I'm really confused by this statement! My understanding is as follows:Herrie wrote:When you are driving in sand you must keep the revs up to keep the turbo cool - with a petrol you can keep the revs lower.
1. Turbos heat up due to the hot exhaust gases that enter the turbine side and also due to the compression of air occurring on the compressor side (Gay-Lussac's 2nd gas law). This is absolutely normal however, and turbos are designed to cope with this heat. The problem comes in when you turn the engine off without allowing sufficient time for the turbo to cool off. Engine oil that is trapped inside a hot turbo will coke ("burn") and degrade, causing rapid bearing damage to the turbo. This does not happen when the oil is circulating, so a hot turbo in a running motor is never a problem.
2. Turbos have a "boost threshold" - it's a combination of revs (i.e. airflow through the turbine side), throttle opening, etc from where they start to work. Below this threshold they do not spin fast enough to generate boost and and therefore the compressor side does not heat up as much as when they are fully spooled up. Lower revs also mean lower amounts of hot exhaust gases, reducing input temperature of the turbo. Lower throttle positions also mean less combustion heat/EGT - even more heat reduction! So... all of this means that turbos actually heat up more when you keep the revs up, not the other way around...
3. Diesel engines generate their maximum torque not very high above idle speed (Chuck's 4.2 engine does this at 2100 RPM), whilst petrol engines typically need about 3-4k RPM to deliver their max torque.
What am I missing here?
