Okay, I get Sport Compact Car every month, and this month had a good set of three stories on inexpensive DIY turbo kits for two Nissans and a Honda. Pretty cool stories, especially with one of the cars getting a donor turbo from an old 90's Cummins turbo diesel engine. Like all SCC articls, this one had a good bit of technical detail on picking out correct turbo size, etc. Anyway, as a young parent of two wonderful daughters that can't afford killer project car, I am looking for modest gains with a budget turbo solution. This route seemed pretty appealing. Give me some feedback, and help me with the questions below...
1) What kind of "junkyard" turbo would you recommend for a 2.0L Zetec? What previous turboed engines have similar displacement and NA performance that could have a properly sized turbo? The key is to highlight older vehicles, as they are more liklely to show up in greater numbers in junkyards.
2) What options are their for an exhaust manifold that would work with both the turbo and the Zetec cylinder head? How much custom fab work would be involved? Do I need to look at a customer manifold?
The SCC article assumed custom piping, with new parts for the fuel pump, injectors, BOV, etc.
For a budget, you may be better off with something like Jackson Racing supercharger, they are cheaper than most any other form of F/I and give nice gains and also are extremely reliable. I think you would probably get into your DIY project and end up spending way more than you planned.
I'd go with tom's stage 1 kit. it's less than $3k, 10 psi max, non-intercooled (you can always upgrade later to a full kit or add a meth injection for cooling). the kit comes with just about everything you need. I believe you just need to get a blowoff valve, injectors, and a boost controller (but only if you want it). it's a bit more expensive than the JRSC, pretty easy to install, and then you just have to get it tuned. overall, you're still spending less than $4k once you throw in the BOV, boost controller, injectors and tuning. and you'll probably make better power than the JRSC (which has very little in the way of upgrades besides the BBK) and it'll probably be more fun. good luck, happy modding
I know how you feel I love reading SCC .....ah for the articles lol well anyways. You could get the manifold from tom I believe hee makes one but I would use parts such has tubing and other little peices he makes to make a kit. I have put some thought into this but I just had a baby (my wife not me) means I will have no money for a long time. So for turbo I would probably use one from a eclispe since it is so close in displacement to our zetec.
[hihi] yeah, but everyone knows pretty quick when your running a turbo. the s/c they dont notice till ya kick it and it starts whining....alot more stealth[]
I would probably say "going cheap" on a used turbine isn't nessicarily a good idea, but you may be able to find one that is rebuildable. Personally I think the turbine itself should be the part you try and buy new.
As far as the rest of the piping, you should be able to find a good shop that can bend or weld (if you can't do that yourself) around here, or if you're looking to go real cheap, hit the dirty dirty D and look for a shop that'll do it for SUPER cheap. I'm sure you could find a couple shops in Detroit that'll be low low cost.
Good luck man, I've done a little research into this but decided it wasn't for me, so I hope it works out for you.
i would go with a turbo from a saab or a thunderbird and have it rebuilt. they are both t3/t4. my buddy did a saab turbo in his s10 and loves it. also volvo has a t3
Thanks for all the help everyone! Looks like I have a lot of reading to do. A lot more labor than a kit, but it may end up saving me a good bit of money!
No idea. I am just looking at the hardware at this point. Once I get a better idea on the hardware I will begin looking into tuning options. Any suggestions?
for tunning, if you have the drive and courage, you could save money getting the SCT pro racer package where you tune the car yourself it comes with everything you need to tune for $650 and you will recieve a base file when you buy it. you could easily use alot of parts from eclipse/talons.....the BOV is perfect and you could get one for $40-50 and the turbo would be a good size if you can get a 14b or even 16g(for more power). pickup a cheap intercooler on ebay for $200, JGStools.com manifold kit for $200, and you will need a bunch of fittings and couplers and such prolly gonna cost another $200. so you could feasibly have a fast turbo forcus for about $2000 if you source your parts right and can fab up your own exhaust and charge piping. i made my own kit and spent almost $3500 but thats because i bout an $800 turbo brand new and got the software to tune myself.
My understanding was that the stock rods, pistons, and CR were okay with anything 10 psi and under. As for the clutch, it was also my understandind that this was okay with mild turbo setups (230 hp and below). While a stickier clutch is always better, my understanding was that you don't have to upgrade.
I had this list when i was putting a turbo on my 95 celica. I used a 88 thunderbird turbo which was water and oil cooled. i would go with a t3/t4
Junkyard Turbo List
If you go intercooled then you need More pipes and couplers obviously.
You'll also need Vacuum Tubing, Tuning, Injectors, Oil in/out Lines, Water Lines (if the turbo is water cooled) I may be missing some things.
Best bet is to find a turbo that is Internally Wastegated. That is an easier setup to deal with. Alot of times you can find EVO turbos that were taken off with only 3K miles on them. Also, a lot of times you can find a pipe section that already has a BOV attached to it, which makes that part easy. I wish you the best of luck. I am going to make a write up of my homebrew turbo build in a couple of months. LMK how things go if you attempt this before I do!
you could always try a honda turbo kit that they have all over ebay for 800 then get a different manifold and do some custom charge pipes and an exhaust. Probably end up costing you around 1500-2500 depends how well you shop around.
Id stay away from them most of them are buy that ssautochrome guy and I have heard nothing but problems with the parts he sells research the kits online and read some of the message boards with the kits that guy sells.
not to mention wny buy the kit if your only going to use the turbo and ditch all the piping??
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