turbo project

[peanotation]

I'm not putting you down, but your dad is right. Even if you don't end up breaking something, it isn't going to be worth all this work. I'd hate to see you end up in a real bad spot, with a broke down car and no money. It sound like you have the guts to just "go for it" without much experience (no offense) which is a great attribute, but doing this on your DD is a bad idea. Save your money and buy a project 1G dsm. The G will be a great DD. 8)

flame suit on.

well said. after i typed up my post last night and ran to the bathroom to puke, i was thinking that the bigger picture wasn't even addressed, which you just did. turboing your DD, which is something i did, is somewhat of a mistake. shit will break; things will start leaking more-so than before; and it requires CONSTANT attention. checking your oil and popping the hood once a week? ha i'd be dead if i did that, try once a DAY. unless money isn't an issue for you, it's not a good idea because parts don't exactly break at convinient times, they love to go when you're saving up dough for something else. everytime i walked to the car, i would get down on the ground and look underneath and pray to god i didn't see a huge puddle of oil or coolant, and most of the time i got lucky. every time i would get into the car in the garage, i'd spend at least 5 minutes checking fluids and making sure couplers were OK and what not. once a week or so i'd find something wrong.

[underated]

the head won't help your current situation, which is running a safe and humble tune. all that will do is add more power, something you really shouldn't be interested in at this point in time.

upgrading engine internals, in retrospect to this discussion, is something you need to forget about entirely for the time being.

with that being said, you can slap on a turbo with the shittiest tune in the world and run 8psi NO PROBLEM. a week later, be sure to mount a camera in your engine bay so we can see the block split down the middle.

it's all about reliability and efficiency, with practicality mixed in the middle. guys have been runing 8psi on stock internals on the 4G64 for YEARS, but their tune and driving method is all key here. if you're going to be one of those guys that's going to showboat to his buddies all night by doing 5th gear pulls down the highway at WOT for hours on end, then maybe engine internals is something you should consider upgrading at this point, in which case, i recomend you do nothing but read for the next year before you buy a single part.

with a moderatly rich tune (~10-11.0 on the wideband), 0 knock, and nice low EGTs, you can run 8psi on the 4G64 until the apocalypse, assuming you don't drive it like a total dipshit.

plan your turbo build in two seperate parts: physical, mechanical components (which turbo you gonna run? what injectors? what size charge pipes? etc etc) and the electrical, tuning area (GM Maf, megasquirt, MAFTpro, standalone, piggyback, speed density, injectors in the intake, etc etc.) of course, when i say plan it two seperate parts, there should be some communication between the two (injectors vs. tuning option, yadda yadda)

as said before, for $1000 you're not leaving us a lot of options to reccomend to you. i have billions of ideas flying through my head but i can't say a single one because of your redicously low budget.

personally, i am completely against piggybacks (with the emanage being the only exception). i never had good results with my s-afc2, and guys using them on the 2G were only using it for moderate adjustments, not complete fuel map realignments like we need on the N/A ECU.

standalone is the shit. it covers all your bases. it is truly the most controlled state of tuning you can purchase. but unless you have a team of tuners standing by, or you feel like spending weeks on end programming the shit out of it, it's not practical at all for your situation, and it's expensive as all hell. especially for just a measly 8psi, it's total overkill.

GM MAF and maftpro are pretty solid. the GM Maf will read all the compressed air post-turbo and let your ECU actually know how much air is going into the engine. maftpro is something you should read up on, being different and the same all at the same time.

speed density is the shit. enough said.

anyone feel to correct me of i mistated something, i'm more drunk than the pope on new years right now.

Best advise hands down right there^

personally ive been running 10-12psi for a little over a good year now with no problems *knock on wood* and i was running 8-10 for another 1.5yrs before that... i put together one of those "budget" kits out of spare parts... IT ALL DEPENDS ON TUNING...

i started out with 450cc injectors and the spexi safc2(do not get an safc2)
now i have the gm maf (zero'd out)with an emange to make major...
might be moving to ecu flash or megasquirt soon havent decided yet

im still using the 450cc injectors only and i was able to make 252whp and 287tq so it can be done without alot of fancy gimicks...

alot of stuff people tell you to get is "good to have" but not really necessary... from the sound of your questions you're not gonna be tuning your own car so get the basics and take it to the best shop you can find and have them tune the car then DONT TOUCH ANYTHING people always want to go faster so usually they think hey ive got a boost controller hmmmm let me turn it up a little... they dont thin about the car being tuned for specific settings and even a few psi difference could blow your motor... im not saying it will but it might...

Tuning makes all the difference trust me...

