Want more power????

Man’s quest for power ultimately sent Him out of the Garden of Eden, when he sought knowledge what he actually sought was power. The race for power is ever evident in the auto industry as with most manufacturers that have products in same groups tend to out-do each other with almost every model they release. BMW’s M3 and Audi’s RS4 are typically good examples.
The power war between the car giants is worse than what ensued between OBJ and Atiku in the last dispensation. These brilliant car manufacturers have arrived at the pinnacle of this battle by various means; vehicular weight reduction, improved aero dynamics and advances in engine design with stuffs like direct injection. But one common denominator that is ever present in almost every car that chooses to go berserk on its power numbers is that the engine is always charged up.
If you remember clearly the very 1st memories you’d have of a sports car is the Toyota Supra. It was fast right? The Supra employed one of two available means of charging up an engine, it used the Turbocharger. The other alternative more commonly in use is the Supercharger. Both are basically the same thing just differentiated in the means of achieving their aim.
Basically both turbo and Superchargers are compressors that compress air that is fed to the engine. The advantage of compressing the air is that it lets the engine stuff more air into a cylinder. More air means that more fuel can be stuffed in, too, so you get more power from each explosion in each cylinder. A turbo/supercharged engine produces more power overall than the same engine without the charging.¬

Single scroll Turbocharger

Superchager
The key difference is that the Turbocharger uses waste exhaust gases to drive its turbine while the Supercharger uses a regular belt or chain and pulley system like your alternator or water pump. Turbochargers are actually cheaper to fix and for an engine not producing any boost power increases the efficiency of the engine by atomizing all of the fuel (ensuring no fuel leaves the system un-burnt). The downside is that the power band on the turbo chargers tends to be in the higher rev range of the engine. Meaning that if you need instant power from stand-still, you might not get it; a feeling often described as Turbo Lag. Superchargers have a more linear power curve but actually are more expensive and use up a considerable amount of the engines power. The Super charger on the McLaren Mercedes SLR actually uses up to 126Hp!!!! That’s more than a Corolla puts out.
Engine power is increased by either of these chargers. Sadly fuel consumption also increases, but this is more than a welcome sacrifice for the increased power?