My name is John and I am an addict...


...must resist the urge to turbo everything.


Intercooler...



Turned the cat into a turbo adapter...



Mounted to the manifold, cheap junkyard turbo...



Mounted...



Used the junkyard oil drain and made it work...





Cut the bumper to clear the I/C...



And the cold pipes (removed the washer fluid res)...






We are about 10 hrs into the project. Still have to weld the oil dran pot in the pan and get the turbo some coolant, and get the wastegate situation figured out.

Using a FMU for now to get it running/driving and find the weak spot (tranny? car has 120k miles), then the Greddy eManage is going on as well as a BOV.

Hope you enjoyed the pics.

 

update:

Got a few hours in this weekend, and might even be able to start the car tonight, or tomorrow after installing a kitchen

This wouldn't seal on the t3 flange...



So I made it work hehe...



Welded the water line to go where I wanted...





Then after getting the WG installed I realized the actuator WON'T FIT!!!

So, another turbo was pirated for the actuator, and then the shaft had to be modified...





checking to make sure it worked...



had some an line laying around, so I bought a $2 fitting and just welded it to the oil line...

 

cont'd...

tee on the sending unit...



pan...



and finally this is a draw-through and used some of the header inventory to make a turbo-to-maf pipe...

 

Those are some of the ugliest welds ever...I LOVE IT!

Huge props to you for the motivation, time and effort you're putting into this thing.
Post up the vids when it runs!

 

LOL

Thanks (I think?)

You should have seen some of the stuff I did when all I had was a flux-core machine, I am still learning the Miller Syncrowave 300, only purchased it a few months ago. I build a lot of headers and the welds on the MAF-to-turbo pipe is more what they look like on a normal basis lol.

OK, looking back, the welds don't look that great, but all these parts are cast and some of this is welding cast to mild steel, but that's OK, they will be hard to see at 100mph

 

And more update..

Moved the manifold temp sensor (looks stock to me hehe)...



stickers make it go faster...



and final cold pipes...



I'll get some more pics up later. We just started the car with no downpipe and I hear a hairdryer w00t!

 

My buddy Steve snapped a pic of me welding haha...



Someone said my welds were ugly, so I slowed down for one.

This is 16ga mandrel bend welded to ~1/2" thick cast iron...

 

Car still can't get out of it's own way lol. 10 count to 60mph with building pressure with the brakes on and letting off.

There is no boost guage or WB display yet, so I left the WG open a hair as a safe guard, but after 4krmp, it sounds like 4 angry chainsaws haha.

 

wow alot of work! definitely keep posting updates, and when its finished a video of it!

 

LOL. Took about 40hrs, still running good. Put a boost guage in it and it's barely at 4psi right now. Don't want to push the luck with no WB and relying on the rising rate regulator.

 

the reason it runs so poorly is you haven't tuned it properly. An FMU is the bare minimum just to keep the thing from blowing up.

sounds like you have an automatic trans or I'd suggest picking up a junkyard MSP ecu and letting it ride. Knowing more about the turbo you sourced would help also.

Of course this thread is over a year old so.....who knows.

 

lol. Car ran poorly? How so? It ran just fine and this was a budget turbo build on a grocery getter.

I am fully aware of tuning and turbo systems - currently working on my 9th system built from scratch (BMW e36 with a Holset HX35 this round), but for a few hundred bucks this was just a fun thing to do.

I let my friend drive the car for several months, he never checked or changed the oil and called me one day saying it was "ticking". Well he ran it dry on oil. Too bad too cause it made the car much more fun to drive. So I took all the parts off it and junked the car.

Turbo is just a rebuilt Garrett t3 .63a/r turbine .50a/r compressor. Have about 3 of them laying around the shop now, they come from Volvo's.


Didn't take any vids, but just took this one of the e30 race car with a Holset HX35 @ 9psi (oh yeah we got a bigger shop lol)...

 

Nice to see fabricators at work. Thanks for posting the project progress.

 

according to you: "Car still can't get out of it's own way lol. 10 count to 60mph"

Well seeing as how a STOCK MSP with smaller turbo runs 0-60mph in 7s, I'm thinking a car that does it in 10s and 'cant' get out of it's own way" is running poorly.

Coincidentally, I believe my stock 2003 Protege5 runs 0-60mph in about 9s so....you turbo'd the car and made it slower.

Not ragging on your skills or anything but just pointing out it might not have been money well spent.

 

Lol. Wasn't slower. First test drive had someone follow me in his rx7 and he couldn't keep up. The car was a piece, very slow to begin with, got tired of not being able to pass on the highway, no problems after the turbo.

Waste of money? Still have the turbo, I/C, piping etc, had it sitting on a shelf at the shop to begin with, the cat gave up it's life to make an adapter. Got the turbo at the junkyard for $57, ebay intercooler and piping was $100 and change, if you want to count the welding gas, filler rod and even the FMU there wasn't $300 in it