No doubt. Which is why if I can find something equal to the manifold he has for near the same price, I will be making my first leap into the turbo build this weekend.

 

Would a $275 DP make it sweeter? I've thought about making DPs for the taco mani for these budget setups.

Or are you doing your own fab work?

 

t3/t4: have fun trying to spool that thing...

 

Your build was a great read. Looking forward to this one.

 

OMG, thats a beautiful car. Makes me want a sunburst that much more!

 

Thanks for checking it out everyone! Your comments and kind words motivate me to keep at it!

I got the turbo mounted up and clocked. Here are a bunch of pictures to give y'all an idea of how it sits in the engine bay. I will say that the compressor outlet piping is going to need a couple bends, as the PS reservoir and headlight motor are fairly in the way. I'd have more clocking freedom without the internal wastegate actuator, but I'm going to give it a try like this.

Braineack is right, spooling this big turbo on the 1.6 will be interesting. I'm treating it like an experiment. Luckily, the investment was low and there are many smaller options that will bolt right up. I promise to give all of you the full details, good or bad. On to the pics!





I'll be building my own 2.5" downpipe. 3" would take some skilled fabrication to fit in here. Remove the V-band internal wastegate housing and there would be loads of room. ARTech's offer of a pre-built downpipe is a good one, but I've got all the bends laying around and a lonely welder.








Thanks again guys! More to come...

 

Looks great man! Keep up the good work, and I love chinachargers.

 

of course I am. worse comes to worse, you swap it for a real T3 and/or china T3 like mine.
start 2.5" then expand it to 3" before cat.

 

Great looking car for sure. I'm curious about the relief cuts. Coming from the DSM world myself I've never seen that done to any cast manifolds. Is there a huge issue with thermal expansion in this application, or does it have more to do with it being a cheap cast mani + thermal expansion?

 

looks awesome. Can't wait to see how this turns out!

 

I can only speak to other's experiences that I've read about on this forum where folks had a problem with the Greddy cast manifold getting "stuck" on without relief cuts to let the manifold expand and contract. I made relief cuts to my old Greddy manifold and it slid off with ease. I'm not sure if it's required on this manifold, but I figure it couldn't hurt.

 

Another quick thing guys - the instructions that came with the turbo are a hoot. Here are some nuggets of wisdom from it, to carry with you as you walk the path of life:

• Check the turbocharger, If you find any demolishment or distortion, please return it to the dealer at once. Don't load any force on its decompressor when carrying the turbocharger.
• Any laypeople are not allowed to disassemble the turbocharger.
• Install the turbocharger on the engine, make sure that it is fastened and sealed at the connection. Otherwise it causes to howl and leaking oil.
• Forbid to operate the engine "accelerate, flamout, slide". It would make the turbocharger run out of oil.

 

Thanks for the insight, Tom. In both posts lol.

 

Quick update - I got the downpipe completed today. It wasn't bad at all, the v-band makes it so nice! I'll definitely go the v-band route on everything I build from here on out. In this update, I included some pictures of me doing this stuff, I thought y'all would enjoy it. I gotta tell ya, a weekend in the garage taking on a project like this is as good as it gets for me.

Once I picked the right spot for the 02 sensor, I drilled into it a few times until I got the hole the right size.


Here's the 02 bung mounted and ready to be welded. This was from Summit Racing and has a nice step to hold it in place.


Here I am welding the 02 bung in the downpipe. God, I love throwin' fire! If you don't yet have a welder go get (a decent) one today, you won't regret it.


Here's the downpipe completed and sprayed with some high heat ceramic low gloss black. I am doing a slip fit at the end of it.


All done! I wrapped it in some black header wrap and secured it with hose clamps. I've tried the metal zip tie things that are made for this, but they are a huge pain in the butt - in my opinion.

More to come!

 

Wow that turned out great!

I want a welder and skillz

Is there a certian budget that you are staying under?

 

Nice work. I wanted to say your build was very helpful to me. I also recommend anyone into this stuff go buy a welder. I bought a used Lincoln welder (for $400). I duplicated your exhaust (even using the same muffler part number) and I love it. This was my first exhaust system and all I needed was a chop saw from HF (for $60) and some practice. It also saved me tons of money on my intercooler piping, etc. over my previous build where I had to buy everything. When I was done, I sold the welder for $400 with plans to upgrade to a better unit for the next project.

 

step it up into a 3" exhaust!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Thanks again for checking it out everyone. Another quick update - here's a picture of the downpipe installed at the turbo. It looks like it's touching the shelf, but there is a good 1/2" or so at the closest point.


For the rest of the exhaust, in the interest of time I'll be running my 2.5" setup that I had while running the Greddy. The only difference from this picture (from '07) is that I've removed the two bolt flange up front and stuck a flex section with a slip fit for the downpipe. It's not optimal for this setup, but it will get me running so I can get the baseline tune sorted out.

As Braineack is highly recommending, I plan to do a nice 3" as close to the turbo exit as possible on out to a Magnaflow, but it's looking like our baby boy may be arriving sooner than we expected! That's the part of this build that I hadn't shared with y'all yet - I'm trying to get it running before the stork arrives!


My Ebay intercooler should be arriving around midweek too. I went with a bigger one this time - hopefully I can jam it in there soon.

Thanks for reading!

 

Looking great, keep up the good work.
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in to see how this comes along. Looks promising so far