Hello and welcome back to the Bespoke Automotive Refinement podcast, the one-stop shop for all Kansas City auto detailing services. Guys, I am your host, the founder, owner, and operator of Bespoke Automotive Refinement, and today we’re going to be talking about something not necessarily auto detailing related, but it is auto detailing related because we’re talking about cars, my favorite topic to talk about in the whole world. So, a little bit of background on me.
I am a semi-professional race car driver, as Ricky Bobby’s father once said, and I have done all sorts of racing. I’ve raced cars on the street, I’ve raced cars on the track, I’ve raced cars in road courses, I’ve done autocross, I’ve done rallycross, I’ve done all different types of racing, and my favorite type of racing is drag racing, street racing, and running half miles. Now, the topic today is supercharger versus turbo, which is better? I’ve owned both, I’ve raced both, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that superchargers are way better than turbochargers.
Now, let’s talk about why. Well, there’s different types of superchargers. You have a top- mount root style, you have an EFI-driven, throttle-driven supercharger, and then you have my favorite, a centrifugal supercharger.
A centrifugal supercharger is a mixture between a turbo and a supercharger. It’s essentially a belt-fed supercharger, but it doesn’t have the overheating and cooling problems that a turbocharger has once you begin adding tons of boost. Now, obviously there are certain types of superchargers that can cause heat malfunctions or overheating malfunctions.
I think back to my 850 wheel horsepower C5 Z06 that had a Kenny Bell 3.2 liter supercharger on it. The Car made a ton of power, but it only made power efficiently for one pass, and then I had to let the car cool down for an hour because it had so much heat radiating off of the top of the supercharger that all that heat began to affect the power of the car because power in a car doesn’t come from heat, it comes from cooling. The cooler the engine runs, the more power it produces.
So a centrifugal supercharger is the way to go because it doesn’t sit on top of the engine, it sits in the front of the engine, it’s belt-fed, it looks like an accessory, like an AC compressor. In fact, that’s the joke amongst me and my friends is, oh, did you put a new alternator on your car because a centrifugal supercharger looks like an alternator. They produce power efficiently, and they don’t cause the car to overheat. I definitely like prochargers, nothing beats the sound of a procharger building boost in a single cam Ls engine before hearing the blow off valve release all the extra pressure.
Superchargers also don’t have boost lag. So if you’ve ever heard a car, a turbocharged car accelerate, you hear it down low in the RPMs (revolutions per minute), it sounds like it’s really sluggish, and then as the car begins to accelerate, it takes three to four thousand RPMs (revolutions per minute) of building before the car enters boost, versus a supercharger is immediate boost. So you instantly have a boost on demand, and you can begin to accelerate and gap your competitor.
Now, obviously, no matter whether you have a turbocharged car or a supercharged car, we recommend using bespoke automotive refinement for all of your Kansas City auto detailing needs. And whether you have a supercharged car or a turbocharged car, we will do work on all of them. And there is one exception to this.
One of the best cars and one of the most efficient cars in drag racing are twin-turbo V10s. Well, Thomas, you just contradicted yourself. You said that supercharged cars are better than twin-turbo cars, and that’s true to an extent, but the reason why the twin- turbo V10 is better than a supercharged V10 is the RPMs in a V10 can wrap way higher, allowing the car to create more boost in the powerband, so you can build more boost over time compared to a supercharged V8 or a supercharged V6 or a supercharged V8 and a supercharged V6. Nothing beats the sound of a twin turbo v10 building boost and accelerating to the redline and hearing the dual clutch transmission smack the next gear.
In fact, some of the fastest cars in the world are twin-turbo V10s. I actually got to witness in person the fastest half-mile Lamborghini in the world. It ran 275 miles an hour in the half mile, and it was a twin-turbo V10 built by my friend Kevin Howeth with Underground Racing, who, by the way, chooses to use bespoke automotive refinement for all Kansas City Auto Detailing services.
Guys, whether you own a twin-turbo car or a supercharged car, or if you have a naturally aspirated car, you need to have your car properly detailed, and choosing bespoke automotive refinement for all of your Kansas City Auto Detailing services and needs is a must, because no matter how fast your car is, no matter how efficient it builds boost, it doesn’t look very good going down the track when it’s dirty and nasty, unless you’re a farm truck. Then it’s kind of cool. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in to Bespoke Automotive Refinement Podcast, the number one stop shop for all of your Kansas City Auto Detailing needs.
If you ever want to talk about cars, if you ever want to talk about whether you should twin- turbo or supercharge your race car, or if you would like to book one of our Kansas City Auto Detailing packages, please reach out at 620-282-0402. That is my personal cell number, and we can talk for hours about street racing, drag racing, road course racing, or getting your car booked for a Kansas City Auto Detailing package. Thank you, and have a great day.