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Thursday, April 9, 2009

More Power!!!

There's one thing in particular that most die hard Mustang owners always want more of. Can you guess what that is? One word pretty much wraps it up. POWER. It seems like you can never get enough horsepower under the hood of one single muscle or sports car. Lets just face it. The measly 210 horse power our v6's put out and the 300 the v8's put out just tease us and make us want even more power. Adding power is definitely easy to do now days, if you have the budget to do it. But there are so many different ways to add that extra little (or big) boost of power.

Your two best bets to really vamp up the power under the hood would be either a supercharger, or a turbocharger. But there are several questions that come with choosing one of these. First off...which one is better? Also budget comes into play...so which one is more realistically priced?

First off you should understand what exactly these systems are and what they do. They are both types of forced induction systems. Which is another way of saying they push more air and fuel into the combustion chamber. The more air and fuel you have shoved into the engine, the bigger the explosion the spark will cause and that's what gives you more power.

Superchargers are a very popular way to increase the power of your car. It is said to be an easier installation than that of the turbocharger system. Another advantage of a supercharger over a turbo charger is that they usually seem to be more reliable than a turbocharged system mainly just because they run cooler than turbos. But this problem can easily be corrected by adding an intercooler to the turbo system.

But on the contrary, superchargers have to first take power away from the engine to actually make more power. The way it works is that it is hooked up to the belt drive or pulley system of the car, where it initially takes the power from the engine. Turbochargers on the other hand use wasteful exhaust gas to power itself, not taking power from the engine. The one big advantage the turbo system has over the supercharger is that it puts wasted kinetic energy to use, thus making it the more efficient choice.

As far as pricing goes most superchargers and turbochargers I found seemed to be around $5,000 to $6,000. Some were as low as $3,000 or as high as $9,000. Some of the turbo kits seemed to be on the expensive end. Turbochargers seem to be the better choice to me, because they are capable of producing more horse power, if tuned right. And also they use wasted energy from exhaust flow to create its own power rather than first stealing it form the engine. But turbos are known to be more expensive and are harder to install. So which is really the best choice? I think it is all up to personal preference and how much money you are willing to spend.

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