7G Turbo installation "guide"

[brandon]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(seth98esT)</div><div class='quotemain'>Finally got my flange welded on. Â*Heres where my BOV lays. Â*Rather nice fitment if you ask me. Â*Just hafta cut the dump tube a bit and Im set.

</div>

I need to re-fit some things so my BOV sits closer to the intake tube. Yours is nice and close.

[ken inn]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(brandon)</div><div class='quotemain'>I've been able to get my A/F close to zero when the throttle is open at every RPM range, but whenever I let off the throttle I'm running crazy rich. Â*

I'm gonna pull all the IC piping apart this weekend and just make absolutely sure there are no leaks.</div>

is your bov routed back into the intake? it not, it is expelling air that has already been counted by the mas, and fuel has been added for it. so, when you lift and it opens, the mixture goes rich, and the motor dies. you cannot compensate for it with the afc.

[brandon]

Yep, got it routed back into the intake tube... the only thing I keep thinking is because the dump tract back to the intake is so long it might be an issue (or I have a leak somewhere).

After raising the idle a bit I don't stall anymore, but still run super rich when letting off the gas.

I've talked to a few other people who seem to think it's normal... but dropping down to the 600RPM range doesn't seem too normal to me...

[ken inn]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(brandon)</div><div class='quotemain'>Yep, got it routed back into the intake tube... the only thing I keep thinking is because the dump tract back to the intake is so long it might be an issue (or I have a leak somewhere).

After raising the idle a bit I don't stall anymore, but still run super rich when letting off the gas. Â*

I've talked to a few other people who seem to think it's normal... but dropping down to the 600RPM range doesn't seem too normal to me...</div>

just to be sure, it has to be routed back in AFTER the mas, iow, btwn the mas and the t/bdy.

[brandon]

[brandon]

Hey guys,

I finished up a quick "install guide" as a few of you have requested it. So here goes:

The information below can be used as a guide to installing a turbo on your 4G64 powered 7G Galant. The parts list is only what I used… many of these parts are interchangeable with others (1G/2G/GVR4/aftermarket), but should help you in getting a basic idea. I will gladly answer any questions I can, but there are tons of resources and information out there, namely in the 4G64 Forums on Yahoo. DO YOUR RESEARCH before taking on a project like this. Installing a turbo is a long and painful process, and involves a lot of time, money, and effort. I strongly recommend you have someone (or a couple of someones) help you while working on most of the installation. They can also help keep you sane when things start to go wrong. Anyway, here ya go…

NOTE: I am in no way responsible for anything that may or may not go wrong with your vehicle based on this guide. Also note that this is NOT a step-by-step all-inclusive tutorial. A lot is based on common sense and figuring things out as you go. The information below may not be in proper order, so be sure to read through the entire guide before beginning, and again, use your judgment in figuring out what needs to be done first. Trial and error should be expected!

Parts List

Under the hood:
- 1G 14b turbo w/internal wastegate
- 2G exhaust manifold
- 2G O2 housing
- 2G downpipe
- 1G 14b j-pipe w/nipple
- 1G BOV
- 2G oil pan
- 2G SMIC
- 1G coolant lines (2)
- 2G oil return line
- RRE oil feed line (for a 2G)
- 450cc injectors
- 1G resistor pack
- 1G intake tube
- Gaskets: Head to exhaust manifold, exhaust manifold to turbo, turbo to O2 housing, O2 housing to downpipe, turbo to j-pipe, oil return line (you should get 2, one to turbo, one to oil pan… although I only had one and used this copper gasket sealer spray stuff on the pan side)
- IC piping (pre-bent or flexible radiator hose for both upper and lower)
- Flexible lower radiator hose – you need to replace it if you want the turbo inlet to be accessible
- Flexible 1 ½� pool hose to connect the BOV back to the intake tube
- Plug for the extra hole on the intake tube
- About 3 feet of 3/8� coolant hose (for your coolant lines)
- About 1 foot of 3/16� coolant hose or vacuum line (for your wastegate to j-pipe)
- About 2 feet of 1/8� coolant hose or vacuum line (for your BOV to vacuum line)
- T-fittings (3/16� – 3/16� – 3/16� and 1/8� – 3/16� – 3/16�)
- Various sized hose clamps (for anywhere you have a hose)
- Various sized zip ties

