Say you wanted to build your own DIY Turbo kit
 

Say it was for a 1.6 that already has:

Big honkin' radiator
Megasquirt
1.8 Brakes
4.3 Torsen
96k on the motor

Budget is CRUCIAL. I thought I was gonna get a used kit from a buddy locally but it turned out to be a crapped out Aerodyne Aerocharger. I didnt wanna mess with it.

The car would be beat on ALOT!!! I do tons of track events and autocrosses every year. Im not looking to see just how much power I can make peak. A nice fat powerband would be nice. Goal would be to keep it sane at say 175 whp.

Thoughts?

budget and reliability is going to be the hardest part. they can be mutually exclusive.

find a solid used turbo for a couple hundred.
get the ebay chinacooler intercooler
make up your own pipes or use stripes kit as the start (hurry while he's still not on drugs)
fish up some larger oem-style injectors
DIY dual feed rail while you're in there.

and add in all the ancillary hardware and it's probably a pretty cheap way to go.

the MS really is a huge leg up though.

Im already running freshly cleaned 1.8 injectors.


Crap, forgot to add

ACT Clutch

you left out the manifold...

There are two options here for a budget minded person.
1) Look around (for 2-3 months) for a used begi/FM unit with a T2 flange for ~$250-300.

2) Build you own. Buy a head flange, some sch 40 weld els, and a turbo flange and build it. Even with a crappy mig if you have any welding ability at all you can make a durable log manifold for about $150-$175. Depends heavily on the cost of flanges and the supplier for the weld els. The weld els can be cut without too much trouble with a 4" angle grinder.

Might as well try a chinese knockoff turbo too, I here the quality isnt to shabby

For that power level, I'm thinking about a small T25, perhaps a .48/49 from a DSM. The problem is that in order to make it work with a Begi Mani/DP combo, you'd need to source a .49standard T2 turbine housing. It's junkyard time!
Also, there have been lots of T25's with standard turbine housings used on lots of cars. Pontiac Sunbird, Merkur's, Suzuki's, lots of Nissan's.
I'm not saying that this one is the ticket, but it illustrates the point:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1986-...QQcmdZViewItem


It's not the major pieces that will kill you in the overall budget, it's the little pieces/parts/fittings/hoses/tools/etc that will just nibble away at that nice fat $2k limit you set yourself.

I had mine boosted DIY for $250. Intercooled for $350

oh fer fux sake i did. hah.

"and a manifold."

Yeah, I was thinking the turbo was the easy part. For my needs a T25 seems to fit the bill nicely.

Is this one of the china chargers?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/T25-T...QQcmdZViewItem

I also have a ton of DSM buddies so getting a good T25 is easy but the craptastic manifolds on ebay are not really screamin' reliability to me.

ecu, you need to immediately go to
http://www.bellengineering.net/Pages/sale_items.html
and purchase the $75 t25 manifold. Right fucking now.

ps, for reward for the hot lead, I'll gladly take the full size pic of the blonde ;-)

Hmmmmmm.... I may have to give BEGI a call tomorrow. I swear I looked there last week and they didnt have anything.

That is their OLD manifold right? It should still be pretty good. It looks just like the one that my buddy with the Aerocharger has.

That's much better sounding than welding up a JGS manifold.

As for the lovely young lady in my avatar, I WISH I had a full size shot of her. I get requests for it all the time.

how the hell did you do it? did you get most stuff like free? Its gonna cost me about 700$ for my DIY.

I wana hear this too lol:vash:

That is a chinacharger... but it's for a front mount Nissan application. Check the way it's clocked. If you mounted that turbo to a standard side-mount Miata manifold, like Begi's, the compressor outlet would point straight towards the engine. If you clocked the compressor to fit, then the wastegate actuator wouldn't line up. Be sure you have a plan in mind when you buy. There are brackets out there, or you can do like most guys here who go w/a Nissan turbo, make your own bracket.

And that manifold is the dogz-ballz for $75, DO IT!

