Black Smoke.....power or waste?

It's both power and a waste.

 

Until someone comes up with a do all turbo, there is always going to be a little smoke at some point, for the power Mr. Haneys truck makes it smokes very little.

Proper tuning goes a long way, but it takes fuel to make power, fuel without the air mean black smoke and I would say that is most of the problem, people add the fuel without having the turbo capable of backing it up.

 

Look at the really souped up diesels, lots of smoke, lots of fuel needs to be used to prevent melting the pistons, a cooling effect as the compression ratios are usually insane. And theres no worries about flooding, no spark plugs. So big throttle body, big injectors, high flow fuel pumps, big turbo's, etc. make lots of extra smoke, but also lots of insane torque figures. It starts to be rated in gallons per mile. lol

 

You're thinking gasser. On a Diesel, when you're seeing all that smoke, the temps are likely skyrocketing instead of having a cooling effect. As a Diesel pours in more fuel, it starts getting hot and smokey. FYI, none of those Diesel's have "big throttle bodies" either.

 

The smoke comes from overfueling the engine before the turbo can catch up. Many people that pay a lot for performance tunes want to see smoke and hear the engine crackle to assure them they got their monies worth. Plus, you get a little more take off this way. Any tune can be adjusted to bring the fuel on slowly to reduce smoke. It's just that most drivers don't want the engine lag that comes with it.

That, and many think the billowing black smoke is cool. As long as I have plenty of torque, I will put up with a moderate amount of engine lag and not have the smoke.

 

Not always true, there are plenty of performance diesels that use fuel to cool things off, it just takes a whole bunch of it to start putting the fire out.

 

<<<Hmmm, wonder if anybody's tried an old reliable Supercharger instead of a turbo with a kit?>>>

Yeah, Detroit Diesel (and others) did back in the day. 238 hp 6-71 inlines and 8V-71 318 horse screamin' demons. Made a lot of noise but didn't really go anywhere. All the black stuff dripped out on the ground instead of going out the stacks.

 

Yeah it's a waste, from my understanding of someone very knowledgeable in this field when you see black smoke it because it's been tuned only on fuel parameters, nothing else has been taken into consideration, and you're right it is an open invite for the EPA , if you see a modern engine belching out black smoke any idiot would know it's been modified. Best way to tune is the mechanical way, another guy uses marine injector tips, this boosts power by 100-120 hp safely and keeps the engine cool, chipping ecu's is getting big, I don't personally like it because not only can it be dangerous for an engine but can also negate your warranty, a real mechanic could tune an engine no problems, maybe that's what we're missing in these times of computer tech, good old fashioned mechanics!