Turbo kit I'm looking to buy, want opinions.

[m5james]

Mind you I'm NOT looking to build some drift machine, crazy HP, etc etc build...I really just want something simple. My DD is a 700+HP X5M, but I enjoy driving my vert and she could use a little more power :-) The seller is very reputable, this is something leftover from someone else's build but he claims it'll get me in the 300-350HP tops kinda range with this small turbo, which I'm completely fine with.

I'm not going to be doing HG just yet, but I'm guessing the inevitable will happen, I'll get bored of the power and the upgrading snowball will begin...but for now I'm looking to just bolt on, drop $1k on a tune and call it a day.

Current mods:
Intake
Single mass flywheel
M3 clutch
CDV delete

Mods sitting in boxes waiting to be installed:
M3 subframe w/ 3.23 LSD
M3 cams w/ matching trays
M50 manifold

Need to buy:
M50 conversion kit
ACT stage 3 clutch
Subframe bushings rebuild kit

Other than what's in the pics, seller has offered to include:
Extra intercooler piping
Fuel pressure regulator
Boost controller
Intake boot to keep ASC if I chose to do so
Fitting to drain turbo oil into existing oil pan bolt (I'll do a welded on bung if that's not good enough)

Seller suggested purchases:
N54 head studs to make installing the manifold easier

What's your guys' .02 on this? Look familiar to anyone? He said it looks very similar to the old AA stage 1 kits w/ the smallish turbo it has on it. I trust the info he's given me, just wanting other opinions while I wait until payday this week.

[Mklock]

If you are going to buy this (I would not) make sure it has some kind of tuning. Stuff looks used which means it worked at one point (good) but... it looks used..

[pbonsalb]

I would be tempted to start from scratch and assemble my own kit.

[m5james]

If you are going to buy this (I would not) make sure it has some kind of tuning. Stuff looks used which means it worked at one point (good) but... it looks used..

It has no tuning. Oh yeah, it's used but seller says there's zero shaft play and it'll be a good starter turbo since it's a complete hardware setup for$1000.

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I would be tempted to start from scratch and assemble my own kit.

I considered that as well, but even after watching people start with CX Racing turbo builds, they still snowballed into the $5k range after being nickel and dimed for parts, tuning, fittings, piping, injectors, etc vs this being $1k and only needs tuning. Apparently the PO of the kit used a rising rate FPR as seen in the pic, but the guy selling it to me threw in a few bits and pieces he had from his own builds and then heavily suggested a real tune.

[pbonsalb]

Maybe since you have a 700 hp X5M and a nicely modded older 740il, you could afford a higher quality and more complete turbo system for your E36?

[jajou318]

Just keep it stock. You say it just needs tune, but mention clutch purchase & install.

It may sound like a good deal but do you really want to put up with the hassle just for a good deal?

If you do go with this route, contact tuners and find out if they want to tune w/ that hardware that's installed.

[m5james]

Maybe since you have a 700 hp X5M and a nicely modded older 740il, you could afford a higher quality and more complete turbo system for your E36?

I hear ya and I see where you're going with that lol. We've got 7 vehicles and recently purchased another house, so while I'd love to turn everything into a no expenses spared project, I'm trying to find the happy medium between bone stock and tire slayer. I was going to break down every vehicle purchased, mods, etc but it'd make for a long as post.

My point is I've spent higher dollar amounts when needed, the seller is a reputable turbo builder who I'd hit up about buying a kit he'd mentioned selling but that ultimately cost more than I wanted to spend on this particular car. He later hit me up saying he got a nice budget kit that he'd got when purchasing an entire M3 coupe in need of an engine, he'd sell to me on the cheap vs listing here, so here we are.

As mentioned above, I'm sure the day will come with everything else I own (my biggest downfall lol) where I'll get bored with it and the snowball will start rolling, at which time I'll swap it into our 528iT and then I'll do a bigger build...but for the time being I'm just getting my feet wet. Zero faith in a budget build I guess :-)

[m5james]

Just keep it stock. You say it just needs tune, but mention clutch purchase & install.

It may sound like a good deal but do you really want to put up with the hassle just for a good deal?

If you do go with this route, contact tuners and find out if they want to tune w/ that hardware that's installed.

He suggested I use 22RPD for a real tune vs using the RRFPR the prior owner used. The stock M3 clutch I'm running now is fine, but the seller being a bigger turbo setup builder is probably leaning to the side of caution and suggesting I get a better clutch.

