Turbos, Records and a Drug-Running Honda | Chris Kambouris of TurboDirect SA
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Chris Kambouris (TurboDirect South Africa | Founder and MD)
Melanie Walker (Motorsport broadcaster and former Group N racing driver)
Turbo tech, motorsport history and a wild drag car story
This episode is for petrolheads who love real mechanical detail, motorsport history, and the kind of enthusiast rabbit holes that end with a drug-busted drag car. Roger McCleery and Melanie Walker sit down with Chris Kambouris, founder of TurboDirect South Africa, to talk all things turbocharging - from DIY turbo builds in the mid-nineties to a Honda NSX drag car that ran a 6.5-second quarter mile at 211 mph, got seized by the Las Vegas PD, and is now heading to PRI Indianapolis.
Chris explains how the core turbocharger design has been unchanged since a Swiss engineer invented it in the 1940s - and exactly what has changed: the control systems, VNT technology, bearing materials, and ECU strategies like anti-lag that can destroy a turbo in seconds. He breaks down the difference between twin-turbo, bi-turbo sequential and compound turbo setups, and explains why the tiny GT06 Garrett turbo in a Tata two-cylinder diesel spins at 360,000 RPM - faster than a nine-millimetre bullet at the rim.
You will also hear why buying a genuine BorgWarner turbo through a VW dealer can cost four times more than buying the identical part through TurboDirect, why a P0299 fault code almost never means a failed turbo on a 1.6 TSI, and why root-cause diagnosis matters more than the replacement part itself. Plus: Group N Golf racing, Kyalami pit-straight sounds, Dakar truck dreams, a 389 km/h turbocharged street-legal motorcycle, and the South African TurboDirect USA expansion.
Melanie Walker (Motorsport broadcaster and former Group N racing driver)
Turbo tech, motorsport history and a wild drag car story
This episode is for petrolheads who love real mechanical detail, motorsport history, and the kind of enthusiast rabbit holes that end with a drug-busted drag car. Roger McCleery and Melanie Walker sit down with Chris Kambouris, founder of TurboDirect South Africa, to talk all things turbocharging - from DIY turbo builds in the mid-nineties to a Honda NSX drag car that ran a 6.5-second quarter mile at 211 mph, got seized by the Las Vegas PD, and is now heading to PRI Indianapolis.
Chris explains how the core turbocharger design has been unchanged since a Swiss engineer invented it in the 1940s - and exactly what has changed: the control systems, VNT technology, bearing materials, and ECU strategies like anti-lag that can destroy a turbo in seconds. He breaks down the difference between twin-turbo, bi-turbo sequential and compound turbo setups, and explains why the tiny GT06 Garrett turbo in a Tata two-cylinder diesel spins at 360,000 RPM - faster than a nine-millimetre bullet at the rim.
You will also hear why buying a genuine BorgWarner turbo through a VW dealer can cost four times more than buying the identical part through TurboDirect, why a P0299 fault code almost never means a failed turbo on a 1.6 TSI, and why root-cause diagnosis matters more than the replacement part itself. Plus: Group N Golf racing, Kyalami pit-straight sounds, Dakar truck dreams, a 389 km/h turbocharged street-legal motorcycle, and the South African TurboDirect USA expansion.
