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Does your Toyota Starlet or Lexus come equipped with supercharger or turbocharger?  Are you sure it does not?  Many cars today especially ones with smaller engines come equipped standard with turbochargers.  This is to help increase the power in the cars without having to add a larger engine to the vehicle.  Other cars, especially used ones, have had after market superchargers and turbochargers added to them.  However, while both will increase the power of your vehicle, there are differences between them.

A supercharger will compress the air that is delivered to the engine of your Toyota Starlet or a Japanese car.  It allows the combustion chamber in the engine to actually overfill with air without having to put a larger engine into the car.  A turbocharger does pretty much the same thing except it uses exhaust gases to increase the horsepower where the supercharger uses the air driving in from the moving of the drive belt.  The more oxygen both of these devices bring into the engine the more horsepower you get from your car.

One of the biggest differences between the two is that the supercharger works immediately as it is powered right from the engine and begins compressing air immediately.  The turbocharger is delayed because the exhaust gases have to build up into the system to power the turbo and then the compressor.  With a supercharger you get an immediate result when you step on the pedal.  A turbocharger kicks in after a small delay.  Supercharger’s also have less of a problem with residual heat coming off the engine, allowing it to run at a greater efficiency than a turbocharger and can help a smaller engine increase the cars gas mileage.

However, a turbocharger is more efficient than the supercharger because it uses exhaust gases to power it although it does cause an increase in the system’s back pressure and this robs the car of power.  The car has to be running at a high RPM in order to get a good boost from the turbocharger than a supercharger.

A supercharger is going to be easier to install into the car after market than a turbocharger.  Both are expensive to add after you have bought the car.  If you are good with mechanics you can probably install either of them yourself.  Otherwise you will want to enlist the services of a good mechanic to make sure they are put in properly and work efficiently.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.