Today's turbos

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Are today's turbos installed on say Ford Ecoboost motors, The new Honda Accord, say most Europen cars water cooled oil cooled or both? The turbos seem to last longer then cars in the 80's or 90's with turbos.
 
They're typically water and oil cooled, and made better than ever. Some OE turbos are ball-bearing.

"Vintage" turbos will last forever too if a quality oil is used.

It helps to let your oil come up to temp before putting your big boot down on the gas pedal, and it also helps to not park your car and walk away with the turbine glowing red-hot. True for all turbos.
 
Turbos have nearly 30 years of time to make superior materials and construction. Also most turbos have natural convection design built into cooling system to maintain coolant and or oil flow on shut off which was hard on them. Lastly engine control and boost control was very primitive. And oil is superior now.
 
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Anyone remember the turbo Corvair? Air cooled engine and GM. 1965 to 1966 !!
 
Originally Posted By: CT8
Anyone remember the turbo Corvair? Air cooled engine and GM. 1965 to 1966 !!


Slightly before my time (heck my dad was a kid!).

I managed 255k on my diesel turbo before it quit. I guess it was oil cooled? wasn't water cooled for sure. Have a tough time believing that they can't go the distance today.
 
Do they still use turbo timers? I heard of them being used on 80s turbos, that keep the engine running for 30 seconds after you turn the car off. These should be required for all turbos.

Todays's turbos are probably worse, with DI, the LSPI, turbos engaged almost all the time rather then only when you need the extra boost power, and saying it's ok to use regular 87 octane and 0w20
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They are water cooled
 
Turbo timers are still used by some people. When I had a turbo car, 2004 Volvo S60R, I would try to either let the car idle for a minute before shutting off or at least try to avoid boost for a bit before parking.
 
Turbo timers are pointless unless you make a habit of drag racing to your parking spot.

Modern cars with electric water pumps will continue to circulate water after being parked if certain parameters for ambient and component temperature are met.
 
Originally Posted By: rooflessVW
Turbo timers are pointless unless you make a habit of drag racing to your parking spot.


You're looking at it from the perspective of someone drives a car. A diesel truck or SUV towing 10,000 lbs will have a red-hot turbine even when the driver is as gentle as possible. In a case like that a turbo timer is extremely convenient.

That said, I don't have one on my diesel truck--I just make a point to start coasting as early as possible before I pull into a parking space. More often than not my exhaust temp gauge reads less than 300 degrees F and I'm able to immediately shut down the engine. Very rarely do I need any idle time to cool the turbo when I'm not towing or hauling anything.
 
Turbo timers were the in thing in the 90's and early 2000's, but I hardly see them these days - I think people realised there wasn't much point. Unless you switch off right after full load, normal driving will cool the turbo down. By the time I've come off the open road and driven though town to my place, there is not much point in letting it run for another minute or so. I've got a couple of old timers lying around, I don't see the point of fitting them to my current turbo car.
 
Even my late 90s car has a water cooled turbo, and the tech has only gotten better. I still make sure I drive gently for the last bit of a trip and let it idle a minute or so if I need to stop suddenly after a hard run.

The advantage of the water cooling is that water continues to circulate even after the pump stops (thermosiphon). This absorbs and carries a great deal of heat away from the turbo bearings and the oil within. Here's a white paper talking about this more in detail with images of heat damage and oil coking on abused or improperly plumbed turbos. https://www.turbobygarrett.com/turbobyga...ter_Cooling.pdf
 
I think a turbocharger is oil-cooled by its nature - but I believe, especially on gas engines, water-cooling is pretty much universal now. My Cruze is - 109K and counting on 5K OCI's of Synpower, baby!
 
The turbochargers themselves are better, the oil we use today is far better, and engine management is a few orders of magnitude better.

Even so, operators of modern turbocharged vehicles will do well to choose a quality synthetic and change regularly. Turbo coking still happens, it's just that modern turbochargers are well designed to minimize coking and it's effects.
 
On my turbo which has both oil and coolant lines going through it, when you shut the motor off the coolant flow reverses due to the convection heat rising. So any heat soak after shutting off there is still coolant flowing.
 
Originally Posted By: SHOZ
On my turbo which has both oil and coolant lines going through it, when you shut the motor off the coolant flow reverses due to the convection heat rising. So any heat soak after shutting off there is still coolant flowing.

There should be a high expansion tank to provide the thermal siphon to a higher point. It's certainly there in my WRX. Mine has a radiator cap (that isn't really designed to be the fill point), but the main cap is on the high tank.

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I'm not sure what's in this setup. Looks like a cone filter and maybe a different cap on the radiator. But the expansion tank looks like it's stock.
 
The high point of the system is at the back of the head where the outlet coolant manifold is. Large piece of cast aluminum with two pipes for the coolant to go to the water pump and a large pipe that is the upper radiator hose outlet.
 
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