5 Things You Should Never Do In A Turbocharged Vehicle

5 Things You Should Never Do In A Turbocharged Car

1. Do not run the engine hard after start-up.
Most people know you should let your engine warm up before running it hard, but many cars only have coolant gauges. Engine oil tends to take longer to heat up, because you don’t have a thermostat like the coolant does, which isolates the coolant in the engine block and regulates its temperature. Oil that isn’t heated up won’t flow as fast as oil at operating condition, which means you’ll have less protection at engine start up. This is especially true for turbocharged vehicles, because you also have oil feeding the bearings of the turbocharger, which spins at insanely high RPM and produces significant heat, so you want to make sure you have proper oil flow through the turbo.
It will be different for every car, but it could be an additional several minutes before your oil temperature is near your engine coolant temperature.

2. Don't shut the car off immediately after running it hard.
You’re going to have hot spots where the engine components, and especially the turbocharger, are still significantly hotter than your engine oil temperature. If you shut off the engine, the oil no longer flows, and thus pockets of the oil are going to be heated up to very high temperatures. These high temperatures break down the oil, and also burn up and evaporate the light end of the oil, leaving behind a heavier oil that won’t have ideal flow characteristics. This reduces your engine oil life, and also means you might have less protection at start-up.

3. Don’t lug the engine. Low Engine Speed, High Load Operations. First, this isn’t ideal because you’re telling your engine to move your vehicle quickly when it’s at a huge gearing disadvantage. Second, when your engine tries to produce more power at low engine speeds, it may be able to inject more fuel, but not ingest enough air. As a result, you’ll have a highly rich mixture and this can lead to poor emissions, damaging your catalytic converter, and seeing black smoke come out your exhaust. Third, regarding damaging your engine, this can cause low speed pre-ignition. LSPI is a when you have pre-ignition of your air fuel mixture (before your spark ignites it) and is becoming a more common phenomenon with small turbocharged engines running at low engine speeds with high load. It’s a dangerous condition that can cause engine damage, such as broken spark plugs or cracked pistons, as a result of extremely high pressures which occur due to significantly advanced ignition timing. It’s also very challenging to detect, and can’t be avoided through ignition timing or changing the spark plug’s heat range.

4. Don't use low octane rating fuel, especially if the car has been modified. Turbocharged cars tend to have higher pressures and temperatures within the combustion chamber, which is why they have reduced compression ratios to compensate. If your car is modified, you can keep it reliable by running a rich mixture and using high quality, high octane fuels. Obviously reducing boost and retarding the engine timing will do this as well, but of course you’ll be reducing performance. There are knock sensors to help minimize any engine problems, and so they’ll retard timing if it senses knock will occur.

5. Don’t floor it coming out of a corner.
In this one I just wanted an excuse to talk about slip angles. Turbocharged cars have some varying amount of turbo lag, new ones are much better. My point is this, as you’re coming out of a corner, your tires have some loading on them, whether your car is FWD, RWD, whatever. Now this doesn’t apply to AWD quite as much, but it’s still an issue. Your car’s stability is a result of your front tire slip angles being nearly identical to your rear tires slip angles. So long as this is true, your car moves on its targeted path. If you floor a turbocharged car, especially cars with high amounts of turbo lag, you get slammed with torque fairly surprisingly. This shock of torque increases the demand of the driven tires, increasing their slip angle. If you have a significant increase of slip angle of just one set of tires, front or rear, you end up with understeer for FWD, or oversteer for RWD. All of this is to say that your throttle application exiting the corner is very important, especially in 2WD turbo vehicles, where turbo lag can easily cause an understeer or oversteer situation.

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[gureno]

I always ensure i warm up my engine each morning by dropping a brick on the accelerator and leaving it to warm up for 5mins or so.

[votzmitvgeschrieben]

Never drive away and forgot your turbocharger on the kitchen table.

[carlbeane]

I redirected my exhaust back into the intake for double the boost!

[dt]

When opening your hood to check your oil/filters, be extremely careful not to look directly at your turbo. If you make directly eyeline contact with your turbo it may instantly explode, sending shards of turbo into your face and killing you and possibly your entire family that might be standing behind you.

[copperkeyracing]

Let me shed some light on these things, from an actual Engineer that designs these cars...
1. True for any car, let the engine oil warm up before putting a lot of strain on the engine, aka flooring it and revving the engine out.
2. True for Turbo cars, you want the Turbo to cool down to prevent damage to the turbo, in the case that you have been running the car hard and you want to turn the car off immediately. This is only the case when you are track driving the car, or being really hard on the car on the street due to traffic, or just being in a huge hurry.
3. Not true about not "lugging" the engine. Engines are designed to be able to simply step on it while in gear on the highway. Be it a a high gear or low gear. The Fuel that you mention that "injects a ton" into the engine... Not true at all. The fuel is tuned to exactly what is best for the engine given any scenario. Your foot does not control the fuel, the computer does. Out of boost, at full throttle the engine will be sending fuel, per the computer, which would be between 12.5 to 11.5 AFR. Engines respond better, the cooler they are, using the greater amount of fuel of 11.5 AFR, the only reason they would be at 12.5 is to try to save fuel. So, its actually the opposite in this scenario, your engine may be lean, not rich... but again, safe for the engine of course. If you see black smoke out the back, its because the computer saw knock/pre-ignition, due to poor maintenance or poor fuel quality (same thing really), pulled timing, pulled the throttle in the case of electronic throttle, and then dumped a ton of fuel to further protect the engine. This means you need to do your intake valve cleaning maintenance by hand, or drop some cleaner in it. DIY, if you know what you are doing. Doesn't matte how good quality of fuel you think you are using, if it is getting mixed with carbon/oil deposits in the engine, the best high octane fuel (premium 91-93oct) will be reduced to much lower octane, worse than the lowest octane you can ever find.
4. Use the fuel that the car has been designed for, this is for any car. If it's modified, and the engine computer was re-tuned to take only Premium. Use only Premium. If the manufacturer states to use regular, use regular, don't use anything else, you won't hurt the engine, but you aren't doing your wallet or performance any favors. If the manufacturer states you can use both, then the higher octane is better and gives better performance, but regular is ok and you can save money just make sure and do your maintenance. If the manufacturer states to use premium, then use only premium. You could damage the engine if you use less than premium, if not in the short run, then in the long run.
5. Flooring it in a turn, sure, but that's with any car. You need to learn the car, and what its driving characteristics are. This is just being a good driver. Not specifically for a turbo car, or a muscle car, exotic, or a budget car. Any car, and all cars, have their limits.

