Alright, here it is finally - The Chronicles of My DIY Turbo Setup

[S0nik]

Ok, so I'm doing this for 4 reasons

1) So I can quickly just link people to this thread when they ask me about my setup and
2) So that I can make Cameron's sweet list he started
3) Because I am really freaking bored out of my skull
4) I haven't really offered nearly as much knowledge back to this forum as I had taken from it

I know the setup isn't completely finished yet and I've made a few changes here and there, and I'll document them as such.

So, here goes ... (and PLEASE NO ONE POST till I'm done to preserve continuity, this may take me a couple of posts to hammer out, I'll tell you when its done haha)

DISCLAIMER

This is in no way meant to be the "right" way to do it and others have certainly done it better. It's simply the route I took, and I definitely made mistakes here and there, learning as I went along usually by trial and error. So hopefully I can help save you from making the same mistakes by sharing my own experiences.

OVERVIEW

Here's the official list of parts I used ... initially cost me $5000-$5500, but now probably up to $6000 after trying to fix various things and the addition of a new clutch ... I'd have to go back and find my spreadsheet and doublecheck all of the numbers which'd take me too much time, so we'll just stay with that general figure.

- T3/4 60-1 Hifi Turbo w/ .82AR
- Turbonetics T3 Manifold machined for 38mm Wastegate
- Tial 38mm Wastegate (Dumps to atmosphere)
- Tial 50mm BOV
- VAC Motorsports .140" Headgasket
- ARP Headstuds
- Porsche 993TT 3.5" MAF
- 42lb-hr Ford Racing Injectors
- Copper Plugs, 2 stages colder than stock
- AA Stage 2 Chip (tuned for 60-1 setup)
- Greddy Profec B Spec II EBC
- AEM Wideband O2
- XSPower (eBay) FMIC - 24x12x3"
- 3" Aluminum intake piping
- 3" Custom downpipe (Using V-Band connectors)
- Half of the AA track pipes (from resonator to cat-back)
- UUC Cat-back Exhaust
- Stainless Steel Oil Feed Lines (-4) and Oil Return Lines (-10)

Some pics of my stuff

[S0nik]

THE BUILD

Some DIY Articles You May Want

hellrot325's famous and amazing HG replacement DIY:
Pelican Parts Vanos Timing/Installation DIY Aritcle
Pelican Parts Valve Cover DIY Article
Pelican Parts Clutch Replacement DIY Article

Okay, so instead of writing this in the confusing order in which I originally built this setup (because of waiting on parts) I'll write it in a somewhat more logical progression, starting with the installation of the headgasket and moving "outwards" from there. I'll try to highlight some of the problems I ran into along the way.

Head Removal / HG Installation

OK, so honestly I had no previous experience building any motors at all - no lie. So this was like sinking my teeth straight into concrete. All I did was follow a few DIY's and I eventually found my way there.

Head removal went "somewhat" smoothly, simply following the DIY's. The one thing I did differently was that I removed the VANOS unit differently, and it showed no adverse effects doing it this way but I suggest you try to follow the DIY as closely as possible. What I did was actually removed the outer housing from the VANOS unit, but still left the unit itself attached to the intake cam. I wish I had a good picture of it, but sorry I don't. I will say that When I did this, it did start and drive well, so it did not appear to adversely affect anything.

PROBLEM AREA

Now, the other big thing I ran into when actually removing the head from the block, is that you absolutely NEED to have 2 people to take the head off. I was caught by surprise by how heavy it was and ended up paying for it. What happened was I picked it up, didn't expect it to be as heavy as it was, so I lost control and it fell back onto the block. Thankfully no damage was done to the block or bottom surface of the head, however, I did manage to snap one of the chain guides for the Exhaust-Crank chain - here's the pic of the aftermath:



So, I had to take the entire pully system off, remove the timing case, and replace the broken chainrail, which cost me a few extra hours worth of work and about $20-$30 for the new rail.

......................

OK, so crisis averted, we move on to cleaning the bottom of the cylinder head and surface of the block and pistons. I basically just did this with a dye-grinder and a nylon brush attachment, then used Brake-cleaner on the surfaces to make sure they were nice and tidy. Worked pretty well, here's pics of the end result and headstuds installed:





PROBLEM AREA

Now, I'll be honest, I now realize it wasn't the smartest of ideas, but the first time I installed the headgasket, I didn't use anything, as I had read and been told by several people that it would be okay to not use anything on the headgasket to seal it. That you should just start it up and let it idle for a while and its supposed to seal itself. Well, this did not work for me and cost me the time of having to tear it down and build it again, as I was burning a lot of coolant and oil, despite the fact that compression testing each cylinder came back "normal".

