Why turbo normalizer?

Peter

Let me pose some what if's.

I have a turbo normalized engine. Going cross country I cruise at 5K
and 65% power. Turbo is off.

I then go on another XC and cruise at 15K and use turbo to pull 65%.

Are you saying that cruising at 65% with turbo on will do more damage
to engine than pulling 65% with turbo off??????

I'll agree that the turbo will require more maintenance it used but
engine no if run within engine manufacturers specs.

Big John
`````````````````````````````````````````````````` ````````````````````````````````

On Mon, 16 May 2005 14:36:27 -0700, "Peter Duniho"
wrote:

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
roups.com...
[...] In the Mooney
community is mostly agreed that a 201 (non turbo) will give you twice
the cylinder life as a 231 (turbo). Other wear factors (heat, less air
over the cylinders) are the same for turbo-norm vs. regular turbo. The
only difference I can see is the "idiot" difference of accidently over
boosting.

Exactly what Mike said. Any kind of turbocharging will shorten the lifespan
of a given engine. The whole point of a turbocharger, even
turbo-normalizing, is to allow the engine to produce more power in certain
situations than it otherwise would have. More power means more wear and
tear.

Turbo-normalizing isn't as hard on an engine as "non-normalized"
turbocharging, but it still makes more power some of the time than the same
engine without a turbocharger would (and on top of that, the increase in
power is in situations when the air is less dense, making cooling more
difficult...again, more heat, more wear). That time spent making more power
results in more wear and tear.

Pete

The engine is going to be considerably hotter running at 65% at 15,000' than
at 5,000'.

Mike
MU-2

"Big John" wrote in message
...
Peter

Let me pose some what if's.

I have a turbo normalized engine. Going cross country I cruise at 5K
and 65% power. Turbo is off.

I then go on another XC and cruise at 15K and use turbo to pull 65%.

Are you saying that cruising at 65% with turbo on will do more damage
to engine than pulling 65% with turbo off??????

I'll agree that the turbo will require more maintenance it used but
engine no if run within engine manufacturers specs.

Big John
`````````````````````````````````````````````````` ````````````````````````````````

On Mon, 16 May 2005 14:36:27 -0700, "Peter Duniho"
wrote:

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
groups.com...
[...] In the Mooney
community is mostly agreed that a 201 (non turbo) will give you twice
the cylinder life as a 231 (turbo). Other wear factors (heat, less air
over the cylinders) are the same for turbo-norm vs. regular turbo. The
only difference I can see is the "idiot" difference of accidently over
boosting.

Exactly what Mike said. Any kind of turbocharging will shorten the
lifespan
of a given engine. The whole point of a turbocharger, even
turbo-normalizing, is to allow the engine to produce more power in certain
situations than it otherwise would have. More power means more wear and
tear.

Turbo-normalizing isn't as hard on an engine as "non-normalized"
turbocharging, but it still makes more power some of the time than the
same
engine without a turbocharger would (and on top of that, the increase in
power is in situations when the air is less dense, making cooling more
difficult...again, more heat, more wear). That time spent making more
power
results in more wear and tear.

Pete

Mike

Have you ever seen a flat 4/6 run hot at any altitude at 65% power?

If your at 15K and engine is running 'hot' what do you do? Increase
IAS, open cowel flaps or reduce power.

My Mooney was as tightly coweled as anything I ever saw. On climb out
after TO I used 120 mph to keep engine cool. It took longer to get to
altitude but I made up for it by a long shallow descent at max IAS at
destination. No shock cooling doing this. Block time was the same as
Tech Order climb and dump for descent.

