"Is it worth the money?" Hello Trevor,
Heck of a question! You might as well ask about sex, politics or religion. But since you asked for opinions, I will give you mine. I am a big fan of Turbo's so my point of view is somewhat biased. What you have to do is determine how you intend to operate the turbo. Are you trying to boost sea level performance, or just make up for the loss of power due to altitude? I would definitely not recommend the former especially for an air cooled engine. The latter is the perfect application for an aircraft. Because you are not asking the engine to do anything it wasn't designed to do, which is make rated power. Generally speaking adding a turbo to a KR installation is going to increase the under cowl complexity. Nothing you probably couldn't handle just understand you will have additional manifold tubing, fittings, clamps, brackets, hopefully an intercooler and a larger oil cooler just to name a few. Your fuel management is going to become much more important than without a turbo. I won't even try to go into detail on this but hopefully you have already done some research on air/fuel ratio's, detonation margin, turbo location, additional heat thus intercooler. Again, not rocket science just more than I can try to explain in a paragraph. Next comes controlling the turbo. Typically this is done by a wastegate but it is the control of the wastegate that is important. Sometimes people just use a manifold gauge and a mechanical linkage to the wastegate. Not a good idea because that would require the pilot to constantly be monitoring that gauge and let's face it that is not the only thing to do when you are flying. You will at least need some kind of automatic control. A simple Blow Off Valve could be used to prevent over boost. Personally I think it is the closest thing you can get to free power. Take you 80HP Revmaster to 10,000 feet and you are getting about 60HP. With the turbo you should still be getting 80 depending on the critical altitude capability of the particular turbo you have. More than likely it will go higher than that and the performance increase will continue. Your cost will be additional weight and some operational necessities and don't forget oxygen. So are you building a put-around-the-airport to build flight time machine, live in the mountains, or want a cross country time machine. I wouldn't put a turbo on the first one but I would seriously consider the latter two. Hope this helps, Best regards, Stephen Teate Paradise, Texas The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not an intended recipient, you should delete this message. Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized, and any disclosure, copying, distribution or action taken or omitted in reliance on it is prohibited and may be unlawful.