......................

OK, so when I did it CORRECTLY the second time, I just used some copper adhesive spray and it worked beautifully. I put about 3 coats on both sides of the headgasket, laid it down upon the block and then put the head back on. After that I wasn't burning anything but good ole gasoline

So, with the head back on, time to torque down the nuts to the headstuds (again see the DIY or a Chilton's manual for the proper torque sequence). I was told by the people at VAC that the correct torque specs for the ARP headstuds was once at 20ft-lbs, then wait 15 minutes or so, retorque at 40ft-lbs wait 15 min, then torque them at 60ft-lbs wait about 30min and check them again at 60ft-lbs. Again, this seemed to work well, as I had no compression problems or burning oil/coolant afterward.

And there we have it, our head is back on and we're ready to move on to the "fun" stuff

[S0nik]

Exhaust Manifold / Turbo / Wastegate Installation

This is pretty self explanatory, so there's nothing really exciting or new here, but I'll add my own opinions of the setup I used.

With the Turbo (60-1 HIFI because the compressor housing is smaller) and Exhaust manifold I used, the inlet of the turbo sat nicely off of the exhaust manifold for 3" piping to slide between the stock motor mount and subframe - here's a pic of the turbo bolted up:



And "mock" intake piping installed:



It's my understanding that other turbo models used in conjunction with this manifold would most likely not fit as nicely as this ended up fitting, so you may end up having to fabricate some or purchase some from someone who sells them and modify them a little.

Getting the piping right for the wastegate was tricky, and I'm still not pleased with how I went about this (I had the wastegate mount underneath the car), so I am going to change it to mount up in the engine bay and have a dump tupe slide back down past the exhaust manifold and straight down to the street.

PROBLEM AREA

I feel I should mention this, as it was an incredible pain in the ass putting the turbo on and I couldn't even get a camera angle to show you what i was talking about, so I'll try and save you some headaches here.

For me, this turbo setup was just NOT POSSIBLE for me to install correctly with the motor in the car, so I ended up pulling the motor out and subframe, bolting everything onto the motor with it on the engine stand and putting it back in the car (this is actually still in progress, so I'll let you know how it goes once its back in).

The problem was that it was physically impossible for me to work my hands around or even get a wrench in to 2 bolts for the turbo, thus I ended up with an exhaust leak and a couple of baked gaskets. It was just the way the turbo set on the manifold and the extremely limited amount of space there is underneath the car to manuver around.

.......................

That pretty much covers that pains that I went through for that. OH - this is probably a good place to mention how I did the oil feed / return lines. Originally, for the oil return, I CAREFULLY drilled a hole into the oil pan (put lots of lithium grease on the bit and drilled ever so slowly so that the grease would pick up all of the shavings). Then used JB Weld (hey I'll admit it, I use JB weld here and there ... jank I know, but that stuff actually works) to secure a fitting to which the return line could bolt into. This worked fairly well, but when I had the motor out of the car I just decided to unbolt the pan and have it professionally done and REALLY welded at a machine shop. (Sorry I don't have any good pictures of this)

For the oil feed, I basically just drilled a hole in the top of the oil filter housing and JB Welded a fitting in to which the feed line could bolt onto. This works well, but just make sure teh fitting doesn't sit too far down into the filter housing, or you could risk damaging the filter or possibly blocking the flow of oil to the turbo. Here's a quick picture:

[S0nik]

I assume you're all well aware of how to remove the valve cover and intake manifold and install the new injectors and stuff ... there are plenty of DIY's out there, its not a very challenging thing to do, so we'll skip past that.

Intake Construction

OK, as previously mentioned, I used all 3" piping, so I had to use some silicone reducers here and there for things to fit. Since it's my understanding that AA is a "pull-through" and not "blow-through" MAF setup, I ended up relocating the MAF shown in the previous picture to in front of the turbo - not really that hard, just a little extra wiring. OH - and if you go with this 993TT MAF (as it does meter quite a bit more air than the stock one), you'll need to replace the stock electrical connector and find one that matches the MAF (yes, is different).

Next, and I know personally many of you wouldn't dare to do this, but honestly I almost never use my Air Conditioning. So for the ease of intake pipe routing, I simply removed it completely. Wasn't too tough to do, and I'm aware it can be relocated, but hey to me it was just in the way and offered me a little weight savings hehe.