The turbo was from a ford probe at the junkyard ($100)
I made the manifold out of scrap pipe cutoffs from the shop I worked next to. (free)
Head flange was 3x15" mild steel ($5)
Turbo flange and downpipe flange was out of another piece ($5)
Downpipe was a 45 elbow from autozone ($6) and a flange from napa ($4)
It used a graphite dougnut from napa ($3)
The pipe to the cat was 1/2 stock pipe and half a y-pipe from a chevy truck ($5) to get the flared end to fit the doughnut.
The fuel pressure riser I found at the swapmeet ($30)
The charge piping was pvc from home depot ($25)

I'm at $177 so far. Most the other stuff was fuel lines, clamps, ect. I had it all added up once and it was just under $250.

I added the intercooler ($20 junkyard ford probe)
With one pipe made by the muffler shop ($50)

That's $247 now. I'm missing $100 somewhere but you get the idea.

If I had the money to open a shop I'd be the next FM or begi. ;)

If you want reliability, you've gotta go cast on the manifold. BEGI is the only option. There's $450 of your budget.

I wouldn't do a Chinacharger on the track; your oil temps are going to be high and you don't want to cook it. Track time ain't cheap. You can get proper-footprint T25s cheap on eBay; I found mine brand-new for $250. You can find them cheaper on SR20 forums, but they may need a rebuild.

Chinese intercooler is fine. ICs aren't very complicated. Stick with something in the 15-20" range for efficiency and cooling reasons.

Downpipe can be custom, or you can pay someone to do it right. I spent a thousand bucks on my exhaust; you can probably do the entire thing for about a third of that if you have someone else weld it. Mine's a BEGI 3" SS DP to a 3" metal cat to a 3" Enthuza catback.

Not really much else to it. The biggest secret to cheap DIY is being able to weld. IC piping can get pricey fast if you can't weld. Oil and water lines are more expensive than you think; just a -3AN feed line with fittings can be $50+. Figure $150 for IC piping, $200 for coolant lines. You'll need a bunch of small shit like an air filter, a bunch of t-bolt clamps for the intercooler stuff, drill and tap for the oil pan, aluminum and heat tape for shielding the brakes and heater hoses, exhaust gaskets, just a bunch of small shit like that. I can send you the excel file that outlines 95% of the costs of my setup; it's about $5k after dyno tuning, but a lot of that is stuff you already have (ECU, clutch, radiator) and I could have saved a lot more money by taking more time with the build and using cheaper materials (could have saved a lot of money by doing mild steel vs. SS on the exhaust, using rubber vs. silicone on the IC piping, cheaper/less gauges, etc).

imo for what the chinachargers cost you can get a turbo from a junkyard that's watercooled. The Ford Probe turbo works VERY well on a Miata. I ran that at 14psi. Or, a saab 900/9-3 turbo which is a T3 with a .48 turbine and a .42 compressor. Both are water cooled. I won't use anything but water cooled turbos. Guys if I had the money to invest in a production run of manifolds I could sell them for $150 and still be making $50 a pop easy. Manufacturing is cheap when it's mass produced (>100pcs) Manifolds are WAY overpriced for the MASS production designs the Miata uses. For you DIY guys that know how to do a little fab work... a Ford Focus has the same (+/-) cylinder spacing as the 1.8 Miata. I have a Focus header I'm cutting off the Focus headflange and using an old Miata headflange and welding them together. I'll slap a turbo inlet flange on the Focus collector and wa-la...instant bolt-on tubular.

Here's a saab turbo on ebay for $65 +25ship

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...m=200127632719

Here's that Focus headder I'm talking about

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ford-...29040497QQrdZ1

I would like that as well if you dont mind. Ill PM you my email address.

So far im at:

Used BEGI t3 mani - $166 shipped

mercadies t3 turbo + boost gauge - $130

T3 rebuild kit - $90

Bipes + vortec FPR - $170

O2 clamp - $70

air filter + adaptor - $20

total = $646

I still need oil lines, a downpipe, v band set, and a intercooler if I want. Maybe a a/f ratio gauge too.

How can you tell if it will just bolt on to a standard manifold with no clocking? What should it look like?