I'm replacing my burned out turbo. How do you determine the horsepower it is putting out..?
The only way is put the truck on a chassis dyno and measure it. If you mean "what is my engine's rated horsepower?" there should be a tag somewhere on the engine with the info you need.
Yair . . . juloftx Is that a straight up or a loaded question? As regards your machine or truck the turbo isn't "putting out" any horse power. It just crams in air to allow the engine to burn more fuel and produce extra power . . . how much will depend on injectors and boost level. The engine manufacturer should be able to supply the numbers or, if it's a pick-up it should not be too spendy to put it on a dyno. Another way to look at your question is that the turbo-charger is in affect a minature gas turbine driving a rotary compressor which takes horsepower to drive . . . so it is putting out horse power, how much I am unsure but I reckon there would be folks on here who would have a pretty good idea. I think it would be a surprising amount. So can any one out there tell us how many horse-power it would take to run a blower to maintain (say) six pounds of boost on a ten litre diesel at full load . . . a lot of variables here but any ideas . . . anyone? My Wild A$$ed Guess would be some where between thirty and fifty hp. So if you can imagine a little one and a half litre engine running a blower to boost a seven litre litre engine you can see what a huge step in engine technology the turbo charger was. This is all thinking aloud on my part and I am probably going to be way out, interesting discussion though. Cheers.
Try running a naturally asperated diesel over Eisenhower on I 70 in Colorada @ 13,000 ft. elevation and you will soon learn just how valuable a turbo is. I was pulling a refrigerated trailer across that one summer day and thought how nice it would be to take my afternoon nap at that elevation (no need to run the truck, just kick the sleeper doors open and enjoy the breeze). The refer unit did not have a turbo, and when it tried to start it coughed and sputtered for quite some time before it finally ran. Sort of off-topic, sorry.