Ok, I found this picture someone post on my wall on facebook and I though I'd create a thread to talk about all ideas, its advantages, disadvantages and/or why you think this is full retard or full genius.

my take on it is that the fabrication seems cool but it will not and cannot deliver on the performance side. I see potential heat soak and general lack of usability other than "hey I got 4 turbos".



So, what do you think?

I'd like to see more pics :/

That looks like it'd be more of a pain than it's worth. And how much power do you think you'd be able to get out of those tiny turbines and compressor wheels? Oiling looks to be rather complicated as well, although I'm sure the spool time is crazy..

Nothing constructive to add...... other then what is "better" then four? The answer eight.

Aside from being absolutely cool looking, way too much mechanism. About the same uselessness as a 2l v8

^^There are some pretty crazy small displacement v8s.. the RS 2.4 in the Ariel Atom for example. That's a lot of valve area for 2.4L, when you think about it the only draw back is all that drag from greater surface area.

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I'd be curious to find more about this project. A couple things stand out to me however:

In addition to just the complexity of the setup there are two obvious potential flaws with this.. first and foremost from a performance aspect, turbos are impulse turbines.

This is basically 4 turbocharged single cylinders in the same block. So each turbine is only going to get a pulse once every 540*. There is no scavenging to take advantage of either.

If it's a 2.0L, you can get treat each as a 500cc engine and there are plenty of folks making decent power with single cylinder turbo setups.. but you have the option to run all 4 pulses at only 180* apart to a single larger and more efficient turbine.

Then there is the oiling requirement of 4 turbo center sections.. I would be curious to see if the pump they've chosen is up to the task. Even if they are ball bearing center sections, 4 together would be fairly thirsty.

Haha true, I forgot that one. In most cases though, the more complex a setup is, the more room there is for error, which in turn leads to more room for failure, which is the reason why there hasn't been a great leap towards small displacement v8s.

In this case, I could see having a single turbo per cylinder being useful in something like circle track racing. Low torque output before 7k Rpms, higher overall power at the top of the rev range, much like a sport bike, and heat would be dispersed across all four turbine housings, instead of being centralized in one....

I think the bigger innovation will be hybrid turbo setups there the turbine drives a generator making power for an electrically driven compressor. Not as efficient, but since they aren't coupled together, you could easily spool the compressor instantly.

That intake pipe looks very reminiscent of the stock, flat, 2g uicp.
I had to put on my xray goggles to figure out how the turbos got their air . Definitely a compact setup.