The M50 manifold I got for free since I've got buddies who scour the yards for random stuff to flip. The S52 cams I got for $300 and were purchased well before talks about going turbo, so they're mods I planned on doing anyways. I've never aftermarket turbod an E36, so honestly don't know how much of a hassle it'll be. I'm a whore for good deals though...it'd take me a minute to count the literal thousands I've saved across multiple vehicles from buying used to doing all the work myself.

The seller is friends with 22RPD, who he also referred me to, so with that I'd assume tuning it won't be an issue. EDIT: just told I might need to upgrade to 60lb injectors at most, tuning is not an issue.

[m3boost]

You came here for options and you were given some. Seems like you had already made up your mind before you posted.

[m5james]

To a point, yes. I've also been hoping that someone would recognize it since it came with a unique widebody M3 that was a drift build. Other than it not being pretty, so long as the turbos in good condition (seller says the turbo has no play) and tuning is good as well (22RPD is an hour away from me vs RK being the other side of the country), I'm sincerely curious what's so wrong with it? Clearly it's run before seeing as it has fittings, oil feed and return lines, etc but at least I'm going to do a tune vs a RRFPR which is a bandaid at best.

It could be a conflict of interest but the seller has also seen this post and said "Yeah there’s never been any love for small hp or budget build e36’s on there so I’m not surprised..." I say it now but I'm still not planning on turning this into some high HP build...I'm fine adding a "simple" 100HP and calling it a day. Of all the work I've done on cars in my garage, the deepest I've ever dug into an engine itself was doing a VANOS rebuild so putting in different cams is going to be fairly intimidating even though I've watched videos on it. With that said, pushing the engine to the point where doing a copper/cutring HG is required would be an even bigger deal for me and I have no intention of taking this car that far.

[someguy2800]

I guess I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work.

[someguy2800]

The reason people on here are not real enthusiastic about this kind of thing is we’ve seen tons of setups like this pieced together for sale and most of the time none of it ever worked on a running car or all the parts are crap from eBay. That doesn’t seam to be the case here but I can’t really tell you all will be well because I don’t know what any of those parts are or if the turbo is actually okay. Since your going to get your own tune and injectors your basically just buying plumbing and a turbo, so if you trust the seller and you think this fits your purposes go for it.

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Did he tell you what the turbo is? Looks like a gt28 or something about that size

[Mklock]

I mean, lets be real here. You can get a NEW... BRAND NEW new s200 borg for under 600$.... slap on the what looks to be cheaper style cast manifold for sub 300$ and what else does it have... some piping, cheap. Intercoolers...are cheap too. You can buy new stuff cheap nowadays it is not hard to make a good quality turbo build for sub 3-4k and it will be a stout build if you know what your doing.

[mackiiN]

I would not trust that oil feed line

[jjjjjjj]

I urge you to keep looking. I went down that road (used takeoff kit/box o’ parts, AA though) and it didn’t end up pretty... sadly don’t own the car any longer. Spent well over $3k patching up a $1k kit and never got it quite right.

You will be so, so much happier and rewarded by building your own setup or honestly if you want bolt on power with less drama I’d suggest a supercharger kit.

[m5james]

The reason people on here are not real enthusiastic about this kind of thing is we’ve seen tons of setups like this pieced together for sale and most of the time none of it ever worked on a running car or all the parts are crap from eBay. That doesn’t seam to be the case here but I can’t really tell you all will be well because I don’t know what any of those parts are or if the turbo is actually okay. Since your going to get your own tune and injectors your basically just buying plumbing and a turbo, so if you trust the seller and you think this fits your purposes go for it.

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Did he tell you what the turbo is? Looks like a gt28 or something about that size

That's kinda where I'm going with it.

He didn't, he just said he'd looked over the turbo and it feels fine. I tried Googling what few numbers I could read on the turbo itself but came up with nothing. I didn't ask directly what size it is but he described it as being similar to when AA sold a turbo setup.

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I mean, lets be real here. You can get a NEW... BRAND NEW new s200 borg for under 600$.... slap on the what looks to be cheaper style cast manifold for sub 300$ and what else does it have... some piping, cheap. Intercoolers...are cheap too. You can buy new stuff cheap nowadays it is not hard to make a good quality turbo build for sub 3-4k and it will be a stout build if you know what your doing.

