Turbo for dummies?

[Edina__Monsoon]

New 2018 Civic Touring (sedan) owner here. Never owned a CVT, nor a turbo. I'm not really an auto enthusiast (I know... "hiss-boo! burn the witch!"). Can anyone direct me to a relatively easy to understand description of how the CVT and the turbo work -- and if there are any unique aspects of the Civic's CVT and/or turbo, that would be good to know as well. Feel free to dumb it down.

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[totopo]

New 2018 Civic Touring (sedan) owner here. Never owned a CVT, nor a turbo. I'm not really an auto enthusiast (I know... "hiss-boo! burn the witch!"). Can anyone direct me to a relatively easy to understand description of how the CVT and the turbo work -- and if there are any unique aspects of the Civic's CVT and/or turbo, that would be good to know as well. Feel free to dumb it down.

wikipedia is a good start! it actually is on the detailed side though

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbocharger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuously_variable_transmission

There's nothing you really NEED to know to operate your vehicle. Honda made it pretty idiot proof to make a reliable commuter car.

The biggest concept of turbos is that you shouldn't think of combustion engines as gasoline burning engines. Rather they are oxygen pumps. Engines are oxygen limited. That's why displacement matters. It's easy to put as much gas in as you want, but you can only "ingest" so much oxygen. Turbos basically scavenge energy from the exhaust to push more oxygen in the motor.

 

[hobby-man]

Engineering Explained!

 

[Schmullis]

New 2018 Civic Touring (sedan) owner here. Never owned a CVT, nor a turbo. I'm not really an auto enthusiast (I know... "hiss-boo! burn the witch!"). Can anyone direct me to a relatively easy to understand description of how the CVT and the turbo work -- and if there are any unique aspects of the Civic's CVT and/or turbo, that would be good to know as well. Feel free to dumb it down.

Good rules of thumb:
1 - Don't push the car into hard acceleration for 10 minutes when starting a cold car at the start of the day
2 - Don't push the car with full acceleration right before turning the car off. Let the car drive for a few minutes after hard turbo acceleration to allow the turbo impeller to cool down.
3 - Drive with the turbo gauge on the dash for a while, so you can see when the turbo is engaged in normal driving

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