I'm bored so I'll give some information
A standard Naturally Aspirated (NA) engine gets air to the cylinders by way of suction. In a 40stroke engine:
1)piston moves up, compressing air fuel mixture against the top of the cylinder
2)spark plug fires, igniting the mixture, causing an explosion which forces the piston down and fills the cylinder with exhaust gasses
3)piston moves up, forcing the exaust gasses out of the cylinder out the exhaust valves
4)piston moves down, and since the cylinder is now empty, it creates a vacuum, and air is drawn into the cylinder
Now, the engine moves by burning the energy in oxygen. So if we get more air into the engine, we can get more power! The idea behind forced induction is instead of sucking just enough air in to fill the cylinder, we compress the air and FORCE it into the cylinder. In order to do this, we need some sort of air compressor. generally this would be some sort of turbine that spins, forcing a large amount of air into a small area. The question is, how do we spin the turbine? There are two types: Turbocharger and Supercharger.
1) Turbocharger: A turbocharger is a little more complex, but offer larger performance benifits. The turbine in a turbo ( :P ) is spun by the exaust gasses from your engine! it works like this. at low RPMs your engine works like an NA engine, sucking air into the cylinders. The exhaust gasses are then expelled from the engine, and instead of going right out the back of the car, they are instead guided through the turbo, spinning the compressor. The faster your engine spins, the faster the turbo spins, the more boost it can generate.
Advantages:
*free power! why let all that exhaust gas go to waste when you can put it to work? very efficient
*flexible! you have a lot of options with a turbo system. more high end boost? bigger turbo, less boost with a quicker spool? smaller turbo. tweak the amount of boost to your engine by adjusting wastegates and whatnot (i'm not an expert here, so I wont get too technical) and lastly, throw a blowoff valve on it and listen to it hiss when you switch gears! woo!
Disadvantages:
*hot! exause gasses are really REALLY hot. this makes the turbo hot, which makes the air going into your engine even hotter! (when you compress things it adds heat, so the air is already hot) hot air burns less efficiently, and it's harder on your engine. This, however can be remedied by an "intercooler" which I'll talk about later
*complex! because there are so many variables with a turbo system, they are very hard to tune, and it often takes a LOT of time with professionals and a dyno to get it working right with your car.
*engine safety! turbos can very easily run very reliably, if you take the time and self control to set it up that way, and keep an eye on it to make sure it STAYS that way. because of all the variables and flexibility, it's easy to OVERboost and do damage to your engine
*turbo lag! it takes a LOT of air moving past a fan to generate the amount of compression it takes to give positive pressure in a car engine. at low engine speeds, it's not going to be moving enough air to spin(spool)-up the turbine. So, you wont see the effects of the turbo until your engine is spinning at (for example) 3500 RPMs! Generally a smaller turbine will spool-up faster, but provide less overall boost, and bigger turbos will take longer to spool up (higher RPMS) but provide bigger results when you get there.
2) Supercharger: A supercharger is generally the simpler of the two types of Forced Induction. Like your air conditioner, and power steering, the supercharger is physically turned by your engine, usually with a belt.
Advantages:
*easy! Superchargers are generally simpler, and easier to install and maintain.
*cooler! since you're not dealing with exhaust gas, that's one less heat issue you're dealing with. A supercharger can also be intercooled (depending on how much room you have and how the install is done) for even better results
*instant power! when the engine spins, the SC spins. if you're at idle and you slam the throttle, you're already feeling the effects of a supercharger. This gives you a nice low-end punch, which is great for daily driving, wheras a turbo doesn't gives as much oomph unless you're really letting the revs fly.
Disadvantages:
*inflexible! Not much you can do to tweak it once it's in there.
*inefficient! You know how when you turn on your A/C it bogs down your engine a little? well, the SC does the same thing! of course, it provides more power than it takes, but any robbed power is bad, especially when the life of your engine is concerned. You could get the same amount of power from a supercharger as with a turbo, but you'd have to run much higher boost, which is bad for the engine :/
!!intercooling!!
Physics lesson!
when you compress something, it gets hotter. Hot air has a lower density than cooler air, so it doesn't burn as efficiently. Plus, heat is bad for the engine. So, when we're compressing all this air, we're also making it very hot, and then shoving it right into our engines! How COULD we? With a turbo the effect is even worse, as we're transmitting a lot of heat from our blistering exhaust gasses right into our intake. ugh..
How can we help? well, we can try to cool the air after it's compressed, but before it gets to the engine! We do this with an intercooler. The most common being an air cooling device, much like the radiator used to cool the liquid engine coolant.
The intercooler ads safety and reliability, since cooler air = better for the engine. It also adds power, since coler air = denser = burns better.
!!supercharger complexities!!
There ARE actually two types of superchargers. everything I said above is in reference to a "roots" type charger. I only mentioned this type because as far as I know (unless you do a custom install, in which case you'd probably want turbo anyway) it's the only kinda available for the lude.
The other kind is called a centrifugal supercharger, which uses a special gearing which makes the charger act much like a turbo! Instead of a linear ratio of engine speed to compressor speed, it will "spin up" like a turbo, offering less low end performance, but more high end boost! Don't ask me how they work, i haven't a clue.. but i'd love to learn sometime!
Ooh, you can also put blowoff valves on CSC systems. Cool...
vrooooom *HISS* vroooooom..
!!the question you just asked!!
can you turn them on/off? not really, but in generall, a charger only provides boost when you NEED it. which is to say.. when you're jammin that gas pedal!
ALTHOUGH, I seem to remember reading about the bypass inside the JRSC supercharger being electronically controlled, so you COULD wire up something to turn it on/off with a flip of a switch. *shrugs* so I suppose you could keep it off while you're runnin to the store or whatever, so show your engine as little boost as possible over it's lifespan.
hope that clears things up a bit!
goddamn I need more to do..
actually that's a lie. I have way TOO much to do. i just need to actually do it :P
626
I have no idea what you are talking about 
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