I see what you're saying, I do...but I also know I'd get stuck on the little details of crap and lose interest. He's assured me this is a complete kit since he's added parts from his own bin of stuff, stating all I need to do is bolt it on and go get a tune.

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I would not trust that oil feed line

I'll look further into the feedline and he heavily suggested I weld a bung onto the oil pan for a return vs what came with the setup in the form of a return line that attaches to the oil drain bolt.

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I urge you to keep looking. I went down that road (used takeoff kit/box o’ parts, AA though) and it didn’t end up pretty... sadly don’t own the car any longer. Spent well over $3k patching up a $1k kit and never got it quite right.

You will be so, so much happier and rewarded by building your own setup or honestly if you want bolt on power with less drama I’d suggest a supercharger kit.

This is my first time doing anything like this, so I'm going off of his experience and assurances that this is a bolt and go setup...minus tune and maybe the need to upgrade to 60# injectors if 22RPD doesn't tune for 42# injectors.

I've looked at SC kits here and there when I've seen them and even they start at like $2k and somehow still have missing pieces, which often tend to be "kit" exclusive and cost more than generic turbo kit stuff.

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I mean, lets be real here. You can get a NEW... BRAND NEW new s200 borg for under 600$.... slap on the what looks to be cheaper style cast manifold for sub 300$ and what else does it have... some piping, cheap. Intercoolers...are cheap too. You can buy new stuff cheap nowadays it is not hard to make a good quality turbo build for sub 3-4k and it will be a stout build if you know what your doing.

I don't know what I'm doing honestly though, so I'm going off his experience in building proven turbo setups of his own and then being friends w/ the owner of 22RPD who just happens to have recently moved closer to me for the tune.

[bmw328m52]

I urge you to keep looking. I went down that road (used takeoff kit/box o’ parts, AA though) and it didn’t end up pretty... sadly don’t own the car any longer. Spent well over $3k patching up a $1k kit and never got it quite right.

You will be so, so much happier and rewarded by building your own setup or honestly if you want bolt on power with less drama I’d suggest a supercharger kit.

^This. I was going to go the CX route before I turbo'd mine. After research, it seemed like most of the guys who used the kit ended up replacing most if not all the parts with more efficient/higher quality ones. You already have 22rpd near you so you'll want his maf/injectors. There's plenty of "budget" builds with better parts. The biggest plus out of all of this is you'll know what you have and how everything is pieced together.

[awp235]

I mean, lets be real here. You can get a NEW... BRAND NEW new s200 borg for under 600$.... slap on the what looks to be cheaper style cast manifold for sub 300$ and what else does it have... some piping, cheap. Intercoolers...are cheap too. You can buy new stuff cheap nowadays it is not hard to make a good quality turbo build for sub 3-4k and it will be a stout build if you know what your doing.

How do I learn what I'm doing?! I was budgeting 6-7k for the eventual turbo build. How could I do it for 3-4k? Does that include a tune?!
Another big added expense would be the new clutch/ flywheel. That adds 1.5kish. RK Tunes is near(ish) to me, so I'd probably go to them for the tune. That's another 1.5k.then 3-4k for the actual turbo kit, I could see happening.

[pbonsalb]

Look up the thread by cmzwirner from maybe 4-5 years ago. He put together a nice 550 rwhp capable system with new and used parts including clutch and tune for around $4500. There have been some other budget threads for what I consider good systems. Your $6-7k estimate would be an easier budget to work with.

[Hova]

Is this a joke?

Why would you want this headache in your life?

The kit may be 1,000 but the tune alone is going to double that. Then you have to install all of it. In all likelihood you'll break something, or blow your HG, and 100% burn out your clutch in no time at all. That oil line splice off the banjo looks sketchy as hell. There are much better ways to get oil to your turbo and a simple drill and tap would look and function far better.

Spend money once, buy the best, it will only hurt once then.

[Mklock]

I got a "new" used full tuning package WITH 340lph fuel pump for 750$...good manifold for 600$... discounted turbo 550$ tial wg 175$ intercooler setup plus piping was like 350$ clutch was 550$ hg n studs another 575. Odds n ends probably 500$. Thats really all you need, not much more. Its NOT that hard. Exhaust i had done my self so just materials there. I can see that being around 800-1200 for stainless with mufflers etc.