| Common wisdom has it that if you are looking
for better performance from your normally aspirated 4WD diesel engine, then
turbocharging rather than supercharging is the way to go. Certainly the popularity
of both factory and aftermarket turbo diesels is evidence that the marriage
of turbocharger and diesel engine is a happy one.
With petrol engined 4WDs, the issue is more clouded. In Australia, owners of these vehicles are generally more interested in better fuel economy than more power so there has been little demand for forced aspiration. In the Middle East where, surprise, surprise, petrol's cheap and there's plenty of it, there's also a great interest in high performance vehicles, 4WD or otherwise. With a relatively small population, plenty of wide open spaces and good roads, those with money in the Middle East like to travel quickly…very quickly. Four wheel driving in that part of the world also involves driving on sand (surprise again!) and for sand driving you need power and lots of it.
Now all that sounds fine if you live in the Middle East and have a couple of oil wells in your backyard, but what relevance does it have in Australia? These were exactly my feelings when Peter Luxon of Safari Turbo Systems offered a drive of his 4.5 turbo GXL on the grounds that this kit is now available in Australia. My initial reaction was that Toyota's'4.5 litre straight six has all the power you need in a normally aspirated form so why turbocharge it? In standard form it also offers excellent driveability so why compromise that good driveability? And finally, like all big petrol engines that power 4WDs, it already uses too much fuel, so why give it the chance to use more? After the better part of two weeks behind the wheel of the Safari Turbo Systems 'Cruiser including a Sydney-Melbourne run via the back roads (dirt included), I'm happy to say I was wrong on all three counts. The extra power, and there's certainly plenty of it, is a real bonus for overtaking and flattening out those big, long hills; the driveability is just fine and the fuel consumption I recorded is no more than 10 per cent up on standard. My only criticism is that the larger diameter exhaust system is noisier than 
|
One company that's helping to satisfy
the Middle East's interest in power is Safari Turbo Systems from Melbourne.
Its' key product for the power hungry Arabs is an intercooled turbo system
that transforms the 4.5 litre petrol Landcruiser from a fast 4WD into a serious
high performance vehicle. How does 240kW at 4600rpm and 550Nm at 3200rpm
sound? Doesn't mean much? How about 0 to 100km/h in under seven seconds and
a top speed of over 210km/h?
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