Inside the car:
Apex-I SAFC II
94-01 Acura Integra pillar pod
Autometer Boost gauge
Autometer Pyrometer (EGT)

Tools, Odds & Ends Required

If you don’t have access to a good set of tools, stop right here. You’ll need a number of ratchets, sockets, open ends, extensions, swivel adapters, screwdrivers, pliers, wirecutters, electrical tape, tweezers, and a knife… More specifically, you’ll also want to have a drill and some good bits, a tap (follow the directions for your EGT gauge) a soldering gun / kit, O2 sensor socket (but make sure you get a good quality one if you use this instead of an open end), Oil pressure sender socket, torque wrench, and your two best friends – a breaker bar and some PB Blaster. You’ll also need a bunch of bolts and washers and all that good stuff to put everything together. I made about 10 trips to Home Depot… your best bet is to put all of your parts in a box and bring it to Home Depot with you and just test fit everything. Another option would be to buy a kit if you can find one. Some bolts you can re-use of course, but there are a number of new ones you’ll need. You’ll also need a couple of jacks and jackstands unless you have access to a lift.

The process

NOTE: DISCONNECT THE BATTERY BEFORE DOING ANYTHING!

The order you choose to do everything is pretty much up to you, but I’d recommend getting the non-turbo stuff out of the way first. Start by installing your AFC (Seth posted a tutorial here), re-wiring your fuel pump (see http://www.vfaq.com), and installing your gauges and gauge pod inside the car (they should come with directions).

You then should install your new injectors and wire in the resistor pack. For wiring, you can follow Rob (Jip)’s 2G ECU swap tutorial (http://jipownz.topcities.com/). I used his info from this post also:

“Cut the black/red stripe wires on the injectors. The resistor pack will have 4 wires the same color and 1 wire of a different color, connect the ECU side of the injector black/red wire that you cut, all 4 of them to the 1 different colored wire of the resistor pack. Take each of the 4 same colored wires from the pack and connect 1 each to each black/red wire on the injector harness itself.�

The resistor pack should be mounted somewhere on the firewall… just don’t use one of the grounding ones. Once you have the injectors and resistor pack installed you should set your AFC to –35% across the board (you’re going from 275cc to 450cc). Make sure you’re not spitting fuel all over the place and you should be good to go.

Now you can start ripping everything apart. Remember to break out the PB Blaster and your breaker bar, you’re going to need them. Jack up the car as high as you can on both sides of the front, and get those jackstands under there (hopefully they won’t stay there as long as mine did).

Remove your intake if you haven’t already. Go ahead and remove your battery and battery tray (if you still have it …I didn’t). Remove your front bumper. Basically just get everything that might be in the way, out of the way.

Now is just as good a time as any to drain your oil and coolant also.

You’ll want to remove the 1st O2 sensor before removing any of the exhaust. I didn’t and ended up having to buy an O2 socket, stripping both the O2 sensor bolt and the socket itself, and luckily having my parts car to grab a sensor from. If you get under the car with an open end (7/8� I believe), you should be able to get that sucker off (you get good leverage from being able to push up on the car). Once you get it out you might as well disconnect it from the sensor and put it aside for later so that it’s out of the way.

Now you can start removing your exhaust parts. Your best bet is probably to disconnect from the back forward. A lot of the bolts to the hangers will probably be quite rusted so again make sure to give em a good soak with the PB Blaster. As for the last bends and muffler section, I used a Sawz-all because the last few bolts are really hard to get at.

Disconnect the downpipe and your whole exhaust should then come off the car. Now you can take off the exhaust manifold and gasket.

By now you should be looking at a pretty empty engine bay.

Time to take off the oil pan… there are a ton of bolts and you’ll need a small ratchet and a decent length extension to get at all of them. Just take your time and be sure not to strip any. Once you have all the bolts out you’ll have to give a good yank on it (or pry) to get it off. Things get pretty messy around here so make sure you have a lot of towels handy.

