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-   -   Maintenance of the new breed of turbo-charged petrol engines in India (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/technical-stuff/228768-maintenance-new-breed-turbo-charged-petrol-engines-india.html)

Dear everybody
I have been an ardent follower of the forum for almost 10 years now. Though I have not posted any reviews I have read many and have come to the conclusion that this is the most authoritative knowledge base for vehicles in India.
The country has seen a revolution where petrol engines are considered. Long being used to NA engines with mileage being the primary concern, we are seeing the rising popularity of turbo charged petrol engines with better performance. Perhaps the first one on the scene was the 1 liter turbo in Baleno RS (since discontinued). Since then, Tata, Hyundai & Mahindra have each come up with their versions. The service center capabilities varying wildly from city to city what do you think will be the future of these engines 5 to 10 years from now? Maintaining a NA engine is now pretty much possible even from a roadside mechanic. But what about these specialized engines which even now many manufacturer service centers are clueless about?

The Turbos have been there for sometime now and thankfully it wasnt Maruti who introduced it! The Laura 1.8 TSI, Linea 1.4 TJet were stalwarts who continue to rule the hearts of enthusiasts. Having researched thoroughly into Turbo tech to try to extract better FE from the TJet has led me to believe and further hardened by seeing the efforts people like Honda and VW have put into their products to cool down the Intake temperatures. Ours being a hot tropical climate and our fuel quality critically hamper optimal efficiency of Turbos. Hence Honda, VW etc have been heavily tweaking their tech to use Water cooled intercooler etc hybrid tech. Simple equation is cooler intake air equals to happier engine, better FE and Power! The intake air in an NA engine doesn't get as hot as in a turbo due to compression and laws of Physics.

Now to come your point of Turbos Engines being more complicated than NA engines, the best reference which comes to my mind is when MPFI, ECUs etc came in to replace Carbs and mechanics were like those will be complicated stuff. Once people really take interest in understanding the simple processes and mechanics involved i am sure things will smoothen out. In-fact most of the fabled Diesels like the Fiat MJD or as Maruti calls it the DDiS are also Turbo charged.

More than Turbo i guess its the engineering at core and then the support staff who can change the perceptions and help get a better experience.

Ex 1. VWs initial 1.8 TSIs were superb engines but then when they started running into design issues VW group companies went for recalls but unfortunately the owners in India never got benefited or even informed! Result were N number of owners ended up with water pump, tensioner etc issues and cars ended up at the workshop for extended periods bcoz the damages were already done.

Ex 2. Honda being Honda and they didn't want to spoil their name in India, knew their 1.5 Turbos are not efficient in Hot climates and there have been many issues reported across the globe like Engine oil consumption etc. Hence they took the easy way out saying NA is NA and had the audacity to sell the Civic with that lackluster 1.8 NA.

Ex 3. Fiat way back understood that Turbo was the next jump and Turbo charged they super robust 1.4 Fire platform and the result was the 1.4 TJet. Well in India due to Fiat being Fiat very few would know what that small engine can do, but a few YouTube searches will tell you that it can be a fire cracker and be very robust at the same time. Obviously its not as Hi-Tech as a TSI or a Ford Ecoboost but it gets the job done and can keep in doing it for miles. But the workshops as most know are horrible and just to show how badly trained these service chaps are, i once blasted them because neither did they have the tools to check a Wastegate nor did they understand what i was complaining about or wanted them to look into.

At the end of the day i feel the money we pay the OEMs in terms of support, going by the logic that any product costing includes post purchase support components and labour as well, just goes down the drain. For regular maintenance like oil change etc we can go to the service center, for everything else there are WhatsApp groups and Team-Bhp.

I think the way we should put down our money should be based on our requirements, if the product matches them and then if the company is able to provide us with the spares either ways the service centers wont be able troubleshoot issues and we would end doing DIY or going to some FNG SME.

Just lik2 Collin McRae said, "When in doubt just flat out!"

As much as I love driving the new turbo-petrols, I'll be the first to admit that they are extraordinarily complex & long-term maintenance won't be as simple as the good, old naturally-aspirated petrols.

