There are two main groups of turbo noises.
The “PSHHHHHH” sound is the excess boost being vented to atmosphere by the BOV you just had installed. It is 100% harmless. With the stock setup, it was fed back into the intake and inaudible. To answer your question, you won’t hear it all the time …. only when there’s enough boost built to create the noise, and you come off the throttle in such a way to create intake vacuum to activate the BOV (which can be mechanical or ECU controlled, depending on type).
The second set of turbo noises ….. this is a higher pitched sound. Sometimes it’s described as a “STU-TU-TU-TU” noise. Other times, it can be just a quick, high pitched screech, depending on boost level, how quick you’ve come off throttle, and a host of other factors like intake type, exhaust headers, etc. This is the sound of the turbines “surging” because you are slowing them down suddenly from high RPM while still under boost pressure, ie before the BOV can do the job described above. Yea, that’s compressor surge. While it technically is causing additional wear, it’s not the sentence of death it was to turbos 30 years ago, and the wear issue is often exaggerated by internet lore. Many folks go out of their way to get these sounds and, conversely, they can be nearly impossible to eliminate if you have an open intake, open exhaust, etc.
Bottom line, if you don’t like the noises, I get it. But, don’t dislike them because of anxiety.
![[driving]](/images/smilies/icon_smile_driving.gif "Driving [driving]"){kind=icon}