You’re almost done with the removal process. Now you need to get out the peskiest part of it all, the oil filter housing plug. For this you’ll need a torch to heat up the area and a 5/16� allen wrench (if you can find a good quality one it will really make life easier). Heat up the bolt and area for a good couple of minutes and see if you can get it to budge. Repeat the process until that sucker finally breaks loose.

Onto the installation process…

Might as well start with the oil pan… you’ll need to have some RTV/silicone to smear over the top in order to make sure you won’t have leaks, and bolt it back up (even harder than getting the damn thing off, but be patient, DO NOT STRIP BOLTS!).

Next you can install the new exhaust manifold (you should have drilled for the EGT gauge already and hopefully had the rest of it installed so you can just “plug� it in). Make sure you have your gasket on first and then install the turbo manifold over it. You should be using a torque wrench for all this mind you.

Assemble the turbo, oil feed line, oil return line, coolant lines (metal sections only at this point), and O2 housing (might as well have the O2 sensor in there also) together as one piece before bolting onto the manifold.

Next you can bolt on the downpipe to the O2 housing.

From here you have options (as you pretty much do for the order of everything involved). I’d suggest installing the oil lines here. The return line attached to the bottom of the turbo of course bolts to the oil pan. You should get some sort of bonding spray to reduce the risk of leaking. Spray it on the flange and bolt as quickly as you can.

The feed line is a tough one. The angle of entry into the oil filter housing is awkward, and you’ll be 99% certain you’re crossthreading the fitting, but so long as you get those first few threads down you can go from there. The hard part is tightening it enough. If I remember correctly I went about 3 ½ or 4 full turns (after breaking a set of channel locks and nearly breaking my head open). Once you have the fitting in you can attach the rest of the line and then zip tie it to the radiator fan brackets so it’s out of the way.

Next you can finish off the coolant lines to the turbo. You’ll need to buy some coolant hose to extend from the metal lines to the throttle body and to the block. Again, you’ll need a lot of towels for when you remove the existing coolant lines from the block and TB, as they will start spewing like crazy despite the fact you already drained the coolant from the radiator. Try to plug them up as quickly as you can with your new rubber lines to avoid a gigantic mess.

Now, you should already have your battery and tray out of the way, but the next steps are dependent on whether or not you’re using a SMIC or FMIC setup. For the SMIC setup, you have to remove all of the emissions garbage that’s located near your horn, under your passenger side headlight. This includes the charcoal canister and some other box IIRC. Try and follow the lines and see where they would recirculate. If you can, recirculate them in a similar fashion minus the canister, or you can just have them release to the atmosphere (of course you might not pass inspection in your state if they check for these things). You’ll also have to do some cutting into the area near the fenderwell in order to get the upper IC piping to go from the TB to the top of the SMIC. You’ll want to mount the SMIC in whatever fashion suits you best, there’s a lot of test fitting and such to be determined here. There are a handful of existing holes in the fender that can be used to bolt her up in there. Cutting your bumper may also be involved depending on which one you have. After you have the SMIC lined up, you can attach the upper and lower IC piping (you’ll also want to install the j-pipe to connect the lower IC piping… make sure you have the gasket!). Note, you want your BOV to be as close to where your intake will be, so you can recirculate. Actually, you may want to install the intake prior to installing your IC piping or at least test fitting to be sure of where you’re going to put everything. Also note that the stock lower radiator hose will be in the way of the intake to the turbo, if not your lower IC piping. You’ll need to install a flexible radiator hose in place of it. Things will get to be a tight squeeze but you should be able to do it using some creativity.

Once you have everything installed you can put your oil and coolant back in and you should be ready to test her out.

Prior to doing so, disconnect the plug on your distributor and crank her a few times for about 5-10 seconds each time so that you get oil and coolant flowing through the turbo. Put the plug back in and start it up. Let it run for awhile and check EVERYWHERE for leaks. If you see something leaking or smoking, turn it off and make any corrections necessary. Once you’ve got all that squared away you can risk the drive to an exhaust shop to have them put a bigger exhaust on, or you can call AAA and have them tow your car there.

After that it’s all about tuning and having fun.

I’m hoping I didn’t leave too much out of this, but again, if you have any questions at all feel free to email me and I’ll be happy to help.