When are you going to get out of that widow maker )

Big John
`````````````````````````````````````````````````` ``````````````

On Wed, 18 May 2005 19:22:04 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:

The engine is going to be considerably hotter running at 65% at 15,000' than
at 5,000'.

Mike
MU-2

"Big John" wrote in message
.. .
Peter

Let me pose some what if's.

I have a turbo normalized engine. Going cross country I cruise at 5K
and 65% power. Turbo is off.

I then go on another XC and cruise at 15K and use turbo to pull 65%.

Are you saying that cruising at 65% with turbo on will do more damage
to engine than pulling 65% with turbo off??????

I'll agree that the turbo will require more maintenance it used but
engine no if run within engine manufacturers specs.

Big John
`````````````````````````````````````````````````` ````````````````````````````````

On Mon, 16 May 2005 14:36:27 -0700, "Peter Duniho"
wrote:

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
egroups.com...
[...] In the Mooney
community is mostly agreed that a 201 (non turbo) will give you twice
the cylinder life as a 231 (turbo). Other wear factors (heat, less air
over the cylinders) are the same for turbo-norm vs. regular turbo. The
only difference I can see is the "idiot" difference of accidently over
boosting.

Exactly what Mike said. Any kind of turbocharging will shorten the
lifespan
of a given engine. The whole point of a turbocharger, even
turbo-normalizing, is to allow the engine to produce more power in certain
situations than it otherwise would have. More power means more wear and
tear.

Turbo-normalizing isn't as hard on an engine as "non-normalized"
turbocharging, but it still makes more power some of the time than the
same
engine without a turbocharger would (and on top of that, the increase in
power is in situations when the air is less dense, making cooling more
difficult...again, more heat, more wear). That time spent making more
power
results in more wear and tear.

Pete

Hot is relative. It will certainly run *hotter*. Yes I have seen the
engine in a Turbo Lance (540S1AD) run hot at 19,000' at fairly low. An
intercooler helps but it will still run hotter. One of the surprises with
my Helio (GO480) is how low the CHT run (never seen over 375F) even though
the rated HP per cu in is higher than the Turbo Lance. I hadn't flown a
normaly aspirated piston except in primary training, so I just assumed that
400F was normal.

Flying the MU-2 is as easy as flying anything else once you learn how. You
just fly it by the numbers and everything will be OK. A lot of guys can't
seem to do that and the training centers used to sign them off (they stopped
when they lost a few lawsuits). The guys flying Barons that think that
3000' of runway is too short, or think that a Mooney is "slippery" have no
business flying a MU-2 or any high performane airplane for that matter. It
has to be flown like a swept wing jet. I haven't flown a great number of
different airplanes so perhaps it is harder than average, I don't know. I
may get rid of it soon because I just don't use it very much anymore. I
hate to sell it because I feel totally secure and comfortable in it in all
weather (most of my flying is IMC, over the mountains, in icing, often at
night with very high winds. It is a perfect airplane for that kind of
flying. The unfortunate reality is that now that I am only flying it
~125hrs/yr it is *costing* me a lot of *time* as well as money. The four
day trip for recurrent training is only spread over 125total flight hrs and
20 of those hours are just to get to training and another 10 or so are to
get somewhere for maitenance. The math works out to one hour of
maitenance/training overhead for every productive flight hour which means
the plane is effectively only half as fast. It has also pushed the
cost/effective flight hour to well over $1000.

I can see Roberts point about engine life being potentially reduced but I
think that you are also getting a lot of advantages with turbocharging.

Mike
MU-2

"Big John" wrote in message
...
Mike

Have you ever seen a flat 4/6 run hot at any altitude at 65% power?

If your at 15K and engine is running 'hot' what do you do? Increase
IAS, open cowel flaps or reduce power.

My Mooney was as tightly coweled as anything I ever saw. On climb out
after TO I used 120 mph to keep engine cool. It took longer to get to
altitude but I made up for it by a long shallow descent at max IAS at
destination. No shock cooling doing this. Block time was the same as
Tech Order climb and dump for descent.

