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It seems you cant talk about turbos nowadays without hearing the bad word "lag". But it seems like nobody really wants to talk about it. What is it and what kind of impact does it have on your application? Turbo Lag is often misinterpreted for boost threshold. Please read the definitions of lag, boost threshold, and throttle response in our Pro Street Glossary. In the day to day usage of your turbo, lag means the time between you hitting the throttle and the turbo providing full boost. By definition then, lag is a really bad thing. But it doesnt have anything to do with throttle response, that will remain the same, turbo lag or no.

Consider that if you did not have a turbo powering your car, the brief lag would be followed by no boost at all. It would make sense to then say that the lag would be from the time you hit the throttle all the way to redline. Which in turn would make your life completely miserable. The situation comes down to a comprimise, some tolerance for lag must be taken into account. Accepting some lag with a huge torque increase as opposed to not accepting lag with no torque increase. Lag decreases as rpm rises. On a properly setup street car, boost rise will follow the position of your foot any time the revs are past 4000 rpm.