Rear or Remote Mount Turbos

5th March  2018

Rear or Remote Mount turbos

Some years ago I put a turbo on the tail of a 205 GTI. The car was a Cat-D so it never had a future for high value, although I do wish I never sold it. Anyway that is to digress from the story.

Rear Mount (or remote) mount turbos have long been criticised for many reasons. My own testing told me that they can deliver excellent reliable power with a few downsides. I remember the whole concept causing many a row online  this was 2008. Nowadays you can still find the odd discussion. In my view whether you would choose to rear mount or remote mount depends on packaging. I found one discussion recently were someone had written that if it was any good it would have been used on a production on a car by now. Well in a way it has been used on a number of cars where turbos have been mounted on the end of long tubular manifolds away from the engine. However it's not really seen in the world of car production, as there are simpler, and cheaper, ways to run a turbo when you are designing a car from scratch.  That doesn't mean it's not been seen before though. I think most would yield a point that the Aero industry doesn't tend to employ technology that doesn't work.

An early pioneer then of the rear mount concept was the P47-D Thunderbolt

Take a look below and see this fascinating powerplant. The reason was for packaging, just like many a rear mount on a car.