When are you going to get out of that widow maker )

Big John
`````````````````````````````````````````````````` ``````````````

On Wed, 18 May 2005 19:22:04 GMT, "Mike Rapoport"
wrote:

The engine is going to be considerably hotter running at 65% at 15,000'
than
at 5,000'.

Mike
MU-2

"Big John" wrote in message
. ..
Peter

Let me pose some what if's.

I have a turbo normalized engine. Going cross country I cruise at 5K
and 65% power. Turbo is off.

I then go on another XC and cruise at 15K and use turbo to pull 65%.

Are you saying that cruising at 65% with turbo on will do more damage
to engine than pulling 65% with turbo off??????

I'll agree that the turbo will require more maintenance it used but
engine no if run within engine manufacturers specs.

Big John
`````````````````````````````````````````````````` ````````````````````````````````

On Mon, 16 May 2005 14:36:27 -0700, "Peter Duniho"
wrote:

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
legroups.com...
[...] In the Mooney
community is mostly agreed that a 201 (non turbo) will give you twice
the cylinder life as a 231 (turbo). Other wear factors (heat, less air
over the cylinders) are the same for turbo-norm vs. regular turbo. The
only difference I can see is the "idiot" difference of accidently over
boosting.

Exactly what Mike said. Any kind of turbocharging will shorten the
lifespan
of a given engine. The whole point of a turbocharger, even
turbo-normalizing, is to allow the engine to produce more power in
certain
situations than it otherwise would have. More power means more wear and
tear.

Turbo-normalizing isn't as hard on an engine as "non-normalized"
turbocharging, but it still makes more power some of the time than the
same
engine without a turbocharger would (and on top of that, the increase in
power is in situations when the air is less dense, making cooling more
difficult...again, more heat, more wear). That time spent making more
power
results in more wear and tear.

Pete

In article et, Mike Rapoport wrote:
...get somewhere for maitenance. The math works out to one hour of
maitenance/training overhead for every productive flight hour which means
the plane is effectively only half as fast. It has also pushed the
cost/effective flight hour to well over $1000.

The thing is - is there an aircraft that WON'T have that overhead that
will give you the reliability of the MU-2? Anything turbocharged/piston
is likely to need more maintenance and just as much recurrent training.

If it's not a high end pressurized turboed piston twin, you end up
stooging around at low altitude like the rest of us and that kills your
mostly all-weather capability.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
In article et, Mike
Rapoport wrote:
...get somewhere for maitenance. The math works out to one hour of
maitenance/training overhead for every productive flight hour which means
the plane is effectively only half as fast. It has also pushed the
cost/effective flight hour to well over $1000.

The thing is - is there an aircraft that WON'T have that overhead that
will give you the reliability of the MU-2? Anything turbocharged/piston
is likely to need more maintenance and just as much recurrent training.

If it's not a high end pressurized turboed piston twin, you end up
stooging around at low altitude like the rest of us and that kills your
mostly all-weather capability.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Agreed, it is not a problem with the airplane, it is a problem with low
utilization, need for specialized maitenance and trainig (neither availible
locally).. I would not get another airplane to replace it, the plan is to
charter.

Mike
MU-2

Big John wrote:

Peter

Let me pose some what if's.

I have a turbo normalized engine. Going cross country I cruise at 5K
and 65% power. Turbo is off.

I then go on another XC and cruise at 15K and use turbo to pull 65%.

Are you saying that cruising at 65% with turbo on will do more damage
to engine than pulling 65% with turbo off??????

I'll agree that the turbo will require more maintenance it used but
engine no if run within engine manufacturers specs.

Possibly, because the air is much thinner at 15K than 5K and thus
pulling the same power from the engine will cause it to run much hotter.
Depending on how much hotter it runs, wear can be accelerated and you
would certainly want to change your oil more often and run a semi-syn oil.


Matt

"Big John" wrote in message
...
[...]
I have a turbo normalized engine. Going cross country I cruise at 5K
and 65% power. Turbo is off.

I then go on another XC and cruise at 15K and use turbo to pull 65%.

Are you saying that cruising at 65% with turbo on will do more damage
to engine than pulling 65% with turbo off??????

You'll have to define "more damage".

Yes, as Mike said there are at least a couple of issues that cause the same
power to result in hotter operating temperatures at higher altitudes than at
lower.