[Reelax]

Best advise hands down

personally ive been running 10-12psi for a little over a good year now with no problems *knock on wood* and i was running 8-10 for another 1.5yrs before that... i put together one of those "budget" kits out of spare parts... IT ALL DEPENDS ON TUNING...

i started out with 450cc injectors and the spexi safc2(do not get an safc2)
now i have the gm maf (zero'd out)with an emange to make major...
might be moving to ecu flash or megasquirt soon havent decided yet

im still using the 450cc injectors only and i was able to make 252whp and 287tq so it can be done without alot of fancy gimicks...

alot of stuff people tell you to get is "good to have" but not really necessary... from the sound of your questions you're not gonna be tuning your own car so get the basics and take it to the best shop you can find and have them tune the car then DONT TOUCH ANYTHING people always want to go faster so usually they think hey ive got a boost controller hmmmm let me turn it up a little... they dont thin about the car being tuned for specific settings and even a few psi difference could blow your motor... im not saying it will but it might...

Tuning makes all the difference trust me...

bro, he was planning on tuning it himself...

[underated]

bro, he was planning on tuning it himself...

oh damn i didnt see that part... well in that case, tuning is not easy so goodluck with that one lol

[seth98esT]

Tuning isnt an issue, you can alwyas get a shop to tune it for $100-200 on the dyno.

[bebopin64]

Tuning isnt an issue, you can alwyas get a shop to tune it for $100-200 on the dyno.

that sounds like a worthwhile investment. How would I get the car from my assembling place to the shop (I know just the place)? I guess a trailor.

[seth98esT]

You can drive it without tuning it. Just setup the MS for the 450cc injectors(just the injector compensation) and you should be able to drive it. Probably wont be able to boost at all, or at least not smoothly, but you can drive out of boost. Just take the wastegate arm off the flapper and you wont boost at all even if you try.

[bebopin64]

I might be getting myself a $50 14b. Some local guy crashed an eclipse turbo and the pictures make it look pretty good. I'm gonna check it out and see what condition its in.

[peanotation]

you can drive it wherever you want, no matter how bad the tune is, as long as you don't boost. like seth said, disconnect the wastegate actuator arm

[steveVR4]

bebopin, no consideration to my and Peano's advice? At least think about it. What are you going to do, and what is your dad going to do, when the car is in pieces for weeks (or worse) and you have no car to drive?

[seth98esT]

If the car is important to your dailey routing(ie ride to work/school) then you absolutely need a beater. The car may be down for a week or a month if something breaks and you dont have money to fix it. I didnt have a beater at first when I started my swap. I soon learned of my mistake and bought one! Once my swap was finished I sold my beater and now I wish I had another beater that the swap is done!

[steveVR4]

I found these mitsu turbos on ebay that are internally wastegated but they are permanently set to 7psi.

By the way, this is not true. You wont be able to run less boost than the WGA is set for (7psi perhaps), but you can always run more boost. Thats what a boost controller is for.

[Reelax]

the only reason i have not gone turbo yet is that i don't have a second car of my own. right now i only have one spot in our garage to park so even when i buy another car where sould i park it (i make my girl park her brand new SUV on the street).... how long do you think my car would b on the street before it was sitting on blocks?

point is, if your going to do this you will need a second car or be able to rent cars when your daily is out of commission (and it will be).

[seth98esT]

By the way, this is not true. You wont be able to run less boost than the WGA is set for (7psi perhaps), but you can always run more boost. Thats what a boost controller is for.

Which turbos did you find on ebay? My 14b stock internal gate is 8psi. When running no boost controller, my turbo spools to 8-9psi, no less.

[steveVR4]

Which turbos did you find on ebay? My 14b stock internal gate is 8psi. When running no boost controller, my turbo spools to 8-9psi, no less.

Yeah thats what I'm saying. 7,8,9 somewhere around there depending on a lot of variables. I'm just clarifying for him, that just because WGA opens the internal gate at X psi, that doesn't mean you can ONLY run X psi. You can always run more.

Just saw your cardomain page, BTW. Looks awesome. :firedevil: I hope you're not saying that you normally run only 8-9psi. I take it the "6gVR4 o2 housing" is, in otherwords, a 1g DSM housing. A ported 2g will buy you some more flow. :twisted:

[Jet Black]

the only reason i have not gone turbo yet is that i don't have a second car of my own. right now i only have one spot in our garage to park so even when i buy another car where sould i park it (i make my girl park her brand new SUV on the street).... how long do you think my car would b on the street before it was sitting on blocks?

point is, if your going to do this you will need a second car or be able to rent cars when your daily is out of commission (and it will be).

Hahaha, is it parked underneath a tree? I bet it has to be washed every few days.

Anyways a DD is absolute must. Unless you have some good buddies who are as dedicated to this project as yourself (i.e. Matt, Ash). But even then when you have to make small but significant trips, life really sucks. At one point I found myself working till 4AM trying to get my stock parts back on so I could drive to school to pick up some transcripts. That was NOT fun.

Also for the turbo...spoil yourself. ;) It is afterall the heart of this project. Don't be afraid to drop a significant amount of money on it. I'm not saying that you have to. Though if I could do it again, I would have.

