Quote:
Originally Posted by Mitch
Yeah, that statement ignores a lot. 250whp is just a peak number. It's completely ignoring area under the curve, where FI engines typically outperform NA engines of equal displacement.
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I understand the hesitation to agree with that statement.
Now you must factor in a lot of things.
I read the article back in 2005 when turbo lag was a greater deal than it is today, and they did this comparison with a 2000 civic si (one being turbo the other being NA). They both used the same engines.
The N/A engines advantage in a FWD or RWD platform (no true advantage in 4WD which is why turbo 4wd's dominate all the time attacks) is lower torque through the apex enabling the driver to go WOT sooner than the turbo.
Now once the NA car is at WOT he is already exiting the corner sooner, and the revs are climbing up to the power-band. While the turbo in the same gear will be at 1/4 throttle trying to compress more pressure. Then it has to rev up to the turbo's optimal range.
Another factor I guess was the extra weight the turbo's added to the front wheels on the FWD cars.
The article was in some magazine and was about 4 pages long. THey went into great detail to explain how the NA car would be cheaper in the long run, and win more races because of better corner exit as well as not as much downtime.
I agree that now in 2011 turbo's are getting wayyyy more efficient.
But for our engines being high comp, most turbo people will have low PSI kits with more lag than low comp engines, since the low comp would be around 300whp rather than 225-250whp to compete with the NA engines.
Hopefully that makes sense..
