What are the differences between the two? Some pro's and conns. I got a 97 civ ex i want to drop a new engine in. Maybe some tips or leads would be helpful. Do's, dont's. I'm talkin about a race reddy engine, complete with transmission and everything . I want to finally go all out. i'm working with about 3500.00 us. am i in the ball park ?

 

the difference is that a turbo works using your exhaust air and a supercharger runs off your engine by a belt. Superchargers need power to emit more power so on a civic a turbo is better because you can get a lot more power out of it than with a supercharger, especially if you have a stock engine. Superchargers give you power right away, turbos may lag depending how big they are and stuff. Thats just the general overview kinda

 

3500 is pretty good for each. lets start with turbo. turbo works off exhaust, which means if your at 1500 rpms your boost is pretty low which means not a lot of extra air going into the engine. so your gas mileage stays good. when you rev up your turbo spools and you gain lots of HP. a supercharger works off a belt so its always working. which lowers your gas mileage but gains low rpm hp. my personal view on it is turbos are better because you can still drive the car to work, and i love the sound of a blow off valve when you rev on the street. thats my view. from what i know they are close to equal. some people say turbos all the way some people are all superchargers. either one done legit will cost about 3 grand. you can ghetto rig it for less, like always.

 

A turbo setup doesn't have to be ghetto-rigged to be less than $3k, but to piece together a custom setup requires a fair understanding of how everything works. If you look for deals you can usually piece a setup together for around $2k, the price rising with the horsepower goal.

As far as turbo vs. supercharger, I think the basics have pretty well been covered. A supercharger will tie into the existing drive belt setup, adding more drag to the engine. However, the power it takes to spin the supercharger will immediately be made up by the supercharger; the power loss is mostly theoretical and probably wouldn't be noticed even on a dyno. But due to the engine design, the supercharger speed and engine speed share a direct relationship, meaning if the car is under power, you're in boost. That's good for power (or more correctly torque), but somewhat bad for fuel economy. With a turbo, you can stay out of boost with a light foot, meaning your fuel economy won't change too much from being naturally-aspirated.

Anyway, if you want low-end torque, look into superchargers (or small turbos). If you want peak power, you'll want a turbocharger. I'm just going to point out that most people won't be sitting at peak power while they're driving; they'll be relying on low- to mid-range power.