Same for tuning. Thats the brain of this project. A beating heart without a brain is practically the definition of comatose. Tuning, in a nutshell, is where you can make power and avoid blowing your engine. Just to stress the importance of tuning, one 3G member with a twin turbo V6 managed to boost up to 15 psi. Thats a record that still has yet to be surpassed by the V6 guys. What made it all the more amazing was the fact that his motor had 186k miles on it when he started. He ran it for some 22k more miles without ANY problems. Unfortunetly a bad timing belt is what ultimately did him in. Interestingly enough the timing belt experience gave him a chance to verify his claim of no problems. His pistons were spotless (aside from the valve indentations and general carbon deposits). Tuning is king! Much more so with our motors and their higher compression ratio. We don't have much room for errors like the DSM guys.

...Anyways...

What I found really helped me during my collection stage was having a pen and a pad next to my bed. Sooner or later you will become so wrapped up in this project that you will only think about it day and night. All you thoughts begin to revolve around the project. And at bed time, you will find yourself thinking about it the most. This is also around the time when you will begin to discover some of the small parts that you need, but don't have. At bed time I used to try to recollect every singly part of the turbo system and how it would need to be installed (i.e. remove manifold, install gaskets, install mainfold...this is where I would remeber that I needed a certain type of bolts to bolt the manifold to the stock exhaust).

And finally...is your family friend willing to sell us his mandrel bends for relatively cheap? I'm looking to buy multiple bends, and I know atleast a few others are as well. You should ask him.

[seth98esT]

Yeah thats what I'm saying. 7,8,9 somewhere around there depending on a lot of variables. I'm just clarifying for him, that just because WGA opens the internal gate at X psi, that doesn't mean you can ONLY run X psi. You can always run more.

Just saw your cardomain page, BTW. Looks awesome. :firedevil: I hope you're not saying that you normally run only 8-9psi. I take it the "6gVR4 o2 housing" is, in otherwords, a 1g DSM housing. A ported 2g will buy you some more flow. :twisted:

Nah, just when I am breaking something in or testing things, or just scared of breaking something. Right now I run about 14-15psi dailey, track usually 18psi. Its all my puny 14b can handle! And I am running an Evo3 exhaust manifold with just a stock 1g/6gVR4 o2 housing which I need to upgrade to a tubular housing.

Personally, I wouldnt mind picking up an Evo3 16g.

Right now I dont have any piggy back systems running, no manual fuel correction or anything, but my A/F ratio under boost goes directly to 11.4 on the wideband and it only cost me $100. Its tuned to 11.4AFR, more aggressive timing maps, adjustable stutterbox, fixed a few CELs that are common with my swap, knock light built into the stock boost wire, and a few other options, all for $100 and I can get updated chips for $15. How do you ask? EPROM chip from www.keydiver.com If your running an 8g, Im not sure if you have are able to use an EPROM chip or not, but if you can, it would be a great way to go. Definitely a great option for 7gers who can use a 1g or 2g EPROM chip.

[bebopin64]

As far as the install down time and broken parts, I have a friend that can pick me up on his way to school if I need him to. And generally I have about $800 cash in my checking account for different things that I might need. I treat $800 as $0 because I hate spending money on things I want and then 2 weeks later not having money for something I need so thats what I do.

I guess I will set a price I'm trying to stay below at about $1600. Does this sound feasible with decent parts? I will ask about the mandrel bends.

[Reelax]

As far as the install down time and broken parts, I have a friend that can pick me up on his way to school if I need him to. And generally I have about $800 cash in my checking account for different things that I might need. I treat $800 as $0 because I hate spending money on things I want and then 2 weeks later not having money for something I need so thats what I do.

I guess I will set a price I'm trying to stay below at about $1600. Does this sound feasible with decent parts? I will ask about the mandrel bends.

is your dad going to even let you do this? he bought the car right? is it yours or HIS... who's name is on the title? i mean, he bought you a car so you can have transportation, he can always take it away and make you walk or ride the bus. if you are REALLY serious about this... b prepared to spend $5000.00 on this project (you may not spend it all but b prepared). you will run into problems and need to spend more than your small budget. it's going to happen. everyone that has attempted to do this on their own has had LONG periods (read: months) of downtime w/ their cars. it sounds like you are going to try to hide this from your dad. can you hide it when it's not running and you are waiting for parts that either you can't afford or have to be ordered from out of state? u really need to get your dad on board or you may not end up w/ a broken car at all... u'll end up w/ no car.

[bebopin64]

when did I say I was doing this behind his back? That would be pretty much impossible even if I wanted to try. I simply put together the most intelligable and biased little presentation I could and convinced him I could handle it. I then told him the worst possible scenarios and how I would make it through them.

When I begin the entire process I will have $2300 on hand.