However, the increased temperatures may or may not result in damage, or even
increased wear. There's just the *potential* for increase in wear.
However, as far as I know, increased operating temperatures almost always
translate into decreased lifetime.

I'll agree that the turbo will require more maintenance it used but
engine no if run within engine manufacturers specs.

I'm having a hard time parsing that sentence.

IMHO, the bottom line here is that no one ought to expect a turbocharged
engine, turbonormalized or not, to require just as little maintenance as a
normally aspirated engine. But that's not an indictment of turbocharging.
It just means that with the significant benefit of turbo-charging, there
comes a cost.

As it happens, I feel that turbonormalization strikes a pretty good
compromise. Even more so when the installation isn't strictly
"normalization". Again, looking at my airplane as an example, the
turbocharged installation has 20hp more than the normally-aspirated version.
This isn't a lot of extra power, but it's enough to help compensate for the
extra weight of the turbocharger and give a little extra "oomph", without
significantly increasing the wear on the engine due to the power the engine
is making.

Yes, at altitude the engine runs hotter. It runs hotter than it would at
the same power setting down low, and it certainly runs hotter than a
normally-aspirated engine would at that altitude. But guess what? I go a
lot faster too, to the tune of about 20 knots compared to what my best
cruise speed at 8000' would be without a turbo. It's really nice being able
to maintain cruise power up into the oxygen altitudes, and I get a nice
true-airspeed boost as a result. As long as I'm not bucking a big headwind,
it's all good.

In addition, mountain flying is less dangerous. Ground speeds are still
higher, and the prop can't convert the horsepower to quite as much thrust as
it would at sea-level. But it's not nearly as much a reduction as I'd get
without the turbocharger. Acceleration, even at max gross, is good as is
the climb rate (handy when you are surrounded by high terrain ).

What's the cost? Well, I can't speak for the average. But in my own case,
I have had a "mini top overhaul" (replaced one piston, due to leaking rings
on that piston, causing erosion of the piston head), and have had to replace
all of the exhaust valves and guides. I don't even know that this was due
to the turbo-charger, but certainly it seems that the extra heat may have
accelerated the wear, if not caused it entirely.

The turbo-charger itself has been remarkably maintenance free, especially
considering it uses an automatic wastegate. As an added bonus, it acts as a
muffler, so my airplane is somewhat quieter than similar-powered airplanes,
and noticeably quieter than the normally-aspirated version. Since it's a
seaplane, and since I do often operate in "well-habited" areas, this is a
nice side-benefit.

There is, of course, the acquisition cost too. Turbocharged airplanes seem
to run anywhere from $20-50K more than the normally-aspirated equivalent.

But given that airplanes are intentionally operated at above-sea-level
altitudes on a regular basis, I can't imagine owning another airplane
without turbocharging. Turbonormalized or otherwise.

IMHO, it's much more important to look at the maintenance history for a
given installation, than to try to paint all turbocharged aircraft with the
same brush. The effects of turbocharging have as much to do with how the
manufacturer recommends the engine is operated and the design of the
installation (especially with respect to cooling), as they do with
generalities about all turbochargers broadly.

Pete

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

In addition, mountain flying is less dangerous. Ground speeds are still
higher, and the prop can't convert the horsepower to quite as much thrust
as it would at sea-level. But it's not nearly as much a reduction as I'd
get without the turbocharger. Acceleration, even at max gross, is good as
is the climb rate (handy when you are surrounded by high terrain ).


Actually a constant speed prop converts HP into thrust about the same at all
(reasonable) altitudes. That is one of the great advantages of a CS prop.

Mike
MU-2

"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
ink.net...
Actually a constant speed prop converts HP into thrust about the same at
all (reasonable) altitudes. That is one of the great advantages of a CS
prop.

Really? I just assumed that with air density lower, the prop (CS or
otherwise) had less air available to move, and thus could not produce
sea-level thrust.

I guess in that case, my longer take-off runs are solely due to the higher
true speed required. Still, that's a significant effect. I just don't want
anyone thinking that a turbocharger makes high-altitude takeoffs just like
sea-level.

Pete