So, here's a pic of the undershot of the car ... I really wish I would have found a better way to route the piping from the compressor outlet to the intercooler, but this is what I was pretty much stuck with:



And actually, to tell you the truth, more often than not my downpipe scraped before that pipe actually did (I was a little off on my measurements, but am going to fix that soon). Also I ended up "modifying" (i.e. hacking a section off) of the silicone reducer elbow so that it wouldn't hang too low ... I didn't realize this until I took the car off of jackstands and this is what I got lol:



So, by modifying the connector, I bought myself another 1-1.5", which is still close, but I was already weary of where I could take my car since it was lowered and I had scraping issues anyway between the X-Brace and the track pipes.

FMIC Fitment

ANYWAY - ok let's move on to the fun part - hacking the crap out of my front bumper to make the intercooler work LOL - I suggest getting a Sawz-All

WHOOPS I got a little carried away with the size :



Yes, the FMIC is probably unnecessarily huge, but I couldn't resist, it was only $150 shipped off of eBay and really didn't take that much enginuity to make it fit.

However, because it was so wide, the first thing I had to do was modify the bumper brackets:

Before (LEFT bracket) - I just cut on the Yellow Line



After (RIGHT bracket)



I know, I did a half ass job, but it fit between the brackets well enough to allow for this genius move on how to mount it:

Basically all I did was take the actual bumper (the chunk of metal), cut out a section on the bottom lip for it to fit and drilled 2 holes to which the 2 holes on the top of the intercooler could bolt into.

"Arial Shot"



There we go!



Believe it or not, its actually quite stable hanging like that (trust me you'd be surprised). However, I did also have to "modify" the plastic bumper cover to make it fit, which not only included chopping portions out of it, but also removing the headlights.

[S0nik]

Exhaust

OK, I'm particularly proud of my exhaust setup, as already having the AA track pipes allowed me to make a creative solution. Basically, since the AA Track pipes cosist of 2 sections (the first section goes from the stock headers to the 3" resonator and the second from the resonator to the cat-back). So, since I didn't need the first section, I axed off the flange (since the two pieces met at a 3" section), took some SS mandrel bends that I got off of eBay, did some measuring and marked the pipes as to how they should line up and took all of the sections and the flange to an exhaust shop and had them weld it together for me real fast. I did the same with the wastegate piping and just had it dump to atmosphere. You can see the end result of the downpipe and how it bolts to the Track Pipes in the previous section.

For the downpipe, I used V-Band connectors to the turbo, and I'm not entirely sure this was the greatest idea BECAUSE the actual coupler that holds the two pieces together mashes up against the transmission housing and is VERY difficult to manuver it on, so I'm kinda searching for a better solution. I can get it on, but its complicated.

Vacuum Lines

Ah yes, the mighty mess of vacuum lines. I'll make a quick MS Paint diagram of how my vacuum lines are setup once I'm done with the rest of the write-up to kind of explain how I went about making sure everything was connected correctly between the BOV, turbo, and EBC. Maybe someone can correct me if they're not hooked up correctly, but it seemed to work alright for me ..

Let's see, what else is worth talking about ... ok how about this:

POST-BUILD MODIFICATIONS

As expected, not everything worked perfectly on the first try. I had some oil leaks, and some other weird-ish problems.

My favorite one was that everytime I hit full boost, I would pop the connector out of the intake manifold that went down to the idle control valve. Maybe the connector was just worn or something and wouldn't hold, I dunno. But I can tell you that JBweld fixed that problem That's right I just JB Welded it to the intake manifold and that was the last problem I had with that.

Another weirdish thing was that I was having a problem with the valve cover gasket seals blowing out. I took my car for a quick run down the road and back and came back to see that I had a ton of oil down in the spark plug tubes, so what I did was capped off the oil return lines that come off of the valve cover and go to the intake manifold and hooked up a little "breather" there ... I'll post pics of it once I have a chance to get some ..

WRAP-UP

Other than that, I think that pretty much sums it up. Most of my decision making for this kit as to which parts to go with ended up following whatever deals I came across. A lot of it came from eBay (pipes, silicone connectors, intercooler, injectors), the flanges and gaskets and lines I just got from ATP Turbo, the headgasket and head studs of course came from VAC Motorsports, and the other more important stuff came from members on this board:

- Thanks to NickG for coming through and selling me one of his manifolds
- Thanks to guc32 for the Turbo & Wastegate
- Thanks to caldweb for the MAF and AA Stage2 Chip (this was a big turning point in my setup!)

CURRENT AND NEAR FUTURE PLANS

Well, currently, like I briefly mentioned, the motor and tranny are out of the car and almost ready to go back in. Ended up buying a SPEC Stage3 clutch while the tranny was out (though to my surprise the stock clutch held up JUST FINE!! )

Once its back together and hopefully no more oil dripping, I'll have it on the dyno for initial numbers. The setup is running between 9-13psi, which the wideband shows is okay up to about 13psi, because the AA Stage 2 setup runs 11, so with the compression level I guess it ended up being a really good match. The reason for inconsistency in boost is mostly because I'm just running off of the wastegate right now (soon to change).

