New to the forums, couple ?s
 

i am buying a 92 3000gt vr4 tdo4 turbo and a stock intercooler from my buddy for 100 bucks. the problem that i am running into is i am a broke high school student.

i was wondering if anyone has tried to hack up the stock manifold from the miata and make a turbo manifold out of it? i have a 1.6 btw. also the 3000gt intercooler is pretty small but i wont be boosting too much at first would it be good for about 5-6psi?

lol first off welcome buddy i think u are in for a loosing battle here modding a stock header to do a turbo setup etc u would be better off making ur own from scratch of buying ebay shit like i have run for so long the IC i gues it will work if u like that IC shit i personally dont allow them on my cars. dangerous heat colectors eww :magna:

well what sucks is the exhaust flange on the 3000 tdo4 is triangular and the greddy mitsubishi spec tdo4 is square. i have searched on ebay for some but i only find t25 ones or t3/t4. do you think it would be easier to buy an ebay one, cut off the flange and custom cut a flange for the tdo4 and weld it on?

If you're that broke, save yourself a couple tears down the road and leave the miata n/a.

Seriously. I know that sounds harsh but even for the extreme budget-ist, you can't scrape that much cuz shit will break and quickly.

-Ryan

by ebay i mean the 16g shit i run. If you think u had the skills to modd a header just get some weld ells and make ur own manifold then make up a dp tap ur pan. Figure out your power gaols and then we can work on your fueling or timing. Ryan is very right though a turbo car is abit more expensive on upkeep and pheripherals than a NA car esp clutchs motors etc.
What budget are we working with also man? If its less than a grand u might as well wait. a thousand dollars is a good bench mark on what the minimalist DIY system runs if u make everything u can and get good deals.

how would it break? i know i wont be running alot of boost until my 1.8 injectors come in and i put on my fuel rail and fpr, i have a bov, all i need is the lines and the pipes.

i have 1000 to work with but the economy is down ya know.

detonation most likely. Still given a healthy fuel system and sorted cooling situation like what i ran initialy it is possible to hit 200 whp given enough timing and a big enough turbo.
What kind of fab skills do you have man?

tig mig stick oxy i have done it all no offense to anyone but welding is easy, pass a bend test whoopdy do. i am confident i can make it work i was just wondering if it has been done but apparently not. do you think buying the ebay t28 kit would be the best starting point?

i am about to say screw it and save for another month and buy the greddy kit and stop my late night staring at the wall thinking about DIYing it

ok now we are talking u can weld hallelujia u dont know how many kids and old farts we get on here that cant. omg. Yeah grab some weld ells and do up a mani then make a DP simple and easy run a bandaid situation RRFPR etc and u will be good to go. The greddy kit is a viable alternative also given that it has a bigger turbo than the one u plan to use if only slightly and some sturdy if not restrictive manifolds. A turbo system at the end of the day is a turbine in your exhuast spinning a compressor in your intake tract and making u hp and smiles.
Several of us have done ghettofab turbo builds and the best of uss transcend this into our own custom shit with top of the line gear for les than kit price to get massive performance.
The dayshift will be on probly around 10 am est man so just give ur self a few days my other buddys will chime in as well i hope.

diy isn't bad but pretty much it always has added costs you weren't planning.. just be sure that if you do price it out you include every single little thing because those little things add up the most.
I only went 1/2 DIY - bought a used greddy kit and then modded it up so that all that's left is the turbo itself and manifold. When I priced it out in the planning stage I came out with $2,000. In the end, my very budget minded setup ran me $2500 all told. That's including all the little things you don't remember to add to the initial cost list - the upgraded spark plugs, changes to the exhaust, etc. Now, that's a great price - nowhere could I have gotten something off the shelf that would have had the same capability and level of tuning control for the same price, but it's no $1,000.
When I said 'it will break' I didn't exactly mean the idea on the surface of hacking and welding a stock header into a turbo manifold.. though that would probably break eventually.. but more to the truth that even for someone budget minded, you can't go past a certain level of cheapness or the crap that ends up on your car won't do the job reliably enough to not fail, and when one part fails on a car running boost that normally didn't have boost flowing into it, odds are it that dominoes into breaking more things. Then the budget turbo on the car has cost you a motor and your broke condition means you take a bicycle or bus to school and work for the next several months.

P.S. if my welding skills were enough that I could confidently make my own DP and mani, that would have cut end cost to probably $1,900.

Damn, you beat me to it. :bigtu:

Does anything on this site look useful? If not, he can make you a flange if you send him a gasket. The price is right. weiRtech

Buy his 1.6 head flange, a turbo flange, and pick up some weld ells. Weld it up and you're good.