Turbo Timer?

[Scott R]

Yesterday I was speaking to one of my employees, he is a younger kid on one of my help desks that has one of these "Riced" out Honduhs. He has an aftermarket turbo, and to keep the seals from getting screwed up he claims a device called a "turbo timer" idles the car for 60 seconds after he turns the key off. Seeing as how the last thing I want to do is go through anotehr turbo, is there any truth in this?

[Lawrence Coppari]

Just my opinion but in view of the fact that our turbos are water cooled with the pump always running for 30 seconds when you turn off the ignition and rerunning again and again if the water temperature rises beyond a set point, I would not worry about idling the engine for any period of time unless it has seen hard use. I will say that I idle it for a short period of time after running it on the track, but do not do it for normal driving.

The aftermarket turbo on the Honda probably is not water cooled. My turbo is just about 5 years old and has about 40K on it with 6 track events per year.

[eimkeith]

Lawrence is right, the electric pump for the turbo runs after the car is turned off to prolong the life of the turbo.

The turboTimer is an aftermarket way of performing this function for car manufacturers who didn't think ahead...

------------------
keith
'86 951 redNeckarsulm

[Scott R]

Cool, I just repaired that little pump. It was inop before my turbo switch. Probably a main reason why the thing was cooked.

[Dave951]

I am actually installing a turbo timer, but indirectly. It is an option on an alarm I am getting. I will probably enable it. The water cooling does help, but it is the oil that is in direct contact with the spinning parts of the turbo. It can't hurt.

However, I don't think that I would be buying a turbotimer separtely.

Dave

[Dave951]

Freakin' double post

[This message has been edited by Dave951 (edited 10-31-2001).]

[Dave951]

Freakin' triple posts


[This message has been edited by Dave951 (edited 10-31-2001).]

[VIPRKLR]

PORSCHE invented the Turbo timer! Only their original idea involved just having an H2O pump running. Years later the Rice gang thought it would be cool to let the engine run while your away - LOL Pretty dumb idea for a manual car...

[marksportcts]

Hey Dave, can you give me the details of the turbo timer install in the 944 cars? I have one but not installed yet, as it has a built-in air/fuel meter.

Some of the stock turbo cooling waterpumps fail, so make sure that it is still working. I also thought that the main reason that the turbo failed was that the hot oil inside would coke and destroy the bearings, and to my undestanding, oil takes a good amount of time/energy/heat transfer to cool down. So if the 30 seconds that the water pump is running is to cool the turbo housing or cool the oil? Is that enough time, and for that matter, is the water itself cold enough begin with? I would think that the k26 is a good tough turbo, but old technology that has been outdated.

[Lawrence Coppari]

The turbo pump has two ways to be turned on. First, there is the automatic 30 second run it gets when you shut off the ignition. Second, there is a thermostat in the turbo. If the turbo reheats due to heat conducting into where the sensor is, the pump will restart. If you unplug the temperature sensor and ground it, the pump runs. On hot days I have noticed the initial running of the pump, then a rest, then it runs again as heat bleeds back into the turbo and raises the temperature beyond the set point of the thermostat.

Water has a higher specific heat than oil so it takes more energy to change the temperature of water than oil on a per pound basis. On a volume basis you have to look at the product of specific heat and density. Surprisingly, the product is nearly the same for steel and water. For water and oil, there is a big difference.

Well, I'd better get off my soapbox.

[951carter]

The factory setup on these cars is very good if maintained properly. I have seen original turbos exceed 200,000 miles and still be in great shape!