In summary, for Turbo cars, of the 5 things Jason states to not do to Turbo cars, only Number 2 is specific to turbo cars, and the rest applies to all cars.
Turbo cars: Let the turbo cool down, before turning it off when you have just driven the car really hard. Obviously, a car without a turbo, you don't have to worry about a turbo cooling down, since you don't have one.
All cars: Let the engine warm up before going hard on it, do your maintenance to your car or the will blow up, use the proper fuel, learn the car gradually before you decide to drive it hard and try to push it to its limits or you'll find yourself in an accident.
Special Note: Maintenance of the intake valves is critical to a turbo car, so stay on top of your intake valve cleaning maintenance, or your engine WILL BLOW UP! Maintenance is important to all cars, but for turbo cars, the engine is extra sensitive to its internal cleaning maintenance. If you don't maintain it, expect reduced performance, and expect to be selling the car very soon with a broken engine that you prefer not to pay for. I've seen this time and time again. I can go into great detail on how and why this occurs, and how modern cars have this issue but older cars do not, but I degress.

[bobriley]

police: why were you going so fast?
> EE told me i can't use this car at low-rpm

[gyffjogofl]

I usually redline my engine as soon as I start it.

[thewedge]

never drive a turbocharged vehicle underwater.

[dusr]

The old “dont turn your car off right after running it hard” was a characteristic of 80’s and 90’s turbo cars, hence people installing Turbo Timers. Modern Turbo cars including Subaru’s now continue to circulate oil even after you turn it off. Some cars like Audi’s have electric pumps that continue to run even after you turn them off. That tip is for old school turbo cars.

[THRS]

Oh boy do I love sending significant loads to my rear tires

[angrybirdsandy]

Next he’ll be telling me NOT to use my ejector seat while driving through a tunnel 🙄🙄🙄

[krenkosenforcer]

So wait. After listening to why I "shouldn't" floor it coming out of a corner, I swear you've just explained exactly why I *should* floor it!

[markrandles]

Today I learned i could clip my gas cap into the inside of the fuel door.

[DrDLightful]

That's interesting you mention low speed pre ignition. When I was in college for autonotive and advamced engine performance, we talked in depth about how there are more and more instances of GDI turbo engines succumbing to "superknock" as we called it. We saw several engines come in with rods and pistons through the side of the block. It seems to happen when people are just driving and tip into the throttle a bit, suddenly the engine locks up. Snapshot of PID data when the check engine light comes on has indicated that these types of engines are perfectly fine and operating at low speed, high load and all of a sudden something happens right after the fuel pressure rises but right before it makes the change from stratified charge to homogenous mode. Tests have been done and the hypothesis is that when you tip into the throttle the fuel pressure goes up, spraying in more fuel, and that fuel hits a hot spot and detonates. I read about tests where pressure transducers have recorded 2500-3000 psi in the combustion chamber before the piston reaches top dead center, shattering the piston.

[newground]

These comments man 😂 I’m picking up on some strong sarcasm

[robbie]

This is crap, the real 5 things not to do in a Turbo car.
1. Dont eat hamburgers while driving, especially if u give it a hit and turbo lag kicks in hard as youll drop your burger, and make a mess.
2. Concentrate on the road and not on the hot babes that are checking out your car especially when the blow off valve is going off as u might crash into stuff.
3. Dont bone more then two girls at a time in the car as you will get a head ache from your head hitting the roof as its tight in there.
4. Dont practice drifting after 10pm around the Liverpool area cause i live there and need to sleep for work next day. (U know who u are)
5. Dont keep your drugs in the centre console cause thats the first place the pigs check.

These here tips will keep you rollin allot longer and staying out of jail or the cemetery.

[EngineeringExplained]

PS - sold the car on Monday! This will be the last video of my personal Subaru STI.

[ronarndt]

Good video. Just thought I'd chime in and FWIW, you mentioned about "pre-ignition" / pre-detonation especially at low RPMs with high load. Pre-ignition can occur for multiple reasons, however, one common area that is usually not looked at right away is vacuum leaks that lean out the A/F ratio. While it's true you can get a little more "giddy-up" on a lean burning engine, the lean can cause ping or pre-detination. What does this have to do with low RPM / high load? High load places more air in the cylinders and at low RPM (retarded ignition) this can "lean-out" the A/F ratio in the cylinder and in turn, may create the the same "lean-burn" condition as a vacuum leak. In short, as you indicated, "Turbo" boost at the appropriate time and RPM.

[macwoodfleet]

I use bricks to keep my car redlining all the time while i am asleep. Each morning my oil thanks me, but i get embarrassed and douse the engine in ice water because i am scared of relationships.

[ZippyTPinhead]

I am in my early 50's have been interested in cars for a long time.Thank you for the clear explanations your channel gives. It clears up a lot of myths that develop over time.