I was wondering if a sandwich plate would work as a oil return and feed line? Don't wanna deal with tapping the oil pan and welding

 

Please elaborate. Confused how this would work.

 

Is there any way to do my oil return and feed line for turbo without tapping my oil pan?

 

No.

 

If you think tapping the pan is the hard part of turbocharging a miata.

...you shouldn't turbocharge a miata.

 

Welcome to the forum. https://www.miataturbo.net/meet-greet-40/

It won't work because the return would be under the same pressure as the feed, there will be no flow. You have to tap the pan.

That and you wouldn't want unfiltered oil being shoved into your nice shiny turbo right?

Follow the how to, or if you have the motor out already, take it to a welder and buy him a beer.

 

Why don't you want to tap it? It's so simple it's stupid.

 

I'm not too sure how to raise the engine up /:

 

I'm not sure how I would raise the engine /:

 

Put the turbo in series in the oil circuit. It will work fine.

If the turbo is watercooled, placing it in line with the radiator outlet is ideal, as the entire coolant flow will go thru it.

 

You don't. You drive the car onto ramps, or jack the front of the car up. You drill the pan without ever moving the engine. Just make sure you follow the instructions with the oil draining/ grease on the tap/ flushing the possible shavings/ air regulator to your breather port.
Seriously though, if you can't do this simple task, you shouldn't be putting a turbo setup on your car at all.

 

so you're saying no oil lines?

 

Yes.
Lubricate the turbo with water.

 

that doesn't sound too safe

 

Is this real life?

Read for 3 weeks, and plan a turbo kit on paper. Understand that if you want something bad enough, that you're going to have to do some things that may be inconvenient....

As mentioned before, installing an oil return line is the least of your worries if you want to turbo your car. If you can't do that, just get a MSM and be done

 

Okay okay I'll tap the pan guys 👍

 

There goes another Miata...I just hope it was already a stanced out bitch basket that was too far gone to save.

 

Just be sure to lubricate the water with oil beforehand.

 

makes sense to me.

 

Just to be clear, so that you understand the logic here:

A sandwich plate can be used as an oil supply to the turbo. The ports typically provided on these plates (eg: for temp / pressure sensors) are located on the inlet side to the filter, so you'll have unfiltered oil going into your turbo. Opinions on this vary from "It'll be fine" to "The turbo will be immediately destroyed and you will die of ***-cancer."

The sandwich plate cannot be used as a return. This is because you'd then have equal pressure on both sides of the turbo, and thus, no flow. (You'd also blow the oil seals on the turbo, by exposing both its inlet and outlet ports to system pressure.) The oil return from the turbo must go to a location whose pressure is significantly less than system pressure, ideally atmospheric. The most common location is a fitting on the side of the oil pan.

You need not weld to install this fitting. The vast majority of us just drill and tap the pan to something like 3/8" NPT while it's still in the car, and use a threaded fitting with perhaps some JB-weld as a thread sealant.