W2 Drop-in Turbo Upgrade - Design Pt 4; Wheel Design

Welcome to part 4 of our W2 design blog series where we go in the whys of turbo development for your 10th generation Honda Civic. In the first three blogs we covered our design goals, the improvements we made to the turbine housing, and the improvements we made to the compressor housing and CHRA. In this update, we are going to dive into wheel selection for the W2.

The size wheels we chose for the W2 upgraded turbo kit might surprise you. Why? Because they are actually the same size as our  W1 with just a small change on the turbine side. We dove really deep into wheel design when we wrote about the W1 so we won’t hit you with all those details again. But if you are new here or need a refresher check out that blog and then come back here and read on.

The W2 will actually use our same billet 6x6 compressor wheel as the W1. This wheel has 47mm inducer and a 58mm exducer with extended tip technology resulting in a wheel that is much larger than OEM. Now you might be thinking how can the W2 make more power than the W1 using the same sized wheel? The secret lies in the A/R’s that we talked about in parts 2 & 3. By sizing up to the larger A/R’s we can flow much more air and that translates into more power potential. 

On the turbine side of things we kept the dimensions the same as well but with one key difference. We opted to go from an 11-blade to a 9-blade turbine wheel. Removing the 2 blades does a couple of things here.

First, fewer wheels mean more space in between the wheels which means we have the ability to move more air by occupying that space . Moving more air is one of the key ways that we are going to be able to make great power under the curve.

Second, fewer blades means less back pressure in the scroll (insides of the turbine housing) which results in less stress acting on the wheels and allows for a more durable unit at elevated boost pressures. This is key to longevity of the unit.

Having fewer blades can result in a slower spool response (boost lag) but is a trade-off we make for more horsepower and torque. For the W2 we mate these wheels to a larger shaft and bearing set and so durability is improved. 

Join us in our next blog as we answer the question everyone keeps asking. Will the W2 be journal bearing or ball bearing?

Till next time,
Vincent

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