[email protected]

-Brandon Rousseau

[95mitsu03]

you rock brandon :twisted:

[DryBear]

Nice job!

Presuming you have all the correct tools and parts, how much time would you estimate to install everything?

[brandon]

Can be done easily in a weekend so long as you have an extra set of hands. Most of it is pretty self explanitory... making sure you have the right tools and all the parts you'll need is the real task at hand.

[peanotation]

you are awesome. answered some questions i had.

what's your opinion on cooling the oil?

[8G_GTZ]

you are deffinately my fav. person right now. if you could when you're not busy, could you take pics of some "detail areas". something like where the "close spots" are, and oil/coolant lines run, etc.? also mounting the intercooler and such? thanks so much. you are a big inspiration to a lot of us, seriously.

steve

[sabzi5858]

Yep, got it routed back into the intake tube... the only thing I keep thinking is because the dump tract back to the intake is so long it might be an issue (or I have a leak somewhere).

After raising the idle a bit I don't stall anymore, but still run super rich when letting off the gas.

I've talked to a few other people who seem to think it's normal... but dropping down to the 600RPM range doesn't seem too normal to me...

sounds like a boost leak. i had the same problem early on. make a boost leak tester and spray soapy water anywhere there can be a leak and test it out.

oh yeah, good job on the write-up. i didn't get to read through all of it, but it seems to be good.

[brandon]

Yep, got it routed back into the intake tube... the only thing I keep thinking is because the dump tract back to the intake is so long it might be an issue (or I have a leak somewhere).

After raising the idle a bit I don't stall anymore, but still run super rich when letting off the gas.

I've talked to a few other people who seem to think it's normal... but dropping down to the 600RPM range doesn't seem too normal to me...

sounds like a boost leak. i had the same problem early on. make a boost leak tester and spray soapy water anywhere there can be a leak and test it out.

oh yeah, good job on the write-up. i didn't get to read through all of it, but it seems to be good.

DOHCSTUNR had mentioned fuel pressure could also be the reason for this. In the next couple months or sooner I'm going to work in an AFPR and see if it helps also.

Wouldn't be surprised if there's a boost leak though, so I'll definitely check that. There's a write up on VFAQ on how to make one, right?

[brandon]

Also... haven't done anything regarding oil cooling. Peano, were you thinking about adding an aftermarket oil cooler?

As for pics, I will do my best to steal away my buddy's camera and take some more up close stuff.

Thanks for the responses!

[sabzi5858]

hmm, i didn't think about fuel pressure, although i suppose that is a possibilty. but if you are on the stock fuel pump still, you shouldn't have any problems with that unless something is wrong. yeah, vfaq has a writeup on making a boost leak tester.

for oil cooling, if you use a '90 oil filter housing, you can hook it up directly to an oil-air cooler. i used a b&m cooler for this. if you have a different housing, you can probably use an oil filter relocation kit and send oil through an air cooler like that. i would advise against using the water/oil cooler though, as people tend to have problems with them ( http://www.vfaq.com/mods/oilcool.html ). if you do get one of those, make sure you torque the oil filter on properly every time.

[peanotation]

Also... haven't done anything regarding oil cooling. Peano, were you thinking about adding an aftermarket oil cooler?

well i have my auto tranny cooler still in the car, and i was thinking of hooking that up as an oil cooler. then i thought about how much of a fucking nightmare it's going to be, and i'm in limbo right now.

[cballz 12]

end price tag ?? Guess?? And was it worth it / happy with the power u gained?

[brandon]

With everything (tools, parts, exhaust), it probably came to around $1700 or so.

Absolutely worth it... and as an FYI went from a 17.9 with no mods to a 15.3 turbo, untuned and with a load of luggage in my trunk.

[youngcs]

how does your car run in terms of gas mileage. I know how expensive gas is right now and right now I basically have all the tools (excluding safc, downpipe, and fuel pump) to do a 4g63t swap or a just turboing my own engine. Which would you do knowing that your current engine has about 90,000 miles on it? So far have you had any major problems??

[peanotation]

haha, the only turboed 7G i've been in (pushing about 275hp at the time) was horrible with gas mileage. you could watch the needle move down the second you started the car just sitting and idling.

i can't wait for that