This summer, I'm hoping to get it retuned for 15-18psi and buy some bigger rims / tires in hopes of more traction. Maybe new gearing, something like 2.93's if I get around to it.

Other than that, once its tuned and running properly I intend to call this project "done" so I can move onto something else (I desparately want to build an E30 turbo )

I'll be sure to post any dyno numbers that I get out of it throughout the course of this summer.

That's pretty much it I think, of course feel free to post comments or questions if I left anything out.

Thanks,

Trey

[Julz69]

To funny. I was wondering how your car was running just the other day. Did you ever get to dyno it?

[Captain]

Well it seems you are done, and i'll just say thanks now before reading it all...it looks very informative and you have definetely succesfully given back! Way to go!

[Captain]

Thank god! It's about time!

Jerk!

[S0nik]

Here's some other random pics I found of stuff laying around the Garage:





Dirty valves / head EWWWWWWWW



Stock HG compared to VAC HG



WEEEEEEEEEE LOWER COMPRESSION LOL



Kinda done-ish

[S0nik]

Ewww crappy stock HG and dirty pistons



Yay another shot of the VAC HG in the wrapping



Stealthy Painted FMIC



Sneaky Sneaky

[and1c]

Great Work there Sonic//
not read it all but it looks informative and very useful to some guys on here....
Top Work

[highboostingm3]

Jerk!

Oops! Guys! Delete your posts until he is done. He is still going strong. This way all his info can merge together without BSS in between! I deleted my post and if he has more info posts I will delete this post.

SOnik-----your ass is on the list! Thank you! Very nice job! Love it!

[S0nik]

Nah I think I covered it all Thanks Cam .. and god I hope I have a running car again soon

[shim]

great job man

[DanR]

Looks great! Nice pics and nice writeup.

[NoBenz]

Can't wait to see you on the streets when its done. You back in town yet?

[S0nik]

I was over the weekend, but I won't be back again until May 26 - its at a friend's place right now with the tranny/motor out of it and he is working on it for me currently. I really wish I could be at home and work on it with him, but living up in Rochester makes it a long drive to just come home for the weekend every weekend - plus I know he'll do a great job on it and triple check everything.

I did build the entire setup like 3 times trying to fix various leaks and other problems, but didn't have enough time to just do it properly. That's one think I meant to put in the write up too - so let me take the time now to make a psychological suggestion.

If you do this, take your time - and I don't mean just be careful, I mean REALLY take your time. Only work on it a couple hours a day. When I built it the first couple of times, I was working on it 6-8 hours a day. The reason this became a problem for me is that you get so worn out or frustrated after the 3rd or 4th hour that you just get careless without knowing it. If I was living at home I probably could have built it right the first time, but not having any experience I just tried to devote almost all of my free time to it whenever I was home on break and ended up making the mistakes that I had mentioned.

So I do feel like I somewhat failed since I ended up passing it off to my friend, but I think earned the right to still say that I built it in some respect, since I did actually build it 3 times I mean all it was really was a couple small exhaust leaks that I couldn't get to and some oil drips that I couldn't tie down ..

[resisTm3]

wow love the stealth intercooler look... nice job with everything

[RRdawho?]

Thats it,

I've decided that I'm painting my intercooler

-Rich

PS I have the same IC as you. Great fitment isnt it?

[S0nik]

hahahhahah so true, and yet so very true

[CosmoE36]

everything looks great..

one thing though..


are you saying that initially you left the PCV HOSE coming from the frontof the valve cover in the stock location and let it SEE boost? and thats why you were blowing the spark plug seals?

iwas just going to put a little filter on it lol or point it down to the ground

[S0nik]

Yes, I assume that's what was causing the seals to blow, as I haven't had it happen since I put the breather (the little filter thing that you're going to put on it) on. I'll bump this thread and post a pic of it when I get back home at the end of the month - its really easy to do and seems to work just fine.

Maybe someone else can offer some insight here - dunno if anyone else had a similar problem or solution for this .. but there was a discussion/debate around the use of the little filter things off the valve cover (I'd dig it up for you, but the search function is disabled like it is 90% of the time LOL)

[m3j0n]

like i told you in the past.... CONGRATS! and THANKS! btw, you should take it to a dyno and check the AFRs....how does she pull with the new setup ?

[WCM3]

hahahhahah so true, and yet so very true

Do you remember the sellers name on ebay where you bought the intercooler?
Thanks!

[MPD47]

Great write up! So you have the car up in Rochester yet?