For instance, we'll start with the turbo-charger itself. Your best friend if maintained well (and you practice the 1-minute idling rule), your worst enemy if you are careless. The fuelling systems of the new direct-injection turbo-petrols are also very high tech & complex. And then you have some motors which are pushed to the limit. E.g. Duster 1.3L Turbo with 154 BHP on tap. Just for the sake of comparison, consider old diesels versus the new common-rail type; the latter is awesome when everything is working well, but when things go wrong (injectors, turbos, fuelling etc.), it's super expensive.

I don't think the typical owner who keeps his cars for 5 - 7 years will face much of an inconvenience. But longer-term owners like me who hold onto cars for 10 years will surely see higher maintenance / repair work with a turbo-petrol than a naturally-aspirated one. My suggestion = rigorously stick to the maintenance schedules in your owner's manual (especially those oil changes), get the longest extended warranty you can buy, practice the 1-minute turbo idling rule, fill up pure petrol from COCO pumps on highway drives and keep a good independent garage handy once out of warranty.

While the competence of people in authorised service centers is on the decline, there are scores of very good FNGs coming up, and such guys are committed to learning new technologies

The root cause of most machine related issues in India is the weather.

Any new technology will get mastered by Indians; except automatic transmissions, I dont think there is anything that Indians haven't mastered.

Yes, such masters aren't out in the open on the net - they are there in some part of the country, in some town or street, and one needs to find them out.

Rightly said. Every machine has a start up and shut down procedure, and if rightly followed, this aids in its longevity.

Long ago, when turbos got introduced in buses, I remember seeing a small guideline on this idling rule written on the top of the speedo console for drivers to follow - and I also observed that they did follow the idling rule.

There are very few owners today who retain their cars for a long time, and therefore manufacturers aren't too concerned about building products that last a lifetime.

TC gasoline engines are going to be even more complicated than Turbo-diesels. The whole design of adding a turbo to a gasoline engine is a bunch of engineers working around basic principles of thermodynamics. Diesel engines have high exhaust pressure due to high compression and diesel fuel is not volatile like gasoline. These factors make it more favorable to add a turbo to a diesel engine.

To get a TC gasoline engine to match the reliability of today's TC diesel engines requires a few generations. EVs will become mainstream by then.
Far from it. The European car brands struggle to make bulletproof TC diesel engines. There are 100s of Innovas with over 500k km on the ODO running fine with regular maintenance. I've posted the technical reasoning above :)

15,000 km oil changes don't work in India.

Why should there be a problem? A majority of passenger vehicle diesel engines have been turbocharged for 10-15 years now, and they aren't breaking down by the roadside. Truck engines have been turbocharged for 50 years, so every roadside truck mechanic already knows how to replace them.

Just a friendly reminder - forced induction petrol engines have been mainstream with Japanese manufacturers since the 1980s, and even further back in the US. There is nothing inherently complex about servicing a turbocharger, any more than there is in servicing a water pump.

Most problems with modern cars are a result of complex electronics that serve the purposes of safety or convenience. As every system is integrated with every other, and a single controller in a chain failing can lead to multiple failures, timely diagnostics and isolation are extremely important.

It also depends on the volumes of any particular technology being sold. Almost all the brands have now turbo petrols in their portfolio and they are selling in good numbers. Be it nexon, venue , sonet or xuv300 all these cars are bringing decent volumes of turbo petrols. In a few years we will definitely see technicians getting familiar with this technology.

I would rather stick to bigger displacement naturally aspirated engine than a turbocharged small engine. These engines are too sensitive to fuel quality and weather which are not that favorable in our country. Also, most of them employ direct injection, which get clogged and the intake valve too gets clogged as it's not being washed with fuel mixture.

All in all, I believe turbo petrols are fun only till they are new. Once issues arise, they are definitely going to hit hard on the pocket.

Wasn't aware idling is super important to turbo engines. I was always under the impression that every engine needs to idle before driving off but it looks like for turboed engines it's a rule. Did some digging around and found this tbhp article from 2012! Thanks for the reminder.

https://www.team-bhp.com/tech-stuff/...o-charged-cars

As mentioned in the article, I guess most of the current turbos in India are oil cooled which are susceptible to earlier failure if idle schedule isn't followed?

Also, at the same time, the vehicle with turbo petrol engine has significantly more upfront cost when compared with its naturally aspirated counterpart. So, it is a double blow to the pocket actually, in terms of upfront cost as well as repetitive cost of maintenance.

