit of power that it makes. The turbo doesn't because it generates enough power to most likely blow the engine if it didn't blow all the extra air out the wastegate. So the turbo is creating a lot of extra heat so that it can blow that wasted extra air out the wastegate

Turbos have colder air intake temps because they have such huge intercoolers and the wastegate always ensures the intercooler has enough air to where it's efficient. A SC's intercooler is more of a compromise. At low boost the intercooler might be too big, at high boost it might be too small.

A centrifugal SC has more power below 2000 rpms than a ST and even some TT's because the turbos usually don't have enough air pressure to start spooling up that low - for a lot of kits anyway. JWT and APS TT's are sorta the exception because they spool up earlier than other TT kits

It's possible to get almost 500whp out of a centrifugal SC. There's a couple guys shooting for 600+ with a SC and are having some belt slipping issues they're trying to work out, but once a solution is found the power is there. A SC probably isn't the easiest path to go for BIG power on this car

Saying ‘if you're going centrifugal, that you might as well go turbo’ is crap. There's some definite differences that can justify going with a centrifugal for certain individuals

For a lot of turbos, when the engine blows it's possible to damage the turbos since they usually sit right next to the engine. I've seen it first hand on an APS TT kit. The SC's and specifically turbonetics ST kit would probably be exempt from that danger because of where they’re located. Having a TT kit and having both turbos go bad can start to get expensive.

Many times when something goes wrong with the engine with a SC, it isn't a catastrophic problem. It might be a chipped piston ring or a bad bearing, but the engine is still usable. You can drive it to a shop and still use the car for a good long while if you go easy on it. Usually if a rod was thrown on a SC setup, something was very wrong or it was making huge power on a stock engine and sorta expected to blow before too long. Turbos tend to not have something little go wrong with the engine though they can. It seems when the engine has a problem with a turbo kit, it has something major or fatal go wrong with it.

Turbos quiet the exhaust down a lot. SC's make the exhaust louder. Using test pipes with turbos can raise the volume back up without much rasp a lot of times. Adding test pipes to a SC with full breathing mods almost ensures some rasp - resonated pipes help though. Each kit has their own unique sounds with BOV's or whistling, or sounding like a jet engine, or sputtering

A turbo can use a tiny lightweight battery to start the car. SC's need more cold cranking amps and need a good strong battery.

Turbos are usually more fun to drive because they give you such a sudden kick. The stillen SC gives a lot of kick, but it's only so hard. The centrifugal SC's don't give much of a sudden kick, but they give you as much power as you can use in 1st gear on normal street tires and then by the time you reach any other gear, you're in the powerband of the SC. You will need to do more shifting with a centrifugal SC to stay in its powerband. Driving a turbo you can just floor it at 3500-4000 rpms and get a nice kick. With a centrifugal you'll have to downshift to 5000+ rpms to get a nice kick - though for both cases you'll want to downshift if you really want to go as fast as you can anyway.

Boost on a SC is predetermined by the pulley and is fairly constant. Boost on a turbo is often determined by the software setting in the piggyback and how the wastegate is set up

SC's have more moving parts with the bigger belt and extra pulleys for something to go wrong. But turbos have more parts with piping, wastegates, electronics that can have something go wrong. IMO it's a toss up with which is more likely to have something go wrong. Though the things that can go wrong with a turbo are the items which keep the turbo in check - meaning if a turbo wastegate or piggyback had something go wrong, you could damage the engine. If something goes wrong with a pulley or the belt on the SC, chances are the belt will just slip more or maybe break in a worse case scenerio - it'd suck, but probably wouldn't damage the engine, but you never know.

People are prejudice on both counts. Younger people seem to think anything with a SC sucks and that turbos are the only way to go because they're more high tech and can give you more power easily and their favorite japanese cars use them. Older people seem to think SC's are the only way to go and that turbos don't give you any power until the upper rpms and that they'll just blow the engine up because they're so complex and are intended for racing cars. The truth is somewhere between all that as the technology and practicality on both sides is better than either of those views

There's people with either setup that have 30k+ miles on their FI Z and people that have blown the engine after 3000 miles at different levels of "safe" tunes and parts that add safety.


I think they're as different as choosing a muscle car vs lightweigh sports car. They're just different and serve different purposes better. People just need to identify what they really want out of their FI kit.

 

pretty damn good write up sentry.

 

I have an obvious biased towards turbos, but come on; parasitic power vs power from a byproduct/waste????

 

Wow that is a huge generalization. I tend to think that both turbos and superchargers have their own place and application. However, I can't imagine why I'd want to make power below 2k rpms. The only time you'll really use that is when launching in first gear, and it will just contribute to traction problems.

Centrifugal superchargers have the basic downsides to both turbos and roots blower (parasitic power loss, belt driven, and very slow building boost [lag]). Don't get me wrong, I've been in a Vortech'd car and it made great power, and if linear boost/power is what you want, it's great.

Roots blowers, however, are where it's really at in the supercharger world. It just blows (ha-ha) that Stillen had to pick one that was so damn small for their kit. If they do release an upgraded blower I think this will be the supercharger kit to have.

 

parasitic power or not, results are results. Centrifugal's don't have as much midrange power as a turbo. Most people have figured that out

That is true most people don't spend much time below 2000 or even 2500 rpms and that dynos are rarely accurate below that, but it could be argued how much time does anyone spend at any rpm. How much time does someone spend at 4000 rpms when racing? How much time does someone spend at 6000 in daily traffic? I don't know about anyone, but every time I leave a stoplight in 1st gear, I cross that 1000-2500 range. I don't launch the car at 3000 rpms every time I stop

How much boost is a turbo making below 2000 or even 2500 rpms? Most dynos I've seen show turbos having a much steeper curve and a vortech being equal or higher than a turbo at below 2500 rpms depending on what turbo and how much power it's running.

To me it's about how you like your torque curve shaped. It's common for a ST to give you midrange torque, but not much low or high end torque which is why the hp curve looks sorta like a S shape instead of a linear rise - though still more linear than say a supra. TT's are different though, but require a bigger budget with more expensive parts and more of them. They usually cover a wider range of power than a ST does but at the expense of some midrange torque where the ST has the advantage at that rpm range. Some TT's like the JWT kit have turbos so small that the high end kinda isn't too great. It's more like a turbo version of the stillen kit as far as how the dyno curve looks

We'll see how the bigger stillen blower does. It does sound promising. I'm not sure it will be the best of the best SC solutions though for everyone's needs, but I think it'll finally let people get above 350whp. I'm going to guess and say it'll give about 30-70 more whp which isn't too bad. I'm not even maxing out my stock vortech blower and am making around 440whp let alone upgrade it to a T-trim. But yeah my low and midrange power probably won't compete with a new upgraded stillen blower until I go to a T-trim