Turbo Sizing 101!

New to Turbo Performance and don't know where to start?

Lets take a dive in and help you learn how to make the right choice for your build.

We will start by talking about the turbine, or "hot" side of your turbocharger. This is where the exhaust gas leaving your engine travels through your turbo. There is three main aspects to the hot side. A/R (Area over Radius) wheel size, and wheel design.

The A/R is the area (or size in volume) of your turbine housing. This is an essential aspect of how your turbocharger will perform. While we could get overly technical about what the A/R actually is, ill make a simple analogy for this article. Lets say you have a glass of water. A .48ar housing might take half of the glass to fill. A .86ar housing will take the full glass. It's quite apparent the larger A/R housing will be capable of flowing much more volume of air out of your engine.

Smaller A/R housings will benefit by significantly faster spool time and drivability, by sacrificing some top end power and increasing back pressure. Larger A/R housings will create a noticeable amount of extra lag, with the benefit of less back pressure and more overall power.

How about the wheels?

Generally speaking smaller turbine wheels (GT28, GT29) will spool faster due to having less rotational mass. This allows for exceptional lower end torque as well. Larger turbine wheels (GT30, GT35) will have more lag because of the added mass and size, but will flow more air and require less rotational speed for your desired results. 

There is also many different styles of turbine wheels. Specific blade designs can vary greatly. A general rule of thumb is higher blade count wheels will "catch" more air and spool better, while sacrificing some flow and top end power. (Increased back pressure) Lower blade count wheels are generally capable of flowing more air and increasing top end power, at the sacrifice of slower spool and low end torque. Mamba tries to tie these together with their D5 wheel. Using 5 tall and 5 short blades, they are able to get full exhaust contact of a 10 blade wheel, with the reduced back pressure from the short blades.

Stay tuned and I will update this with the compressor side info!