Sticking to manufacturer recommended oil change intervals, using the specified grade and spec of the engine oil and filling fuel from reliable pumps should be sufficient.

For those who need to go the extra mile, the various injector cleaner from reputed brands can be used along with the tankful every 5k kms or so.

It isn't the engine and its components that can pose a problem in terms of maintenance, it's the idiots who want to cut corners and save a few rupees - the engine oil being the most important item here, followed by the coolant. Put in the wrong oil or coolant (even if you are not saving much, but out of ignorance), and look forward to really expensive repairs in the medium-to-long term.

Thank you Landcruiser123 for this post! I have been searching this topic for a few days and just this morning reading the guidelines to create a new thread for comparing Turbo diesels and Turbo petrols and their reliability comparatively. Since turbo diesels run 4-5 lakh KM with regular maintenance I was wondering about the reliability of newly launched TGDI and TSI engines, as now I believe they have/ will become more mainstream now.
I want to believe that the Hyundai GDI and New TSI will be as reliable as a MJD for example.
I so want to buy a i20 Turbo/ Rapid TSI AT! But I plan to keep my car for 7-8 years at least and reliability of new age direct injection turbo petrols is yet to be tested in our climate!

Two months back, I was on a search for a small hatchback for my sister. These were my requirements:

1. From the options available in Indian market, car should be simple, easy to maintain and reliable.
2. No 3 cylinder engines.
3. No turbo petrols.
4. No automatic transmissions / AMT / CVT etc, only MT.

I chose a Hyundai NIOS 1.2 NA MT variant over the Turbo variant. Swift in Kerala is like sand in the beach, so got something new and refreshing.

I'm a strict advocate for following manufacturer recommendations (barring a few exceptions), so question of modifications does not arise. Chose a Hyundai NIOS NA with the following rationale:

1. We have manufacturers like Hyundai / KIA who are unable to solve simple brake problems, can I expect them to handle problems related to systems as complex as a 3 cylinder turbo petrol? No! Finding a good authorized service centre is like saying, I'm happily married, you know what I'm implying :D

2. I'm still somehow not convinced with 3 cylinder engines, although there are some good engines in the market, call it my mental block.

3. No doubt they are complex, some of these turbo petrols might have proven their mettle outside India, but I don't feel confident with turbo petrols when compared to turbo diesels. Turbo diesels have been in the Indian market since a long time and can be safely assumed as reliable, not the case with these newer turbo petrols. Last 7 years I got the opportunity to work on some turbo petrols - B38, B48 from BMW, M274, M260, M276, M256, M254 from Daimler, but these too took their time to get the reliable badge.

One can avoid surprises with a 5 year manufacturer warranty and scheduled maintenance. After that one is left with the mercy of garages who might not have the required know-how. And by garages, I mean not the ones from big cities, but also from places in rural India.

For time being I have left the FE of turbo petrols out of discussion, which is also a big question mark !

4. I'm not talking about the 8 speed ZF Transmission here, but referring to the recent flood of "automatic" transmissions introduced in the Indian market. Try troubleshooting a failed automatic transmission, if big OEM's can struggle to troubleshoot, I do not expect my friendly neighborhood garage to solve my problems. On the other hand, a MT would not cause me that much headache.

Agreed, there are some workshops in India with skilled technicians to service / repair / troubleshoot complex automotive systems, they are very rare, but not hard to find - thanks to T-BHP !

Situation will definitely improve over time, until then I prefer to keep it simple and stupid. For me reliability and peace of mind is far more important than few minutes / hours of driving ecstasy. Troubleshooting I have enough at work.

Spike :uncontrol

To get a hang of how complicated TC Petrol engines are just open the hood and remove engine cover of any turbo petrol car and compare that with a NA petrol engine :) There's too many pipes/hoses/wires running around the small engine block. Too many parts = more probability of something failing.

Plus, Turbo engine's parts have tighter tolerances as they have to deal with high pressure and temperatures, so if something goes wrong slightly, it will put the car in limp mode immediately. NA engine cars can still get you home with some jugaad.

The real test of a turbo petrol is once all components start ageing, how big a hole it will put in one's pocket compared to NA engine. I wont be so worried about service competency as humans adapt to changes pretty fast.